Ant2008 Recent Advances

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Recent archaeometric research onthe origins of Chinese civilisation

Yuan Jing 1

& Rod Campbell2

We are very pleased to present a summary account of the Peoples Republic of Chinas proon the Origins of Chinese Civilization. It has focused on Late Neolithic and early Bronze Agsites of the Central Plains the cultural heartland of the rst three dynasties of Xia, Shang an Zhou. Particularly notable is the emphasis of methodology which was driven almost entirely the archaeological sciences.

Keywords: China, Late Neolithic, Bronze Age, palaeoecology, palaeobotany, archaeozoology,

ceramics, lithics, jade, bronze-casting, DNA, stable isotope analysis

IntroductionThe origin of Chinese civilisation is an old and fraught question both in China and the West. What, for instance, does Chinese mean in the context of Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age China? Should we speak of Chinese civilisation or Chinese civilisations? Didit or they have a single or multiple origins? What exactly do we mean by civilisationanyway? Nevertheless, and despite the long history of these questions and the fact that they

themselves have become more complicated over time, signicant progress has been made inat least some areas. It is now uncontroversial, for instance, to state that Chinese civilisationhad many sources, even if by the former we restrict ourselves to the Yellow River Valley polities privileged by traditional historiography.

Major discoveries in the last 30 years, both within and beyond the Central Plains havetransformed our understanding of regional development and interaction. There have beenqualitative developments in Chinese archaeology as well, such as the increasing use of inter-disciplinary specialist collaboration, notably involving archaeological applications of naturalscience techniques. Nevertheless, the task of unravelling the prehistory of an area as largeand diverse as China is Herculean and there are many serious lacunae in our understanding of even the more intensively studied regions. Thus, while there has been much progressin researching culture-history, chronology, urban sites and elite material culture, much lessis known about the technological and economic aspects of civilisation and its antecedentsin China. To address these concerns and to foster the development of inter-disciplinary archaeometric approaches in China, collaborative scientic research into the economy and

1 Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, 27 Wangfujing Street, Beijing, 100710, P. R. Ch(Email: [email protected])

2 Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, New York University, 15 East 84th Street, New York, NY, 10028,USA (Email: [email protected])

Received: 18 January 2008; Accepted: 20 June 2008; Revised: 15 August 2008 ANTIQUITY 83 (2009): 96109

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Yuan Jing & Rod Campbell

Figure 1. Map showing location of sites discussed in text: 1) Xinzhai; 2) Wangchenggang; 3) Erlitou; 4) Taosi.

technology of several key Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age sites in the Central Plains was undertaken under the auspices of the Chinese government-funded Origins of ChineseCivilization Project.

The Origins of Chinese Civilization Project Announced in 2001 following the completion of the Three Dynasties Chronology Project,the Origins of Chinese Civilization Project is in some ways an extension of the former,overlapping in its chronological (2500-1500 BC) and geographic focus. Moreover, while

the Three Dynasties Chronology Project was aimed at giving the traditional historiographicnarrative a rmer chronological basis, the rst stage of the Origins of Chinese CivilizationProject focused on the origins and development of what could be termed Central Plainscivilisation in the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age (the Longshan, Erlitou and Erligang periods). Future phases of research, however, will extend beyond the Central Plains andexpand in chronological range, making this a much more expansive and inclusive project.

The sites focused on in this rst stage of research, Taosi, Wangchenggang, Xinzhai andErlitou, were selected because of their precocious development, ancestral relationship tolater developments in the Central Plains and their location within the area traditionally associated with Chinas rst dynasty: the Xia (Figure 1). The Taosi site (c . 2500-1900 BC)located in southern Shanxi province, is important for its size (300ha), elite burials, massive

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wall, evidence of early bronze-casting and what is apparently a monumental observatory (Shanxi Team 2005). Wangchenggang (c . 2200-2000 BC), for its part, is signicant forits possible identication with Yangcheng, a capital of Yu, the legendary founder of the Xia dynasty. With a second rammed earth wall discovered in 2002 enclosing 30ha (Peking University & Henan Institute 2006), Wangchenggang is the largest walled Longshan sitein Henan province. Sacricial remains and elite ceramics and jades discovered there arealso suggestive of the possible signicance of the site and its relationship to Erlitou elitepractices. Xinzhai culture (c . 2200-1900 BC) is generally understood to be culturally ancestral to Erlitou and therefore crucial to understanding the origins of the latter (Peking University & Zhengzhou Institute 2005, 2006). At Erlitou itself (c . 1850-1600 BC), therst owering of the Central Plains Bronze Age can be seen with the advent of forms of palatial architecture, bronze-casting and elite material culture that would remain central toan expansive metropolitan elite tradition for more than 1000 years (Institute of Archaeology 1999). While some scholars have doubted the historicity of the Xia or the association of

Erlitou with it (e.g. Allan 1984; Bagley 1999), there is no denying that Erlitou stands atthe headwaters of a cluster of traditions that link it with the elite material culture andpractices of the following Shang and Zhou dynasties. Investigation into the economy andtechnology of these sites is therefore of crucial importance to understanding the originsand early development of Central Plains civilisation. The research was divided into eightcomponents focused on agriculture, animal husbandry, bronze-casting, ceramic productionand stone and jade industries. In the following paragraphs we will briey introduce theresults of this work, provide a synthetic discussion and suggest avenues for future research.

Palaeobotany (Figure 2) Analysing 380 otation samples from Erlitou, Wangchenggang, Xinzai and Taosi, Zhao(2007) recovered and identied hundreds of thousands of carbonised seeds. He discoveredthat, continuing early Chinese Neolithic traditions, cereals, dominated by millets, were themost common palaeobotanical remains. Nevertheless, this period saw a major development with rice and soybeans becoming common. In the Erlitou period wheat began to appear inthis area as well. Between the Erlitou and Erligang periods, while rice continued to appear, wheat seeds suddenly and dramatically increased (see also Lee et al . 2007). It can thus besaid that by Erlitou times this area already had a crop assemblage including millets, barley,

rice, wheat and soybeans. This kind of multi-cropping would have not only increased overallagricultural production, but diversication would have also acted as insurance against thefailure of any one crop. Increased intensication could support larger populations of non-producers involved in other activities. Other relevant issues awaiting future research includethe possible use of irrigation or other labour-intensive projects that could have affected socialeconomic organisation (Rapp 2005).

Zooarchaeological analysis: domestic vs . wild (Figure 3) After identifying and quantifying over 50 000 bone fragments excavated from Wangchenggang, Xinzhai, Taosi and Erlitou, Yuan et al . (2007) discovered that the use of

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Figure 2. Archaeobotanical remains (absolute quantity above and percentage of samples with particular plant presencbelow).

Figure 3. Comparison of wild anddomestic animals. NISP refers to thenumberof identiable specimens (i.e. bone fragments)while MNI refers to the minimum number of individuals (animals).

animals for food during this period had continued earlier traditions with domestic animalsbeing the primary source of meat. Nevertheless, starting in the Longshan period and despitethe continued predominance of domestic pig in the faunal assemblage, at each of these sitesnew domesticates such as cattle (Bos sp.) and sheep (Ovis sp.) began to appear. Betweenthe Longshan and Erlitou periods these newcomers formed an increasing percentage of the faunal assemblage while pig declined in relative importance. More than mere sourcesof protein, these animals played an important role in ritual as sacricial victims and wereincreasingly used to convey status differences in Shang and Zhou times (Yuan & Flad 2005). Another matter of interest is the rather sudden appearance of sheep in the archaeologicalrecord, a phenomenon related to East-West contacts at this time. Indeed, the late appearance

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Figure 4. Phylogenic tree of 152 modern domestic, wild and ancient sheep.

of domesticated sheep and cattle in China (c . 2500 BC) contrasts with the early appearanceof domesticated dog by 8000 BC and pig by 6200 BC.

Performing DNA analysis on 10 ancient sheep (4000 BP) from Erlitou and Taosi, Caietal .(2007) determined through mutation site and phylogenic analysis that they all belonged to Asian common branch A (Figure 4). These ancient sheep thus shared a common maternal

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Figure 5. Human and pig 13C and C 3:C 4 ratios (not including the two Erlitou high C 3 human outliers).

ancestor with modern Chinese sheep breeds (and some Central Asian ones) such as theshort-tailed winter sheep, Hu, Mongolian and Tong sheep.

Human and pig 13C and C3:C4 ratios (Figure 5)Using stable isotope analyses on human and animal samples from Taosi,Erlitou and Xinzhai,Zhang et al . (2007) and Wu et al. (2007b) were able to show that the occupants of these sitesate diets primarily composed of C4 plants like millet. The samples from Taosi showed a dietentirely comprised of C4 plants while the samples from Xinzhai and Erlitou contained smallpercentages of C3 plants possibly from consuming rice or some other C3 plant. Interestingly,there were two individuals from Erlitou whose diet was comprised primarily of C3 foods,completely standing out from the other 20 human samples from Erlitou. Whether these

individuals were resident aliens or whether rice and social status were related could beelucidated with larger-scale studies that include mortuary context.

Human and pig 15N (Figure 6)The stable isotope results for the pigs at the three sites were largely comparable with thoseof the humans, suggesting that the pigs may have been eating kitchen scraps and human waste as is still common practice. This research also showed that because C3 plants aremore common in the north China environment than C4 plants, simply looking at 13Cvalues ought to be enough to determine whether pigs at a given site were fed as opposed toforaging in the wild if the agriculture at the site in question was primarily based on C4 plants

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Figure 6. Human and pig 15 N.

(Figure 5). If, on the other hand, agriculture at a particular site was based primarily on C3plants such as rice, then 15N analyses or some other source of information is necessary todistinguish domestically fed vs. free foraging or wild pigs (Figure 6).

Pottery (Figure 7)Using trace element analyses on 72 ceramic samples from Erlitou, Wang and Hong (2007)and Wu etal.(2007a) discovered that they could be divided into two groups and one isolatedcase: comprised of ordinary clay manufactured ceramics (Group A), white ceramic or grey ceramic (Group B) drinking vessels, and a single grey jue -vessel (Group C), respectively.It was noted that the three-footed ceramic wine vessels found at Erlitou underwent a developmental sequence from red-grey or brown-grey, to white, to nally grey and thedevelopment of ceramic ritual vessels differed from that of daily use ceramics. Group A contained two deep-bellied guan-jars which stylistically show obvious inuences of the Yueshi culture of modern day Shandong province, yet the results of the trace element analysisshowed that they were very likely manufactured at Erlitou. From this we know that Yueshiculture ceramic manufacturing techniques were known to at least some of the inhabitants

of the Erlitou site. The composition of the ceramic jue -vessel belonging to Group C showedobvious differences from the other vessels sampled and perhaps it originated in another placeand was brought to Erlitou. The above three groups of ceramic vessels showed differencesresulting from the use of different fabrics, having different uses and perhaps coming fromdifferent places. The samples were also compared to the stamped earthenware and stonewareunearthed at Erlitou and found to be similar in composition to the stamped earthenwarebut different from the stoneware. Analyses of ceramic characteristics such as permeability,porosity and density also showed similar results, suggesting that the stoneware originatedelsewhere with possible Lower Yangtze sources postulated. While the archaeometric study of Erlitou ceramics is in its infancy, the above investigations suggest avenues of futureresearch such as recovering the networks of production and distribution that underlie the

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Figure 7. Erlitou ceramic groupings based on multiple component analysis of trace-elements.

ceramic tradition distributions that have traditionally been the focus of much of Chinesearchaeological work.

LithicsLithic tool assemblages also seem to have undergone dramatic changes over the periodunder focus. Wang (2007), in a long-term study of lithic tools, was able to show that inLate Yangshao and Early Longshan times before 2500 BC tool assemblages mostly consistedof axes, adzes, shovels and hoes, with axes making up 30-40 per cent of the ground stone

tools. During Late Longshan to Early Shang times (2500-1500 BC) aked tools becameextremely rare and stone axes and shovels dropped in frequency while harvesting tools suchas knives and sickles begin to form the majority of stone tool assemblages. The great increasein harvesting tools such as stone knives and sickles may reect an increasing importance andintensication of agricultural production.

JadeErlitou was the early centre and perhaps origin of a suite of Chinese Bronze Age elitetraditions that lasted for a millennium and notably included both jade weapons and bronzevessels. While Neolithic societies in the area of modern China had been carving jade for

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millennia before the occupation of Erlitou, the latter is notable for its large jade blades,symbolic weapons ancestral to the gui tablets of later Zhou ritual. In a study of jadecraftsmanship at Erlitou, Deng et al. (2007) discovered that blanks for the large blades werecut from jade boulders in sheets. The manufacturing process included chipping, sawing,drilling with hollow drills, grinding and polishing and showed technical progress from thepreceding Neolithic craftsmanship. Following photographic analysis, Deng was able to show that Erlitou jade ge -dagger-axe and yue -axe blades display hafting marks, demonstrating thatthey were, in fact, components of symbolic weapons and not simply abstract ritual jadeartefacts. Deng also performed a preliminary reconstruction of the manufacture of theturquoise plaques found at Erlitou, dividing them into types, analysing the ways they wereassembled into larger artefacts, and studying the construction of the large dragon-shapedartefact discovered in 2004 (Erlitou Team 2005). These preliminary technical studies of Erlitou jade and semi-precious stone craftsmanship will no doubt contribute to a fullerunderstanding of these crucial industries as well as forming points of departure for future,

perhaps more socially focused, studies of elite craft production.

Bronze-casting (Figure 8)There is probably no form of technology in Chinese archaeology that has been more studiedand debated than bronze-casting, especially its origins and the sources of its ores. Researching bronze artefacts from all periods at Erlitou, Li and Hong (2007) discovered that Erlitoumay have had both arsenic bronze and tin-(lead) bronze metallurgical traditions. Given thatarsenic bronze typies early bronze metallurgy of north-western cultures such as Qijia andSiba, and tin-(lead) bronze is said to typify the metallurgical tradition that developed in theCentral Plains (Li 2005), nding both at Erlitou is signicant. Moreover, although there wasa shift from an arsenic bronze tradition toward tin-(lead) bronze production around ErlitouPhase II, there may have been a long period of overlap and some tin-(lead) bronze artefactscontinued to contain arsenic well after arsenic bronzes had becomerare. Based on the fact thatelements such as bismuth, antimony and silver have been detected in high tin-lead-(arsenic)alloy slag, it was hypothesised that the tin from tin-(lead) bronze may have originated intin-lead alloy (which can contain arsenic). This suggests that the raw material for the Erlitoubronze industry may have come from a mineral source simultaneously containing tin, leadand arsenic. Mineral deposits containing both lead and tin frequently also contain arsenic,

silver, bismuth and antimony with each ore belt containing different ores. If arsenblende,arsenopyrite or julienite contained in such mineral deposits were directly added into thesmelting process the result would have been arsenic bronze. If ore containing tin, lead andarsenic was smelted, however, it could have resulted in lead-tin alloy and yellow slag, which, when combined with copper could result in tin-lead-(arsenic) bronze. The development of smelting technology can result in the appearance of different alloys as well. In early periods,under conditions of a relatively weak reducing atmosphere, attempts to smelt ores containing tin, lead and arsenic would have resulted in arsenic-(lead) bronze, as the tin would not havereadily separated out. Because of this the change from arsenic bronze to tin-lead-(arsenic)bronze may reect a gradual process of processing a single mineral source as well as improving smelting technology (increasingly strong reducing atmospheres). The nding that tin, lead

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Figure 8. Arsenic bronze slag adhering to an Erlitou crucible fragment indicating possible common source of arsenic a

lead.

and arsenic may have originated in a single source has very important ramications for thestudy of the Erlitou metallurgical industry and its development, as well as the search for thesource of its ores.

DiscussionSynthesising the above research, it can be said that obvious and dramatic changes took place in the economies of Central Plains societies between 2500 and 1500 BC, most

conspicuously in the realm of agriculture and animal husbandry. In the Central Plainsfrom Longshan to Erlitou times rice and domestic cattle became common while wheatand sheep arrived from western Asia creating an increasingly diverse agricultural economy.The addition of rice, wheat, cattle and sheep would not only have brought new foodsources but also new cultivation and husbandry techniques, effecting structural changesin agricultural production. Between the Erlitou and Erligang periods the scale of wheatcultivation dramatically increased, a development with great long-term ramications forlater northern Chinese dry farming crop regimes.

Another characteristic of economic change in this period was the development of thebronze, ceramic, lithic and jade industries. While the rst mould-cast bronze bell discoveredto date was cast in the Late Longshan period, the Erlitou period saw dramatic development

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in bronze-casting with the rst large-scale bronze workshops and multi-component moulds.During the Erlitou period rare examples of stamped-patterned stoneware and even proto-porcelain also made their appearance, possibly imported from the south. The ring temperatures attained during the millennia under study in the Central Plains show obviousadvances over earlier periods and ceramic ritual sets reached their apogee before being replaced by bronze sets beginning in the Erlitou period. Multi-function production toolssuch as stone adzes ceased to dominate lithic assemblages, aked tools became rarer andspecialised agricultural tools such as stone knives and sickles increased in relative frequency.The variety of jade artefacts increased in this period while the techniques of chipping,sawing, drilling, grinding and polishing all showed technological development.

Thus between 2500 and 1500 BC, the Central Plains area saw major developments inboth agricultural regimes and craft production. At the same time, the rammed earth walls,large scale structures and a possibly astronomically related feature at Taosi all dating fromthe Longshan period, as well as the palace-temple structures and complex bronze-casting at

Erlitou, display the material correlates of increasing concentrations of productive force andthe diverse ends to which they were put. What do these things tell us about the origins of Chinese civilisation? As noted earlier,

the studies discussed here were focused on the antecedents of the Central Plains Bronze Age, home of the ruling dynasties of the traditional Chinese historical narrative and it isonly with the caveat of an ancestral relation that we can speak of them in terms of Chinesecivilisation. This leaves the question of the meaning of civilisation and the relationshipof economic and technological development to it. While remaining deeply ambiguousand ambivalent (Elias 1994; Patterson 1997), civilisation has been employed recently by archaeologists in two quite different ways. The rst use goes back to early twentieth-century social evolutionists like Morgan and Childe and takes civilisation to mean an advancedstage in human social evolution marked by such developments as cities, writing, metallurgy,social hierarchy, elite material culture and states. The second use of civilisation has been asa kind of cultural sphere in which early polities were embedded: the normative traditions,practices and symbols demarking the ordered/domesticated world from the chaos beyond.The rst use of the term civilisation has been much debated and the various markers thatsupposedly attend this stage of social evolution are in dispute. If there can be said to be a consensus on the topic of social evolution in archaeology it is that there is great variety in thematerial and practical expressions of what one might want to call civilisation. In the Central

Plains case, we can already see many of the markers of increasing scale and intensity of socialinteraction in the enormous, sometimes walled, sites (100-300ha), large-scale rammed earthstructures and growing distinctions in burial hierarchy that begin to appear in the later half of the third millennium BC.

From a materialist historical perspective, changes in form and scale of productionpredicated on social re-organisation or technological development are necessary bases of increasing social complexity, and agriculture and craft production are frequently seen inthese terms in archaeology. Recently, however, authors such as Andrew Sherratt (1999: 16)have noted that not only can food production be seen as sharing a common social domain with craft production in requiring technological knowledge, skill and investment both in productive facilities and in distributive networks , but also in sharing the domain of value and

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exchange . Food and craft production then are not only facets of the economy and theirdevelopment is not merely a matter of technological advance. This realisation means thatthe creation or introduction of new elements such as bronze metallurgy or cattle would haveinvolved socio-cultural negotiation and adaptation along the way to incorporating thesethings into increasing elaborations of material culture, people and meanings.

Taking up the second useof civilisation, cattle and bronze (among other things) mutually shaped the development of a tradition of hierarchical ancestral sacrice and feasting thatmany authors have posited lay at the heart of Chinese Bronze Age civilisation. Jade andbronze symbolic weapons were the second most important form of symbolic capital in theCentral Plains Bronze Age tradition and thus the incorporation of jade and later bronzesymbolic weapons in increasingly hierarchical mortuary contexts suggests the dawn of a world in which it was possible, a millennium later, to state that the great affairs of the state are sacrice and war (Zuo Zhuan, Cheng 13). Given this, future research ought to exploreexplicitly the social contexts of changes in production and economy and the ways in which

these changes were involved in reguring local and regional networks of objects, practicesand ideologies. In short, more work needs to be done on exploring the ways in which theaddition of new elements recongured local worlds by explicitly looking at the connectionsbetween things, practices and people in ancient China.

Another signicant contribution of the research discussed here was the evidence of long-distance contact indicated by the introduction of sheep, wheat and possibly cattlefrom western Asia. The prevalence of arsenic bronze in the early stages of Central Plainsmetallurgy, and the revelation that it was probably advances in smelting technique ratherthan a separate metallurgical tradition that distinguished tin-(lead) bronze from arsenicbronze, is signicant for the suggestion that bronze metallurgy may also have been an importfrom the north-west where arsenic bronze occurs earlier than in the Central Plains. Morelocally, evidence for Eastern Shandong potting techniques being reproduced at Erlitou, theputative Lower Yangtze origin of stamped stoneware and the possible southern origin of twoindividuals found at Erlitou, show the importance of inter-regional interaction and exchangeto Central Plains societies in this period. What is still unclear, however, are the forms thatthis interaction took and it is hoped that future research will focus on both the mechanismsof exchange and the processes through which new elements were locally absorbed.

ConclusionPerhaps the most exciting aspect of the research produced by the Origins of ChineseCivilization Project lies in its scientic nature. No longer content to merely maparchaeological culture, history and chronology, the current multi-disciplinary collaborativearchaeometric project reects the growing sophistication and diversity of Chinesearchaeological practice.Bringing together specialists to focus on keysites within thesame area and time period, performing analyses in palaeobotany, zooarchaeology, DNA, palaeodiet,bronze-casting waste, ceramic composition and ring, lithic and jade composition andmanufacture, within a cooperative project aimed at a synthetic reconstruction of ancientsociety, is something that has never been attempted in China before on this scale. Inaddition, some of these studies, such as the work on ancient DNA, were undertaken as

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basic, foundation-building research which in the future promise even greater results. Froma methodological point of view this project was a pioneering synthetic study with itseight component approaches mutually informing an overall understanding of this crucialperiod and beginning to ll serious lacunae in the literature. The success of this research will hopefully presage the continued expansion of multi-specialist collaborative projects inChina and with it, a shift toward more integrated social and economic studies.

Although with the current research it has been shown that dramatic changes with long-term repercussions took place in the economies of Central Plains societies between 2500and 1500 BC, it should also be noted that at present comparable quantitative work onthe technology and economy of the periods before and after 2500-1500 BC, or regionssurrounding theCentral Plains has yet to be undertaken. Thus detailed comparisons betweenthis selected time frame and the periods before and after are currently impossible. Given thepreliminary nature of the results, little can be said at this time about the interrelationshipsof different components of the economy, specic technological advances and their socio-

cultural impact. Accordingly, in the next phase of research, the chronological, geographical andmethodological scope of the project will expand to include the systematic and quantitativestudy of periods before and after 2500-1500 BC, the Upper and Lower Yellow River areas,the Yangtze region and other areas, and the relationships between material culture, socialhierarchy and political forms.

AcknowledgementsThe research for this article was supported by the Chinese Science Council project on the Formation andEarly Development of Chinese Civilization from 2500-1500 BCResearch on Technology and Economy(2006BAK21B03). The Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University generously gaveone of us (Rod Campbell) post-doctoral support during the writing of this article. The authors would like tothank Dr Liu Jianguo of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Institute of Archaeology for his assistance inmaking the map and Dr Li Xingwei also of the Institute of Archaeology for his comments. Further thanks areextended to Professors Li Yun-kun and Rowan Flad for reading early versions of this article and to ProfessorCharles Higham and an anonymous reviewer for their comments and suggestions.

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