Evaluating Structural Change in Neolithic Economies: Social Network Analysis of Utilitarian Pottery Exchange in the Jianghan Plain

Summary

The emergence of walled town settlements of the late Neolithic middle Yangzi River region are widely associated with the development of a complex form of social organization. While significant attention has focused on the structure and organization of individual walled settlements, little is known about the nature of social and economic interactions between communities. To address this issue, I combined geochemical analysis of pottery with formal social network methods to investigate changes in utilitarian economic networks across a 1,500 year period. These economic networks were traced between the neighborhoods of two Neolithic walled settlements, Taojiahu and Xiaocheng, over a 56 km2 region during the Qujialing (c. 3300-2600 BCE) and Shijiahe (c. 2600-1900 BCE) periods. Preliminary findings indicate that networks were less centralized and better integrated in the Shijiahe than in the Quijialing period, suggesting that economic interactions between these communities became less regulated through time.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)   •
• Beyond Typology: Current Trends in Ceramic Analysis in China

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 14387