The archaeological study of cities in East Asia

Summary

This paper explores the study of cities in China and the implications for their archaeological investigation. Walled settlements developed in China during the Neolithic and by the Bronze Age many had already grown to considerable size and complexity. While scholars in China and East Asia often consider cities to be a form of settlement organization starting at this early date, the concept of city used in their study is frequently unexamined, and historical examples of cities in the Chinese heartland are used as models to understand earlier sites, or sites outside of this region that may have developed differently or had different uses. These long-held concepts of what pre-modern cities were and who lived in them developed from the study of rich historical documentation but have now come to limit understandings of cities by constricting the available range of interpretation.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Medieval Cities in the Eurasian Steppe   •
• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 15342