Rising from blood-stained fields: Royal hunting and state formation in Shang China
01 Jan 2001-Iss: 73, pp 48-191
About: The article was published on 2001-01-01 and is currently open access. It has received 43 citations till now.
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TL;DR: This article present a synthesis of zooarchaeological research published since the early 1990s that addresses political economy, status distinctions, and the ideological and ritual roles of animals in complex cultures.
Abstract: The zooarchaeology of complex societies provides insights into the interrelated social and economic relationships that people and animals created. I present a synthesis of zooarchaeological research published since the early 1990s that addresses political economy, status distinctions, and the ideological and ritual roles of animals in complex cultures. I address current approaches and applications as well as theoretical shifts in zooarchaeological practice. Research indicates there is great variability across space and time in how past peoples used animals to generate economic surplus, to establish status differentiation within societies, and to create symbolic meaning through sacrifices, offerings, and in feasts. The study of human/animal interactions in complex societies can contribute to fundamental questions of broad relevance regarding political and social life.
178 citations
TL;DR: The authors argue that the naturalized experience of nation-states and the legacy of modernist political theory form an unexamined yet pernicious influence on the development of ancient polities.
Abstract: The past 10 years have seen a reorientation of archaeological political theory from a focus on neoevolutionary classification and “state origins” to a focus on the operation of ancient polities. This trend, while promising, nonetheless frequently retains problematic habits of earlier approaches, including the tendency to slip into reductionist classificatory exercises. Furthermore, I argue that the naturalized experience of nation‐states and the legacy of modernist political theory form an unexamined yet pernicious influence. In ancient contexts, the reified anachronism of “the state” is better understood in terms of a nexus of networks of power and authority and the imagined political communities with which they articulate. I suggest that both polity networks and polity ideas should then be analyzed in terms of their discursive, practical, and material aspects and the relationships between them. Relatively understudied and still undeservingly peripheral to the generation of ancient political models in ar...
84 citations
TL;DR: For example, during the Shang Dynasty (ca. 1600-1046 BC) in China, the animals used in sacrificial activities changed over time as discussed by the authors, and pigs, dogs, and cattle were used as sacrificial victims in the late Neolithic period, whereas horses and sheep were added in the Shang.
82 citations
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TL;DR: In ancient China, divination was the domain of ritual specialists who used their skills to mediate uncertainty, but the role that these specialists played in society differed considerably from one place to another as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Divination is a ritual practice frequently employed as a source of social and political power. Elaborate forms of divination can be crucial to state control and have widespread influence. In ancient China as elsewhere, divination was the domain of ritual specialists who used their skills to mediate uncertainty, but the role that these specialists played in society differed considerably from one place to another. An examination of divination remains from the Neolithic, Shang, and Zhou periods of China suggests that more elaborate divination procedures are associated with bureaucratic institutions as a source of state power.
74 citations
Cites background from "Rising from blood-stained fields: R..."
...The animals involved tend to be those that are important economically and/or ideologically (Fiskesjö 2001; Yuan and Flad 2005)....
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...It is part of the “quest for certainty in an uncertain world” (Fiskesjö 2001, 55) and is used to help order experience and mediate the unexplained or unexplainable....
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...Other taxa used earlier were no longer employed, even though deer, for example, continued to be captured in large numbers by Shang hunters, sometimes in highly politicized and ritualized contexts (Fiskesjö 2001, 53)....
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Book•
30 Nov 2013TL;DR: Early China chronology Map of China 1. Introduction: early China and its natural and cultural demarcations 2. The development of complex society in China 3. Erlitou and Erligang: early states expansion 4. Anyang and beyond: Shang and contemporary bronze cultures 5. Cracking the secret bones: literacy and society in Late Shang? 6. The inscribed history: Western Zhou State and its bronze vessels 7. The creation of paradigm: Zhou bureaucracy and social institutions 8. Hegemons and warriors: social transformation of the Spring and Autumn Period (770 BC-481
Abstract: Early China chronology Map of China 1. Introduction: early China and its natural and cultural demarcations 2. The development of complex society in China 3. Erlitou and Erligang: early states expansion 4. Anyang and beyond: Shang and contemporary bronze cultures 5. Cracking the secret bones: literacy and society in Late Shang? 6. The inscribed history: Western Zhou State and its bronze vessels 7. The creation of paradigm: Zhou bureaucracy and social institutions 8. Hegemons and warriors: social transformation of the Spring and Autumn Period (770 BC-481 BC) 9. The age of territorial states: warring states politics and institutions 10. Philosophers as statesmen: in light of recently discovered texts 11. The Qin Unification and Qin Empire: who were the Terra-Cotta Warriors? 12. Expansion and political transition of the Han Empire 13. State and society: bureaucracy and social orders under the Han Empire 14. Ideological changes and their reflections in Han culture and Han art.
53 citations