Local and Regional Economics in Northeast China

Summary

Food production and other forms of economic activity manifest at both local and regional scales. In some instances population density within one community may lead to stress at the local scale. The region can, however, mitigate local stresses through regional exchange between small polities. In the same way that household exchange mitigates the risk of a single community, inter-community exchange mitigates risk for many communities regionally.

This paper will explore both regional and local subsistence strategies in Northeastern China and the degree to which inter-community exchange may have been necessary. Population density and carrying capacity are two essential variables in understanding the role in which exchange would have been a necessary element in the subsistence economy. This paper will focus on a region of roughly 200 sqkm and the subsistence shift theorized to have taken place at about 1200 BCE. The paper will outline the shifts in population density and carrying capacity in this region with respect to a variety of economies. This research is in contrast to the macro-regional exchange and pan-continental networks most often associated with Bronze Age Archaeology in Northeast China. This paper attempts to demonstrate the variability in the subsistence strategies of Bronze Age communities.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• New Perspectives on the Archaeology of Economics in China   •
• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage