Archaeology of the Chinese Bronze Age: From Erlitou to Anyang (Monographs

by Roderick Campbell

Archaeology of the Chinese Bronze Age is a synthesis of recent Chinese archaeological work on the second millennium BCE--the period associated with China's first dynasties and East Asia's first "states." With a focus on early China's great metropolitan centers in the Central Plains and their hinterlands, this work attempts to contextualize them within their wider zones of interaction from the Yangtze to the edge of the Mongolian steppe, and from the Yellow Sea to the Tibetan plateau and the Gansu corridor. Analyzing the complexity of early Chinese culture history, and the variety and development of its urban formations, Roderick Campbell explores East Asia's divergent developmental paths and re-examines its deep past to contribute to a more nuanced understanding of China's Early Bronze Age.

Genres: Archaeology

208 pages, Paperback

First published January 15, 2014

Reviews

[Marc Lamot · Rating 3 out of 5]

Naturally, in a survey work entitled 'Archaeology of the Chinese Bronze Age' you can expect quite a bit of attention to be paid to archaeological finds. And this is certainly the case here. Roderick B. Campbell (Associate Professor of East Asian Archeology and History, New York University) is skilled enough to pull this off. However, for a general audience (I include myself) he goes into a bit too much detail when it comes to typologies of pottery. I estimate that more than a quarter of the pages in this book contain precise drawings of the pottery found in various places in China. For Campbell, it is the backbone of his view on earliest Chinese history. That's remarkable because I thought that early Chinese cultures were distinguished by their exceptional and abundant bronze work, not the pottery. Of course, the former is also discussed here, but much more limited. Due to the focus on archaeological finds, this book remains very descriptive and less attention is paid to broader cultural aspects (economy, social relations, religion, etc.).
But before you think that this is an inferior work: the introduction that Campbell gives in this book is certainly worth it. He rightly adds the necessary nuances and perspectives to official Chinese historiography. That historiography is focused too much on finding evidence for the old dynasties (which we know from much later textual sources), and it pays too much attention to the Central Plain (around the Yellow and Yangtse rivers). Campbell is trying to correct that image, and rightly so. More about that in my History account on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show....

[Sense of History]

Western academic historiography has long suffered from myopia. For too long it was anchored in 19th century nationalism. Fortunately this has been corrected, though it hasn't completely disappeared. And the strange thing (or not?) is that nationalistically biased historiography still is rampant in relatively young, non-Western nations. You can call this an understandable, healthy reaction to the previous eurocentrism and colonialism, but sometimes the excesses are very great, especially in nations with authoritarian/dictatorial regimes. This is also the case in the People's Republic of China. For example, I recently looked at 'Steps of Civilization. A Chronology of Chinese and World Civilizations', edited by Guo Bonan and Bao Qianyi. That is the English translation of a work originally published in Chinese (on GR: Steps of Civilization- A Chronology Of Chinese and World Civilization). It offers a chronology of world history, with approximately two-thirds of the 1,500 entries relating to Chinese history. Chinese nationalism is both implicitly and explicitly present everywhere. For example, no mention is made of the African origins of Homo sapiens, and the species seems to have appeared out of nowhere in China around 50,000 bp. Or again: the origin of Chinese writing (found on turtle backs) is dated to around 6500-5500 BCE, no less than 2 to 3 millennia before the Near East, although this find is fiercely contested.

Perhaps Guo and Bao's book is an extreme example, but from R. Campbell's introduction to the book I am reviewing here, I can conclude that such nationalistic-inspired myopia also plays a role in the historiography of official Chinese institutions. For example, Campbell cites the standard work of the Institute of Archeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences on the Bronze Age (Chinese Archaeology: The Xia and Shang, 2003). According to him, this certainly has merit, but it uncritically establishes a link between formal typologies of pottery and ethnic or political groups. It testifies to the Chinese obsession with finding references in archaeological finds to the dynasties (Xia and Shang) that can be found in the much later textual writings (especially those of the first great historian, Sima Qian 145/135-86 BCE). Another outgrowth of that nationalist focus is the overemphasis on archaeological finds in the Central Plain (the basins of the mighty Yellow River and Yangtse), which is seen as the unique birthplace of classical Chinese civilization. Campbell: “In this view, the stage of Chinese history was its Yellow River cradle, where groups archaeologically identified with the dynastic and predynastic ancestors of the Chinese nation created civilization. This centrally created Chinese culture then magnetically drew in and sinified surrounding, but backward, ‘ethnic minorities’, establishing the teleology that would lead to the modern Chinese nation.”.

For Campbell, this urgently needs to be corrected, and that is exactly what he attempts to do in this book. For each part of the Bronze Age (in his case especially the 2nd millennium BCE) he lists the various local and regional variants of the well-known cultures in the Central Plain, but also the many peripheral cultures with their own variants. This results in a book that is not very accessible to the layman (except for the introduction), especially due to its accumulation of typologies of pottery. But it is undoubtedly a worthwhile correction to the image disseminated by official Chinese historiography. I must add that a look at the website of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences shows that in recent decades views in China itself have also been evolving and are moving more and more in the direction of those of the Western academia. I think we cannot but see this as a very hopeful sign.