Asia: East Asia (Geographic Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew MacIver.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The transition from the Late Shang state (ca. 1300 – 1046 BC) based in Anyang to the Western Zhou state (ca. 1046 – 771 BC) founded in Shaanxi represents one of the most significant geopolitical and cultural transformations in ancient China. The conquest of the Shang by a Zhou-led alliance precipitated in the elimination of the human sacrificial rituals...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yufeng Sun. Yonggang Sun. Petra Vaiglova. Xinyi Liu.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Food preparation is an arena for the understanding of social performances, and its scope is often indicative of the fabrications of social relations in historical contexts. This paper investigates daily food preparations in archaeological contexts and considers social bonds through the lens of mundane meals. By doing so, we aim to shift the focus from the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yahui He.

This is an abstract from the "Cultivating Cities: Perspectives from the New and Old Worlds on Wild Foods, Agriculture, and Urban Subsistence Economies" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The late Neolithic period in China witnessed a boost of settlement scale and number, interregional interactions and exchanges, and sociopolitical and economic complexities. The Shimao site, located in the north Loess Plateau, China, was one of the most important urban...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jingbo Li.

This is an abstract from the "Drinking Beer in a Blissful Mood: A Global Archaeology of Beer" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the Bronze Age of China, alcohol practice was an integral part of rituals and the spiritual world as a social agent in hierarchical societies. Multiple types of alcoholic beverages appeared in the earliest writings of the late Shang dynasty some 3,200 years ago. However, little research has been done to characterize how...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Xiangming Dai.

Taosi is one of the largest sites surrounded by the huge fortification during the late Neolithic in the middle Yellow River valley. So far the archaeologists have excavated a large cemetery, and uncovered a number of burials at Taosi. These burials can be divided into a few categories based on their scale, structure and grave goods, representing the different social ranks. The cemetery consists of several sections, which represent the different social groups. During the early Longshan period,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine Brunson. Kelsey Witt. Sloan Williams. Susan Monge. Lisa Janz.

This is an abstract from the "From the Altai to the Arctic: New Results and New Directions in the Archaeology of North and Inner Asia" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Societies in East Asia have utilized domesticated cattle since approximately 5,000 years ago, but the origins of East Asian cattle remain understudied. Possible experimentation with management of wild aurochs (Bos primigenius) and other bovids has been hypothesized but not explored in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yifan Wang. Yu Dong. Fen Wang. Fengshi Luan.

This is an abstract from the "New Thoughts on Current Research in East Asian Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The long-term excavations at Dinggong, a late Neolithic site in northern China (c. 2600-2000 cal. BC), have uncovered extensive human and faunal remains with clear contextual information. We carried out stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis of faunal remains to investigate the animal resources utilization and management of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yunfei Zheng. Haibin Gu.

The first domestication of rice in the Yangtze river valley in China is recently informed by genetic, archaeological, palaeoenvironmental, and archaeobotanical data. Archaeological sites where rice remains between 10000 and 4000 BP have been unearthed are concentrated in the middle and the lower Yangtze valley, a distance of over 1000 km apart. This study focuses on the morphological and histological features of spikelet bases of rice between 8300 and 4800 BP found in the Liyang Plain of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only He Xiaolin.

This is an abstract from the "Craft and Technology: Knowledge of the Ancient Chinese Artisans" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Shang Dynasty-era site of Taijiasi was excavated from 2014 to 2017. Excavations revealed many remains of bronze casting and bone-tool manufacture. This paper focuses on the arrangement of the two different kinds of handicraft. Along with analysis of other house and sacrificial remains, archaeologists can investigate the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Zhe Dong.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Most scholars supported that there were only choppers or chopping tools in East Asia among Paleolithic time, while in the west side of the old continent the innovation of technology is obvious. In China, archaeologists have already found some important regions which are characterized with large cutting tools such as handaxes, cleavers, picks, and knives during...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rachel Lee. Martin Bale. Jade D'Alpoim Guedes.

This is an abstract from the "New Evidence, Methods, Theories, and Challenges to Understanding Prehistoric Economies in Korea" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Relict fields and archaeobotanical remains from village sites in South Korea indicate intensive agriculture was practiced during the Mumun Period (ca. 1500-200 B.C.). In this paper, we discuss the effects of climate and landscape in the decision-making of Mumun farmers, particularly which...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Li-Ying Wang. Ben Marwick.

This is an abstract from the "Bayesian Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Burials provide valuable information to study social structures and discuss social inequality. The relationship between prestige goods among burials may reflect the social relations between individuals, since prestige goods usually relate to social practices of trade, exchange, and gifting. We ask whether European colonial activities in seventeenth-century Taiwan...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Seungki Kwak. Sujung Lee. Heegeun Kim.

This is an abstract from the "Social and Environmental Interactions on Coasts and Islands in Korea" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This study investigates the subsistence and foodways of Neolithic coastal foragers in the Korean Peninsula using an innovative method of organic chemistry. The Neolithic subsistence practice in the Korean peninsula is characterized as “maritime hunting-gathering-fishing.” Throughout the Neolithic period, people...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Xiaofan Sun. Sen You. Jinping Wang. Quanchao Zhang. Qian Wang.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Therapeutic craniotomy is a kind of artificial trepanation used for treating head injuries. In this study, a skull with signs of trauma and trepanation from a young adult female who lived 3,000 years ago was assessed in the context of medical care systems and a policy of benevolence during the time. A blunt force assault on the left temporal bone induced a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tommy Budd.

The social significance of large kinship structures such as clans and lineages has been demonstrated throughout Chinese history, and kinship has in part determined social ties and participation in various social activities. Clan emblems appear on artifacts from as early as the Shang Dynasty, and kinship remains an important element of social identities in modern China. In relation to mortuary practices, kinship identities may affect factors such as mortuary assemblages and burial location. This...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Siran Liu.

This is an abstract from the "Craft and Technology: Knowledge of the Ancient Chinese Artisans" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Most studies of early metallurgy in China have focused on style, manufacturing techniques and alloy compositions of bronze artefacts. In rare circumstances, other sections of the bronze production Chaîne opératoire such mining, smelting and metal processing are considered. This research concentrates on early bronze...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yan Sun.

This is an abstract from the "Recent Research on Early Chinese Borderland Cultures and Archaeological Materials" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This study focuses on manipulation of bronzes of different styles, and mortuary rituals overall, during in the emergence of political power in the northeastern frontier of ancient China. Data are presented on three richly furnished burials M101 at Nanshan’gen and M8501 and M9601 at Xiaoheishigou of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Chun Yu. Ya Wei Dong.

This is an abstract from the "From Tangible Things to Intangible Ideas: The Context of Pan-Eurasian Exchange of Crops and Objects" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The four-footed base is a specific structural feature of bronze statues of Buddha in China during the fourth to ninth century BC. This feature appears to have been made using the lost wax method, but experimental methods indicate that the four-footed base was made with the sand mold...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Francis Allard.

First incorporated into China in 214 BCE, the southern region known as Lingnan (which consists of the present-day provinces of Guangxi and Guangdong), has traditionally been regarded as one of China’s peripheral regions. Not only was Lingnan distant from imperial centers in the north, its native pre-literate ‘Yue’ inhabitants spoke non-sinitic languages and were known for their distinctive ‘uncivilized’ behaviors. Along with its location at the southern margin of modern China’s territory, the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Womack.

This is an abstract from the "Scaling Potting Networks: Recent Contributions from Ceramic Petrography " session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over the last 10 years, excavations at the early Bronze Age site of Shimao (2300–1800 BC), in northern Shaanxi Province, have transformed our understanding of the archaeology of early China. What was previously seen as an area that was peripheral to the development of early dynastic centers is now being heralded by...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Camilla Sturm. Liam Hayes. Anna Campbell.

This is an abstract from the "Ceramics and Archaeological Sciences" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The past several decades have seen a shift in the focus of ceramic studies in Neolithic China from ceramic products toward ceramic production, as scholars have pushed beyond typological analyses to investigate the people who made, handled, and used these wares. Despite this turn toward process, comparatively little attention is given to the many...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Fumie Iizuka. Pamela Vandiver. Kazuki Morisaki. Masami Izuho. Mark Aldenderfer.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Although conventional thinking has associated the advent of pottery with farming, sedentism, and groundstones, more recent research suggests that emergence contexts vary. Case studies on intra-regional variability are required to better understand the timing and behavioral context of the adoption of pottery. In this study, we provide the case of the first...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rowan Flad. Josh Wright. Zhanghua Jiang. Kueichen Lin. Zhiqing Zhou.

This is an abstract from the "The Chengdu Plain Archaeology Survey (2004–2011): Highlights from the Final Report" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Various available aerial imagery from the 1960s through 2000s allow for examination of changing ground surface conditions in the Chengdu Plain in recent decades. Surface conditions impact accessibility, visibility, and preservation of archaeological evidence of ancient human activity in the area. They...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Fumiko Ikawa-Smith.

This is an abstract from the "Current Issues in Japanese Archaeology (2019 Archaeological Research in Asia Symposium)" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Apart from sporadic finds of human bones and artifacts, systematic research on the Palaeolithic began in Japan with the Iwajuku excavation in 1949. In spite of the relatively short history of 70 years, and the negative impact of the "Fujimura Scandal" of 2000, which resulted in nullification of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Haibin Gu.

Based on the comprehensive analysis of grain shape and embryos of carbonized rice from archaeological sites, the author draws conclusions as follows: a. There is a difference in shape of spikelet base between cultivated rice and wild rice, but it is difficult to make comparable measurements. Therefore, it is possible to identify rice by using the characteristics of the spikelet base based on one’s experience, but it is difficult to make comparisons between different researchers. b. According to...