Grounding an underground survey: Paddy fields and monumental Bronze Age shell-scapes in the Dian Basin, Yunnan, China

Summary

Regions under paddy cultivation often present limits on site detection. In addition to deep plowing and continuous flooding of the fields, which intensify erosion and weathering of cultural remains, paddy fields are constructed and managed through field leveling and canal dredging. These processes raze and displace sites, leaving behind a fragmentary settlement record consisting primarily of sites defined by raised mounds and/or standing architecture. Oft used survey techniques that seek to document sites through surface finds and distributions are not always suitable for subtropical zones such as Southeast Asia and southwest China where such regimes have existed continuously for millennia or longer. Focusing on the lake basin identified as the core of Bronze Age Dian polity, this paper assesses the possibility and limits of total coverage survey and explores complementary surface and subsurface applications used in our survey. The findings reveal a hierarchical Bronze Age settlement system but also highlight distinctive natural and artificial arrangements which transformed this wetland landscape into a politically contested space.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• Recent Advances in the Settlement and Landscape Archaeology of Southwest China and Southeast Asia Part I: The Macro Perspective: Spatial Analysis and Subsistence Systems

Keywords

Spatial Coverage