The Formation of Chinese Civilization: An Archaeological Perspective

The Culture & Civilization of China

by Kwang-chih Chang, Pingfang Xu, Liancheng Lu (Contributor)

Paleolithic sites from one million years ago, Neolithic sites with extraordinary jade and ceramic artifacts, excavated tombs and palaces of the Shang and Zhou dynasties―all these are part of the archaeological riches of China. This magnificent book surveys China’s archaeological remains and in the process rewrites the early history of the world’s most enduring civilization. Eminent scholars from China and America show how archaeological evidence establishes that Chinese culture did not spread from a single central area, as was long assumed, but emerged out of geographically diverse, interacting Neolithic cultures. Taking us to the great archaeological finds of the past hundred years―tombs, temples, palaces, cities―they shed new light on many aspects of Chinese life. With a wealth of fascinating detail and hundreds of reproductions of archaeological discoveries, including very recent ones, this book is an invaluable resource for anyone interested in Chinese antiquity and Chinese views on the formation of their own civilization.

Published in association with New World Press, Beijing

Genres: History, China

288 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 2002

Reviews

[Eric · Rating 2 out of 5]

Having finished this book, I haven't the slightest clue who, exactly, its intended audience is. The pictures are amazing... it's like an exhibition catalog for the world's best early Chinese art exhibition crossed with the stack of National Geographics in your dentist's waiting room. It is fascinating to see the essential aesthetics of Chinese culture emerge from the haze of history.

The text, on the other hand, is a different story. The reader is warned from the start that the scholarship follows the (literal) party line in China and it shows. One of the authors asserts that it's likely that humans evolved in China then dismisses disagreement with a wave of his hand, saying that there's some controversy. There is no such controversy.

Then there's the subject matter. Sometimes it's interesting but much of the book is drudgery. No casual reader is interested in an exhaustive list of Zhou era cemeteries complete with dimensions. And that follows an exhaustive list of Zhou era cities, also with dimensions. A scholar would use the primary source material; no one else has any use for this level of detail. Exhaustive lists of pre-unification cultures appear with no contextualization of how they could be related to one another, how they might have contributed to the larger development of Chinese culture.

All in all, it's nice to look at, but I don't feel all that better informed about how Chinese civilization developed.

Skip this book.