Subsistence ecology in the making of the Shang state, Eastern China

Summary

This study examines the transition of subsistence practices in early Bronze Age sites in eastern China, when the region was integrated into the Shang state in the second millennium BC. Through a combination of geomorphological and archaeobotanical analyses, I reconstruct the long-term environmental history as well as land-use practices at the Yueshi cultural sites, to explore a variety of responses and adaptations that would have been developed before and after the Shang expansion into the area. In so doing, I seek to demonstrate that indigenous farmers had sophisticated buffering strategies to ensure a better adaptation to the environmental and social transitions, and that they affected the Shang state formation as active participants, rather than as minor or miscellaneous players.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• "Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes": Transitions and Thresholds throughout Central America and Beyond

Keywords

Spatial Coverage