Early Complex Societies in NE China: The Chifeng International Collaborative Archaeological Research Project

Linduff, Katheryn M.; Drennan, Robert D.; Shelach, Gideon

doi:10.2307/3181485

Cited by 51 publications

(13 citation statements)

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“…The local community pattern for the Hongshan culture area in Northeast China is much more like that of the Valley of Oaxaca than the Alto Magdalena. For a systematically surveyed zone of 783 km 2 in the Chifeng region (14,15), it is easy to delineate a village pattern similar to that of Oaxaca in Hongshan occupation (4500-3000 B.C.) (1, 2).…”

Section: Economic and Symbolic Hierarchies In Northeast Chinamentioning

confidence: 99%

Patterned variation in prehistoric chiefdoms

Drennan

Peterson

2006

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Comparative study of early complex societies (chiefdoms) conjures visions of a cultural evolutionary emphasis on similarities and societal typology. Variation within the group has not been as systematically examined but offers an even more productive avenue of approach to fundamental principles of organization and change. Three widely separated trajectories of early chiefdom development are compared here: the Valley of Oaxaca (Mexico), the Alto Magdalena (Colombia), and Northeast China. Archaeological data from all three regions are analyzed with the same tools to reveal variation in human activities, relationships, and interactions as these change in the emergence of chiefly communities. Patterning in this variation suggests the operation of underlying general principles, which are offered as hypotheses that merit further investigation and evaluation in comparative study of a much larger number of cases.comparative study ͉ social hierarchy S upralocal communities organized around institutionalized social inequalities emerged repeatedly and independently around the world between about 1,000 and 7,000 years ago. The earliest such societies, often broadly labeled chiefdoms, frequently, but not always, came into existence after the establishment of sedentary agricultural living. This fundamental transformation in human social organization was speculated about by mid-19th-century cultural evolutionists on the basis of comparative ethnography, and it has been more directly documented by archaeological research since the mid-20th century. Comparative study has drawn heavily on earlier cultural evolutionary work, sharing its focus on similarities and universals. Hierarchical relationships, of course, have deep roots in dominance behavior in the human (and other) species, and the institutionalization of such relationships provides effective organization, especially at large social scales. That such institutions have appeared repeatedly in human history is no surprise, but we do not fully understand just how they came to emerge when and where they did, and not in other times and places. We are also increasingly aware that early chiefdom communities did not all take the same form and did not all emerge in the same way. There are indications that this variation is not just idiosyncratic detail, and that comparative study of its patterning can provide insight into the developmental dynamics of institutionalized social hierarchy. Ironically, the very richness of information that has brought about this realization is itself an impediment to effective comparative study, which finally will need to draw on the social trajectories of dozens of regions. When a recent comparison of seven early civilizations runs over 750 pages, one despairs of ever seeing the forest for the trees. Here, we look at three regions, focusing on changing activities, relationships, and interactions in human communities where inequalities emerged and became institutionalized.

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Section: Economic and Symbolic Hierarchies In Northeast Chinamentioning

confidence: 99%

Patterned variation in prehistoric chiefdoms

Drennan

Peterson

2006

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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“…Most of these tombs are located in Inner Mongolia and Liaoning Province in China (Kuhn 2006, p. 28). The extensive site survey by the Chifeng International Collaborative Archaeological Research Project (CICARP) provides extensive documentation for numerous sedentary agricultural communities in the Chifeng region for the Khitan, other polities, and earlier periods (Chifeng 2003;Linduff et al 2002).…”

Section: Khitan Liaomentioning

confidence: 99%

Inner Asian States and Empires: Theories and Synthesis

Rogers

2012

J Archaeol Res

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By 200 B.C. a series of expansive polities emerged in Inner Asia that would dominate the history of this region and, at times, a very large portion of Eurasia for the next 2,000 years. The pastoralist polities originating in the steppes have typically been described in world history as ephemeral or derivative of the earlier sedentary agricultural states of China. These polities, however, emerged from local traditions of mobility, multiresource pastoralism, and distributed forms of hierarchy and administrative control that represent important alternative pathways in the comparative study of early states and empires. The review of evidence from 15 polities illustrates long traditions of political and administrative organization that derive from the steppe, with Bronze Age origins well before 200 B.C. Pastoralist economies from the steppe innovated new forms of political organization and were as capable as those based on agricultural production of supporting the development of complex societies.

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“…Surveys in Mesoamerica (Balkansky 2006;Balkansky et al 2000;Feinman et al 1985;Ford and Fedick 1992;Healy et al 2007;Killion et al 1989), South America (Drennan et al 1991;McAndrews et al 1997;Wilson 2009), the northern Mediterranean (Ammerman et al 2013;Bevan and Conolly 2002;Bintliff 1997;Given et al 1999), the Near East (Ur and Hammer 2009;Wilkinson 2000;Wilkinson et al 2007), and east Asia (Drennan 2010;Linduff et al 2002;Underhill et al 1998) have made significant contributions to our understanding of changing patterns of settlement and land use, particularly with relation to changing political, socioeconomic, and environmental conditions. These projects have also been successful in delineating the relationships between urban centers and their hinterlands, and recent research has continued to expand our understanding of peripheral areas through the study of non-sedentary pastoralism (Frachetti and Mar'yashev 2007;Rosen 1987a;Ur and Hammer 2009), local adaptation to ecological niches (Bevan and Conolly 2009;Ford and Fedick 1992), small-scale metallurgical production (Ben-Yosef et al 2010;Georgakopoulou 2014), and movement across landscapes (Gibson 2007;Snead et al 2006).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%