Archaeology of Iron in the Lingnan Region and the Imperial Strategy of the Han Dynasty in its Southern Peripheries

Summary

Although the imperial strategy of the Han Empire in its southern peripheries attracts significant scholarly interests, how to synthesize the issue of ethnic integration and imperial expansion within the study of material culture is still widely under-addressed. Especially, how the Han’s control over the movement and distribution of iron—a strategical resource for agricultural and military conquest—is almost overlooked in the literature. This presentation presents the latest statistical studies on the assemblage of iron objects from burial contexts in the Lingnan region to identify relations between the procurement and burying of iron and the ethnicity as well as rank of tomb owners. Through a comparison with the distributional pattern of iron objects found in Han tombs in the Yungui plateau after the Han conquest, this study also attempted to depict the distribution of iron materials on a macro-regional scale in order to articulate the underlying political strategies reflected by the strategic material.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)   •
• Casting Empire: Metal Production in the Early Imperial China

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 17058