Water, Earth, and Fire

Abstract

This chapter introduces the material evidence of the making of riverine communities in the Greater Jiang Han Region in prehistoric central-southern China and their uniquely emplaced social dynamics of collaborating with both the landscape and with one another. By focusing on two types of material remains—hydraulic “landmarks” and special classes of pottery—at the Shijiahe site complex in the Jiang Han Basin that brought together people and place, this chapter demonstrates how these communities integrated the natural and the social through collective activities of place-making and ritualized practices of community building. The chapter argues that these activities all foreground a common set of social values of shared labor, community participation, and an intimate connection to the landscape that persisted through millennia in this region. Ultimately, the chapter advocates shifting attention to the deep-time pattern of living in the Jiang Han region at the local level and seriously considering the alternative path of social development—characterized by heterarchy rather than hierarchy—that was emplaced in the co-evolving socio-natural landscape and integral to the long-term social resilience of the Jiang Han riverine communities.