Colonial developments in a global context- complex connectivity in the Western Zhou world

Summary

The period of Western Zhou (1046-771 BCE) is often considered the genesis of Chinese civilization. As the Zhou expanded their borders and influence they developed a Chinese political tradition that would eventually formalize and consolidate the elite culture and practices of this emerging world. While Postcolonialism theory has been successful in highlighting the multi-directionality of regional interactions in the ancient world, Globalization offers a wider approach, geographically and temporally, that is most beneficial for cases of colonial contact among larger scale processes of supra-regional developments.

The state of Yan 燕 - an important polity established by the Zhou - provides a case study for this new perspective on Western Zhou expansion: The bronzes found in the realm attributed to the Yan polity, are shown to have been locally used in a variety of ways that reflect a continued incorporation of Zhou material culture into indigenous communities, rather than the expansion of the Zhou power and the subsequent assimilation of local peoples. More than just a unique period of colonization, this paper finds the Western Zhou influence to represent an increased stage of interaction and connectivity within the larger process of globalization that preceded it.

SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology and Center for Digital Antiquity Collaborative Program to improve digital data in archaeology. If you are the author of this presentation you may upload your paper, poster, presentation, or associated data (up to 3 files/30MB) for free. Please visit http://www.tdar.org/SAA2015 for instructions and more information.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage