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Applies the 'life history' of objects approach to China's prehistoric, early dynastic and more recent material culture.
List of contents
Introduction: memory and agency in Ancient China: shaping the life histories of objects Francis Allard, Yan Sun and Katheryn M. Linduff; 1. Memory, amnesia and the formation of identity symbols in China Gideon Shelach; 2. The lives of shovels and bells in early South China: memory, ritual and the power of destination Francis Allard; 3. The whole and fragmented lives of jade objects from late Neolithic Middle Yangzi river burials (ca. 2000 BC) Sascha Priewe; 4. The social life of salt in Ancient China from the Late Neolithic to the Han Dynasty Pochan Chen; 5. A divergent life history of bronze willow-leaf-shaped swords of Western Zhou China from 11th to c. 10th centuries BCE Yan Sun; 6. Bird-pillar basins and cylindrical vessels: object lineage in Ancient China Xiaolong Wu; 7. Toiletries and the production of social memory from the warring states through the Han (4th c. BCE-3rd c. CE) Sheri Lullo; 8. A biographical approach to the study of the mounted archer motif during the Han Dynasty Leslie Wallace; 9. Dynamic between form and material: the bi disc in Western Han noble burial ritual Eileen Lam; 10. Crossing the Taiwan Strait: contextualizing and re-contextualizing Taiwan Aboriginal Objects (1895-1980) Du Hui; 11. Artifacts that invoke the aura and authority of the ancient Katheryn M. Linduff
About the author
Francis Allard is Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Indiana University, Pennsylvania. Allard is a scholar of complex societies, nomadic pastoralism, and the expansion of the Han Empire.Yan Sun is Professor of Art History at Gettysburg College. A scholar of the bronze cultures in north China, she is co-author of Ancient China and its Eurasian Neighbors (Cambridge, 2017).Katheryn Linduff is Professor Emerita at the University of Pittsburgh. A specialist in the art and archaeology of Eurasia and East Asia, she is most recently co-author of Ancient China and its Eurasian Neighbors (Cambridge, 2017) and editor of several books.
Summary
The case studies in this edited volume will appeal to archaeologists, art historians, and historians interested in the varied factors which guided the development of material culture in China over the past 5,000 years. They also supply comparative material to scholars with broader theoretical interests in the 'life history' of objects approach.
