Author: Rowan K. Flad
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139851314
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 435
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Book Description
Ancient Central China provides an up-to-date synthesis of archaeological discoveries in the upper and middle Yangzi River region of China, including the Three Gorges Dam reservoir zone. It focuses on the Late Neolithic (late third millennium BC) through the end of the Bronze Age (late first millennium BC) and considers regional and interregional cultural relationships in light of anthropological models of landscape. Rowan K. Flad and Pochan Chen show that centers and peripheries of political, economic and ritual activities were not coincident, and that politically peripheral regions such as the Three Gorges were crucial hubs in interregional economic networks, particularly related to prehistoric salt production. The book provides detailed discussions of recent archaeological discoveries and data from the Chengdu Plain, Three Gorges and Hubei to illustrate how these various components of regional landscape were configured across Central China.
Author: Edwin George Pulleyblank
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 9780860788591
Category : Aliens
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
The present set of studies by Professor Pulleyblank complements those gathered in Essays on Tang and pre-Tang China. The central concern here is the interaction between China and the non-Chinese peoples around it, in particular those of Central Asia. The volume opens with several articles contributing to the dating of events as far west of China as Afghanistan and India based on more accurately dated Chinese historical sources. Two studies deal with the prehistory of the Turks, while others are concerned with indigenous non-Chinese peoples that lived within the heartland of China during the formative years of Chinese civilization and the way in which they were absorbed into that civilization. The concluding series of papers, published between 1966 and 1999, addresses the controversial question of the coming of horsemen belonging to the Far Eastern Tocharian branch of Indo-European to Xinjiang (Eastern Turkestan) at the beginning of the second millennium BCE and their possible influence on the origins of the Chinese bronze age.
Author: Constance A. Cook
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438467125
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 174
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Book Description
Using newly discovered and excavated texts, Constance A. Cook and Xinhui Luo systematically explore material culture, inscriptions, transmitted texts, and genealogies from BCE China to reconstruct the role of women in social reproduction in the ancient Chinese world. Applying paleographical, linguistic, and historical analyses, Cook and Luo discuss fertility rituals, birthing experiences, divine conceptions, divine births, and the overall influence of gendered supernatural agencies on the experience and outcome of birth. They unpack a cultural paradigm in which birth is not only a philosophical symbol of eternal return and renewal but also an abiding religious and social focus for lineage continuity. They also suggest that some of the mythical founder heroes traditionally assumed to be male may in fact have had female identities. Students of ancient history, particularly Chinese history, will find this book an essential complement to traditional historical narratives, while the exploration of ancient religious texts, many unknown in the West, provides a unique perspective into the study of the formation of mythology and the role of birthing in early religion.
Author: Michael Loewe
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521470308
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1192
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Book Description
The Cambridge History of Ancient China provides a survey of the institutional and cultural history of pre-imperial China.
Author: Ningning Dong
Publisher: International
ISBN: 9781407357928
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 146
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Book Description
This book, integrating multiple lines of evidence and their contextual information, attempts to investigate folk animal classification in central China during the late Neolithic to the early Bronze Age through archaeology.
Author: Bret Hinsch
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538115417
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 227
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Book Description
This pioneering book provides a comprehensive survey of ancient Chinese women’s history, covering thousands of years from the Neolithic era to China’s unification in 221 BCE. For each period—Neolithic, Shang, Western Zhou, and Eastern Zhou—Bret Hinsch explores central aspects of female life: marriage, family life, politics, ritual, and religious roles. Deeply researched, the book draws on a wide range of Chinese scholarship and primary sources, including transmitted texts, inscriptions, and archaeological evidence. The result is a comprehensive view of women’s history from the beginnings of Chinese civilization up to the beginnings of the imperial era. Clear and readable, the book will be invaluable for both students and specialists in gender studies.
Author: Captivating History
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781647481704
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 134
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Book Description
In this book, you will be led on a journey through almost 2,000 years of Chinese history, showing you all the ups and downs of those ancient times, the sufferings and joys of the Chinese people, along with their greatest achievements and failures.
Author: Paul R. Goldin
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824864654
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 242
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Book Description
The subject of sex was central to early Chinese thought. Discussed openly and seriously as a fundamental topic of human speculation, it was an important source of imagery and terminology that informed the classical Chinese conception of social and political relationships. This sophisticated and long-standing tradition, however, has been all but neglected by modern historians. In The Culture of Sex in Ancient China, Paul Rakita Goldin addresses central issues in the history of Chinese attitudes toward sex and gender from 500 B.C. to A.D. 400. A survey of major pre-imperial sources, including some of the most revered and influential texts in the Chinese tradition, reveals the use of the image of copulation as a metaphor for various human relations, such as those between a worshiper and his or her deity or a ruler and his subjects. In his examination of early Confucian views of women, Goldin notes that, while contradictions and ambiguities existed in the articulation of these views, women were nevertheless regarded as full participants in the Confucian project of self-transformation. He goes on to show how assumptions concerning the relationship of sexual behavior to political activity (assumptions reinforced by the habitual use of various literary tropes discussed earlier in the book) led to increasing attempts to regulate sexual behavior throughout the Han dynasty. Following the fall of the Han, this ideology was rejected by the aristocracy, who continually resisted claims of sovereignty made by impotent emperors in a succession of short-lived dynasties. Erudite and immensely entertaining, this study of intellectual conceptions of sex and sexuality in China will be welcomed by students and scholars of early China and by those with an interest in the comparative development of ancient cultures.
Author: R. Kent Guy
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 0295997508
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 475
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Book Description
During the Qing dynasty (1644–1911), the province emerged as an important element in the management of the expanding Chinese empire, with governors -- those in charge of these increasingly influential administrative units -- playing key roles. R. Kent Guy’s comprehensive study of this shift concentrates on the governorship system during the reigns of the Shunzhi, Kangxi, Yongzheng, and Qianlong emperors, who ruled China from 1644 to 1796. In the preceding Ming dynasty (1368–1644), the responsibilities of provincial officials were ill-defined and often shifting; Qing governors, in contrast, were influential members of a formal administrative hierarchy and enjoyed the support of the central government, including access to resources. These increasingly powerful officials extended the court’s influence into even the most distant territories of the Qing empire. Both masters of the routine processes of administration and troubleshooters for the central government, Qing governors were economic and political administrators who played crucial roles in the management of a larger and more complex empire than the Chinese had ever known. Administrative concerns varied from region to region: Henan was dominated by the great Yellow River, which flowed through the province; the Shandong governor dealt with the exchange of goods, ideas, and officials along the Grand Canal; in Zhili, relations between civilians and bannermen in the strategically significant coastal plain were key; and in northwestern Shanxi, governors dealt with border issues. Qing Governors and Their Provinces uses the records of governors’ appointments and the laws and practices that shaped them to reconstruct the development of the office of provincial governor and to examine the histories of governors’ appointments in each province. Interwoven throughout is colorful detail drawn from the governors’ biographies.
Author: Muzhou Pu
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107021170
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 277
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Book Description
This book employs textual and archaeological material to reconstruct the various features of daily life in ancient China.
