Measuring the Travel Distance: Travel Path and Cultural Difference of the Ming Officials

Summary

This is a paper/report submission presented at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

The Ming government (1368-1643) established a personnel system to counter against bureaucracy corruption and to secure the frontier. Regulations include separate family members in the line of authority, appoint officials to a non-native region. This indicates that people from multiple cultures were appointed to travel across the country to serve their duty. By using the GIS as a tool, this study investigates an alternative way to quantify the challenges that a long-distance traveler might have experienced in adjusting to a new environment. The model measured the physical distance, quantified and visualized the cultural difference that considers the climate and language attribute to compare the diversity of the officials of the studied areas. The result reveals that some prefectures had significantly more officials from a closer area. This indicates that the Ming personnel system may not strictly be implemented as it was on historical records in some regions.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• 2020 SHA General Sessions   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2020

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Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 820