Specialized salt production and changing social structure at the prehistoric site of Zhongba in the eastern Sichuan Basin, China

This thesis examines the organization of specialized salt production at the site of Zhongba in central China. The objectives of this study are twofold. On the one hand, I attempt to deepen our understanding of the prehistory of the Chongqing region, an area that has been understudied but which was crucial to the communication between emergent states in Sichuan and in eastern parts of China during the Bronze Age. On the other, I am interested in the study of production in archaeological contexts cross culturally. I develop a model that has been used to explicate the organization of specialized production in other contexts by incorporating several lines of evidence. In this study, the juxtaposition of these different sets of data allows us to examine the relationship between the development of specialized salt production and the emergence of social hierarchy in the region during the Bronze Age.; The era under analysis lasts from the last part of the Neolithic (third millennium BC) through the end of the Bronze Age (late first millennium BC). I discuss changes during this period based primarily on materials excavated from the middle of a specialized salt production zone at the center of Zhongba. I suggest that specialized salt production emerged in the second millennium BC and developed into a large-scale, intense activity centered on an embankment along the Ganjing River near a naturally effluent brine spring. As the intensity of this activity increased during the early Bronze Age, production became more obviously coordinated, perhaps by an emergent elite. This emergent elite seems to have supported their position of authority by means of divination and the control of ritual knowledge.; As the salt production activity increased in scale and intensity, it is also probable that other, concomitant activities occurred at the site including the salting of meat and fish. Preserved meat-products and salt were possibly commodities that found a market in the state of Chu, further to the east, and the exploitation of this market may have played a role in the increasing social inequality in this region during the later parts of the Bronze Age.