Dissertation Research: Staple Economies and Social Integration in Northeast China: Regional Organization in Zhangwu, Liaoning, China

University Of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh PA

Investigators

Abstract

The interaction between mobile herders and sedentary farmers has long framed the discussion of social and political complexity during the Bronze Age in Northeast China (2000-600 BC). For later times, historic sources document the vital importance to dynastic Chinese statecraft of dynamic interactions between the pastoral "nomads" of central Asia and the settled farmers of northern China. Fully sedentary agricultural living had been established thousands of years earlier in favorable locations in northern China and had fostered considerable population growth. It has been proposed that a more mobile way of life founded on herding sheep, goats, cattle, and horses emerged from this agricultural base as a response to stress from deteriorating climatic conditions during the Bronze Age. Mobile herding, in this perspective, developed as a subsistence specialization in a relationship of close interdependence with settled farmers. Actual archaeological evidence of the emergence of mobile herding is, however, extremely scanty because previous archaeological research has concentrated heavily on the more favorable zones settled by farmers. Under the guidance of Dr. Robert D. Drennan, James Williams will carry out a regional settlement study in the Zhangwu region, where an agriculturally productive area adjoins a portion of the Horqin Sandy Lands. These Sandy Lands present a moisture and soil regime that would have encouraged the development of extensive grasslands during the Bronze Age, grasslands that could have been very productively exploited by specialized mobile herders bound into a complementary economic relationship with farmers to the south. Archaeological field survey of 185 sq km will cut across the boundary between the productive farmland and the Horqin Sandy Lands to provide a view of Bronze Age subsistence and settlement patterns on both sides of this ecological divide. The research will bring to a new level the analysis of use wear on stone tools for reconstructing regional patterns of ancient subsistence activities. The project will also have broader impacts beyond its substantive research issues. As dissertation research, it will provide essential training for Mr. Williams. The fieldwork will also be an opportunity for students from the University of Pittsburgh, Jilin University, and elsewhere to gain practical field experience in regional settlement survey. Analysis of use wear on stone tools will train students in this important laboratory approach. Research results will be disseminated in peer-reviewed publications and the complete dataset will be made publicly available online. The research will build upon and strengthen existing collaborations between the University of Pittsburgh, the Liaoning Institute of Archaeology, and Jilin University. It will cooperate with the Zhangwu County Museum's efforts to document the cultural heritage of the region and to enhance the local public's appreciation of local heritage and the nature and value of the scientific investigation of archaeological remains.