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" Writing and Materiality in an Early Chinese Kingdom is an interdisciplinary study of the different kinds of writing (manuscripts made of silk, bamboo, and wood, as well as inscriptions in different media) discovered in three southern Chinese tombs dating to the first half of the second century B.C.E (early Han dynasty) at a site called Mawangdui. Studying these texts as things-artifacts to be manufactured, used, stored, displayed, performed, viewed, owned, and eventually buried-Alex Waring explores the different roles writing played in the lives and afterlives of three Chinese nobles, and those connected to them, including groups that are underrepresented in early sources such as women and non-elites. Intervening in debates surrounding the extent of literacy in Early China and the functions manuscripts played in ancient burials, Waring shows that during this period writing was not used simply to record or communicate important information, but also to complement and reinforce broader notions of material display, ritual performance, and cultural prestige, and that written texts were part of the elite visual and material cultures of their time. A detailed case study that draws on sources and scholarship from other parts of the "ancient world," the book also makes use of approaches and methodologies developed in a range of overlapping disciplines, including literature and philology, history and archaeology, religion, art history, and material culture studies."-- Provided by publisher.
About the author
Luke Waring is an assistant professor of Asian studies at the University of Texas at Austin.
