2nd Millennium BC Bronze Studies In Northern China

This dissertation is about the how bronzes were used in the Beifang,or the northern frontier in 2000 BC.This area from a vast extent of ecologically varied land in the northern and northwestern China(Liaoning,Inner Mongolia,Hebei,Beijing,Tianjin,Shanxi,Shaanxi,and from Ningxia to Qinghai and Gansu).It including the area thet was raversed from the vast stepps of Eurasian into the Central Plains.We will concentrate on the ancient employment of metal artifacts,in the part because of their high survival rate and abundance in the archaeological record,and in part because we think the they bery often were used to display sociopolitical and ritual identity.Over time,their use changed to accommodate political,social and cultural affliations.It is our contention that the display and behavior of visual culture,and particularly these metal artifacts,had the capacity to define groups and individuals in significant ways the were fluid and fluctuated over time,because the expansion of the state power in the Central Plains in the Xia,Shang and Zhou Dynasties.Technoscapes where metal products appear in this early period are included within the following framework:The Western region manifest in its earliest form in Gansu and XinjiangThe Central region manifest in Southern Mongolia,Shaanxi and Shanxi.The Northern region manifest in the Eastern Inner Mongolia,Liao Ning and Beijing,Tianjing,Hebei.The archaeological evidence of these regions shows that local communities and perhaps individuals willingly adopted,probably from various sources in different locations,and localized metal technology.We have proposed that technoscapes characterized interaction among these late Neolithic and later communities that led not only to transformations in technology,but also probably to the adoption of types and styles of material culture that,for various reasons,were used for display and identity characterization in burial.They may have simply been exotic.Groups on Northern Frontier clearly maintained local pride that creatively and selectively adopted burial types and materials rather than simply accepting burial systems and materials passively while wait-ing to be annexed by a more powerful dynastic center.More often than not,this meant mixing local products and practices with those of an outsider group.These choices are interpreted within the framework of identity formationThe Northern Frontier from the 3 millennium through the 8 century BCE was a dynamic locus of cultural experimentation,selective technology adoption and multicultural and multiethnic interaction(Chapters 5).Interestingly and tellingly,those groups with most interac-tion with the dynastic centers(Chapters 6)were those where proxim-ity decidedly affected the degree of affiliation.Some colonization was evident,this was clearly a choice of the local group,and one that could be changed,given political power maneuverings at the dynastic center.