Erligang bronzes and the discovery of the Erligang culture / Robert Bagley -- Erligang : a perspective from Panlongcheng / Zhang Changping -- China's first empire? : interpreting the material record of the Erligang expansion / Wang Haicheng -- Civilizations and empires : a perspective on Erligang from early Egypt / John Baines -- Erligang : a tale of two "civilizations" / Roderick Campbell -- The politics of maps, pottery, and archaeology : hidden assumptions in Chinese Bronze Age archaeology / Yung-ti Li -- Erligang and the southern bronze industries / Kyle Steinke -- Erligang contacts south of the Yangzi River : the expansion of interaction networks in early Bronze Age Hunan / Robin McNeal -- Bronzes and the history of Chinese art / Maggie Bickford.

Erligang bronzes and the discovery of the Erligang culture / Robert Bagley -- Erligang : a perspective from Panlongcheng / Zhang Changping -- China's first empire? : interpreting the material record of the Erligang expansion / Wang Haicheng -- Civilizations and empires : a perspective on Erligang from early Egypt / John Baines -- Erligang : a tale of two "civilizations" / Roderick Campbell -- The politics of maps, pottery, and archaeology : hidden assumptions in Chinese Bronze Age archaeology / Yung-ti Li -- Erligang and the southern bronze industries / Kyle Steinke -- Erligang contacts south of the Yangzi River : the expansion of interaction networks in early Bronze Age Hunan / Robin McNeal -- Bronzes and the history of Chinese art / Maggie Bickford.

One of the great breakthroughs in Chinese studies in the early twentieth century was the archaeological identification of the earliest, fully historical dynasty of kings, the Shang (ca. 1300-1050 B.C.E.). The last fifty years have seen major advances in all areas of Chinese archaeology, but recent studies of the Shang, their ancestors, and their contemporaries have been especially rich. Since the last English-language overview of Shang civilization appeared in 1980, the pace of discovery has quickened. China in the Early Bronze Age: Shang Civilization is the first work in twenty-five years to synthesize current knowledge of the Shang for everyone interested in the origins of Chinese civilization. China in the Early Bronze Age traces the development of early Bronze Age cultures in North and Northwestern China from about 2000 B.C.E., including the Erlitou culture (often identified with the Xia) and the Erligang culture. Robert L. Thorp introduces major sites, their architectural remains, burials, and material culture, with special attention to jades and bronze. He reviews the many discoveries near Anyang, site of two capitals of the Shang kings. In addition to the topography of these sites, Thorp discusses elite crafts and devotes a chapter to the Shang cult, its divination practices, and its rituals. The volume concludes with a survey of the late Shang world, cultures contemporary with Anyang during the late second millennium B.C.E. Fully documented with references to Chinese archaeological sources and illustrated with more than one hundred line drawings, China in the Early Bronze Age also includes informative sidebars on related topics and suggested readings. Students of the history and archaeology of early civilizations will find China in the Early Bronze Age the most up-to-date and wide-ranging introduction to its topic now in print. Scholars in Chinese studies will use this work as a handbook and research guide. This volume makes fascinating reading for anyone interested in the formative stages of Chinese culture.

The violence of war and sacrifice were not the antithesis of civilization at Shang Anyang, but rather its foundation.

This book examines the emergence of imperial state in East Asia during the period ca. 400 BCE–200 CE as a network-based process, showing how the geography of early interregional contacts south of the Yangzi River informed the directions of Sinitic state expansion. Drawing from an extensive collection of sources including transmitted textual records, archaeological evidence, excavated legal manuscripts, and archival documents from Liye, this book demonstrates the breadth of human and material resources available to the empire builders of an early imperial network throughout southern East Asia – from institutions and infrastructures, to the relationships that facilitated circulation. This network is shown to have been essential to the consolidation of Sinitic imperial rule in the sub-tropical zone south of the Yangzi against formidable environmental, epidemiological, and logistical odds. This is also the first study to explore how the interplay between an imperial network and alternative frameworks of long-distance interaction in ancient East Asia shaped the political-economic trajectory of the Sinitic world and its involvement in Eurasian globalization. Contributing to debates around imperial state formation, the applicability of world-system models and the comparative study of empires, The Imperial Network in Ancient China will be of significant interest to students and scholars of East Asian studies, archaeology and history.

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.

The Cambridge History of Ancient China provides a survey of the institutional and cultural history of pre-imperial China.