Forging Power beyond War: Iron Innovation in the Guanzhong Basin and Its Role in the Qin-Han Transformation

Summary

This is an abstract from the "New materials and new insights for our understanding of the First Emperor's Mausoleum and early imperial China" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Qin state is often regarded as a war machine, renowned for its military prowess that led to the unification of China. However, recent archaeological discoveries from Xianyang, Shaanxi Province, suggest that advancements in iron technology were equally vital to this transformation. Despite the relative scarcity of early iron artifacts, new metallographic analyses and excavation reports from the “capital metropolitan area” reveal significant technological developments in the Guanzhong basin, particularly in the production of chaogang (fined iron) and iron-working techniques used for manufacturing both daily-use tools and military weaponry. This presentation evaluates these innovations and explores their implications for broader social and technological shifts during the Qin-Han transition. By comparing existing data from the Han period in other regions, it highlights emerging patterns of regional “technological divergence” between core and peripheral regions in the production and supply of metal goods—patterns that shaped the trajectory of early imperial China.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• New materials and new insights for our understanding of the First Emperor's Mausoleum and early imperial China

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 51014