Elements in Ancient East Asia – serie
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19 produkter
19 produkter
241 kr
Skickas inom 7-10 vardagar
The immense outpouring of archaeological discoveries this past century has shed new light on ancient East Asia, and China in particular. Yet in concert with this development another, more troubling, trend has likewise gained momentum: the looting of cultural heritage and the sale of unprovenienced antiquities. Scholars face difficult questions, from the ethics of working with objects of unknown provenance, to the methodological problems inherent in their research. The goal of this Element is to encourage scholars to critically examine their relationships to their sources and reflect upon the impact of their research. The three essays in this Element present a range of disciplinary perspectives, focusing on systemic issues and the nuances of method versus ethics, with a case study of the so-called 'Han board' MSS given as a specific illustration. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.
241 kr
Skickas inom 7-10 vardagar
The transition from the middle to late Holocene (5000–4000 BP) coincided with profound socioeconomic transformations and intensified regional and trans-regional interactions in late prehistoric China. These environmental and socioeconomic changes gave rise to diverse lifeways and settlement modes that constituted the foundation for the emergence of regional civilisations. In this Element, prehistoric China is divided roughly into the Highlands, Lowlands, and Coastal areas, each with unique environmental and ecological conditions and distinctive technological and economic traditions between 5000–4000 BP. The author gathers and reviews large amounts of environmental and archaeological data, and reconstructs brief environmental and settlement changes and lifeways. The author argues that environmental conditions and subsistence adaptations are two of the engines driving the increased socioeconomic complexity and rise of civilisations in the late prehistoric China. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Reconstructing the Human Population History of East Asia through Ancient Genomics
Häftad, Engelska, 2025
241 kr
Skickas inom 7-10 vardagar
East Asian population history has only recently been the focus of intense investigations using ancient genomics techniques, yet these studies have already contributed much to our growing understanding of past East Asian populations, and cultural and linguistic dispersals. This Element aims to provide a comprehensive overview of our current understanding of the population history of East Asia through ancient genomics. It begins with an introduction to ancient DNA and recent insights into archaic populations of East Asia. It then presents an in-depth summary of current knowledge by region, covering the whole of East Asia from the first appearance of modern humans, through large-scale population studies of the Neolithic and Metal Ages, and into historical times. These recent results reflect past population movements and admixtures, as well as linguistic origins and prehistoric cultural networks that have shaped the region's history. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
234 kr
Skickas inom 7-10 vardagar
This Element describes early Chinese views of the heart-mind (xin 心) and its relation to the psychology of a whole person, including the body, affective and cognitive faculties, and the spirit (shén 神). It argues for a divergence in Warring States thought between 'mind-centered' and 'spirit-centered' approaches to self-cultivation. It surveys the Analects, Mengzi, Guanzi, Zhuangzi, Xunzi, Huainanzi, the Huangdi neijing, and excavated medical manuscripts from Mawangdui, as well as a brief comparative perspective to ancient Greek views of these topics. It argues for a contrast between post-Cartesian dualism and Chinese and Greek psycho-physicalism.
- Nyhet
Unearthing Fluctuating Wealth Inequality
Household Disparities at Jōmon and Yayoi Sites in Southern Kantō, Japan
Häftad, Engelska, 2026
241 kr
Skickas inom 7-10 vardagar
This Element examines how archaeology can contribute to the investigation of ancient wealth disparities, using the Jōmon and Yayoi periods in Japan as a case study. It analyzes 1,150 pit dwellings from 29 archaeological sites in southern Kantō, dating from the Late Jōmon to the end of the Yayoi period (ca. 2540 BC-AD 250). Household wealth is estimated through pit dwelling floor area, with Gini coefficients calculated for each site. Results show relatively low inequality in the Late Jōmon, a slight decline in the Middle Yayoi, and a marked rise in the Late Yayoi period. Notably, average floor area decreased in the Late Yayoi period. These patterns raise broader questions about how wealth disparities were shaped by communal norms, settlement organization, the rise of agriculture, and expanding trade networks involving iron tools. This research underscores archaeology's unique ability to illuminate long-term economic transformations.
The Methods and Ethics of Researching Unprovenienced Artifacts from East Asia
Inbunden, Engelska, 2024
775 kr
Skickas inom 7-10 vardagar
The immense outpouring of archaeological discoveries this past century has shed new light on ancient East Asia, and China in particular. Yet in concert with this development another, more troubling, trend has likewise gained momentum: the looting of cultural heritage and the sale of unprovenienced antiquities. Scholars face difficult questions, from the ethics of working with objects of unknown provenance, to the methodological problems inherent in their research. The goal of this Element is to encourage scholars to critically examine their relationships to their sources and reflect upon the impact of their research. The three essays in this Element present a range of disciplinary perspectives, focusing on systemic issues and the nuances of method versus ethics, with a case study of the so-called 'Han board' MSS given as a specific illustration. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.
753 kr
Skickas inom 7-10 vardagar
This Element examines evolving methods of cultivating the embodied self, including healing diseases and creating a superior person, in late Warring States and early imperial East Asia. It analyses many topics, including the textualization of bodily regimens and therapies, their systematization, their dissemination among different (and sometimes rival) social groups, and the diversity of traditions – religious, pharmacological, nourishing of life – that contested and combined to form a hegemonic medical practice. These topics in turn feature several issues: models of the body, regimens of cultivating and extending vitality, models of disease, and therapies for these ailments. All these ideas will be refined and extended through comparison with early Western medical traditions.
Institutions and Environment in Ancient Southern East Asia (3000 BCE to 300 CE)
Inbunden, Engelska, 2025
775 kr
Skickas inom 7-10 vardagar
Over the past decades, archaeological exploration of southern China has shattered the image of primitive indigenous people and their pristine environments. It is known, for example, that East Asia's largest settlements and hydraulic infrastructures in the third millennium BCE were located in the Yangzi valley, as were some of the most sophisticated metallurgical centers of the following millennium. If southern East Asia was not a backward periphery of the Central Plains, then what created the power asymmetry that made possible 'China's march toward the Tropics'? What did becoming 'Chinese' practically mean for the local populations south of the Yangzi? Why did some of them decide to do so, and what were the alternatives? This Element focuses on the specific ways people in southern East Asia mastered their environment through two forms of cooperation: centralized and intensive, ultimately represented by the states, and decentralized and extensive, exemplified by interaction networks.
775 kr
Skickas inom 7-10 vardagar
The transition from the middle to late Holocene (5000–4000 BP) coincided with profound socioeconomic transformations and intensified regional and trans-regional interactions in late prehistoric China. These environmental and socioeconomic changes gave rise to diverse lifeways and settlement modes that constituted the foundation for the emergence of regional civilisations. In this Element, prehistoric China is divided roughly into the Highlands, Lowlands, and Coastal areas, each with unique environmental and ecological conditions and distinctive technological and economic traditions between 5000–4000 BP. The author gathers and reviews large amounts of environmental and archaeological data, and reconstructs brief environmental and settlement changes and lifeways. The author argues that environmental conditions and subsistence adaptations are two of the engines driving the increased socioeconomic complexity and rise of civilisations in the late prehistoric China. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Reconstructing the Human Population History of East Asia through Ancient Genomics
Inbunden, Engelska, 2025
775 kr
Skickas inom 7-10 vardagar
East Asian population history has only recently been the focus of intense investigations using ancient genomics techniques, yet these studies have already contributed much to our growing understanding of past East Asian populations, and cultural and linguistic dispersals. This Element aims to provide a comprehensive overview of our current understanding of the population history of East Asia through ancient genomics. It begins with an introduction to ancient DNA and recent insights into archaic populations of East Asia. It then presents an in-depth summary of current knowledge by region, covering the whole of East Asia from the first appearance of modern humans, through large-scale population studies of the Neolithic and Metal Ages, and into historical times. These recent results reflect past population movements and admixtures, as well as linguistic origins and prehistoric cultural networks that have shaped the region's history. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
775 kr
Skickas inom 7-10 vardagar
Gendered archaeology in Asia has been studied by archaeologists since the 1990s and scholars have posed questions such as the role and construction of gendered identities in ancient societies. In this Element, the authors review secondary literature, report on to what stage the research has evolved, evaluate methodologies, and use the concept of networking to examine the issues across East Asia, including China, Mongolia, Korea, Japan, and Taiwan. Interestingly, those literatures are not entirely parallel with each other – the authors found, for example, that archaeological investigation was largely bound by national guidelines, by local intellectual traditions, and by changing historiographic interpretations of past events, as well as funding. The complexion of recent studies on gender and archaeology in Asia has often been focused on providing a framework for a grand narrative of each national 'civilization' as the emergence of institutional political structures, including traditional values placed on men and women.
- Nyhet
Unearthing Fluctuating Wealth Inequality
Household Disparities at Jōmon and Yayoi Sites in Southern Kantō, Japan
Inbunden, Engelska, 2026
694 kr
Skickas inom 3-6 vardagar
This Element examines how archaeology can contribute to the investigation of ancient wealth disparities, using the Jōmon and Yayoi periods in Japan as a case study. It analyzes 1,150 pit dwellings from 29 archaeological sites in southern Kantō, dating from the Late Jōmon to the end of the Yayoi period (ca. 2540 BC-AD 250). Household wealth is estimated through pit dwelling floor area, with Gini coefficients calculated for each site. Results show relatively low inequality in the Late Jōmon, a slight decline in the Middle Yayoi, and a marked rise in the Late Yayoi period. Notably, average floor area decreased in the Late Yayoi period. These patterns raise broader questions about how wealth disparities were shaped by communal norms, settlement organization, the rise of agriculture, and expanding trade networks involving iron tools. This research underscores archaeology's unique ability to illuminate long-term economic transformations.
753 kr
Skickas inom 7-10 vardagar
This Element describes early Chinese views of the heart-mind (xin 心) and its relation to the psychology of a whole person, including the body, affective and cognitive faculties, and the spirit (shén 神). It argues for a divergence in Warring States thought between 'mind-centered' and 'spirit-centered' approaches to self-cultivation. It surveys the Analects, Mengzi, Guanzi, Zhuangzi, Xunzi, Huainanzi, the Huangdi neijing, and excavated medical manuscripts from Mawangdui, as well as a brief comparative perspective to ancient Greek views of these topics. It argues for a contrast between post-Cartesian dualism and Chinese and Greek psycho-physicalism.
Institutions and Environment in Ancient Southern East Asia (3000 BCE to 300 CE)
Häftad, Engelska, 2025
241 kr
Skickas inom 7-10 vardagar
Over the past decades, archaeological exploration of southern China has shattered the image of primitive indigenous people and their pristine environments. It is known, for example, that East Asia's largest settlements and hydraulic infrastructures in the third millennium BCE were located in the Yangzi valley, as were some of the most sophisticated metallurgical centers of the following millennium. If southern East Asia was not a backward periphery of the Central Plains, then what created the power asymmetry that made possible 'China's march toward the Tropics'? What did becoming 'Chinese' practically mean for the local populations south of the Yangzi? Why did some of them decide to do so, and what were the alternatives? This Element focuses on the specific ways people in southern East Asia mastered their environment through two forms of cooperation: centralized and intensive, ultimately represented by the states, and decentralized and extensive, exemplified by interaction networks.
241 kr
Skickas inom 7-10 vardagar
Violence, both physical and nonphysical, is central to any society, but it is a version of the problem that it claims to solve. This Element examines how states in ancient East Asia, from the late Shang through the end of the Han dynasty, wielded violence to create and display authority, and also how their licit violence was entangled in the 'savage' or 'criminal' violence whose suppression justified their power. The East Asian cases are supplemented through citing comparable Western ones. The themes examined include the emergence of the warrior as a human type, the overlap of hunts and combat (and the overlap between treatments of alien species and alien peoples), sacrifice of both alien captives and 'death attendants' from one's own groups, the impact of military specialization and the increased scale of armies, the emergent ideal of self-sacrifice, and the diverse aspects of violence in the regime of law.
234 kr
Skickas inom 7-10 vardagar
This Element examines evolving methods of cultivating the embodied self, including healing diseases and creating a superior person, in late Warring States and early imperial East Asia. It analyses many topics, including the textualization of bodily regimens and therapies, their systematization, their dissemination among different (and sometimes rival) social groups, and the diversity of traditions – religious, pharmacological, nourishing of life – that contested and combined to form a hegemonic medical practice. These topics in turn feature several issues: models of the body, regimens of cultivating and extending vitality, models of disease, and therapies for these ailments. All these ideas will be refined and extended through comparison with early Western medical traditions.
241 kr
Skickas inom 7-10 vardagar
This Element first discusses the creation of transmitted medical canons that are generally dated from early imperial times through the medieval era and then, by way of contrast, provides translations and analyses of non-transmitted texts from the pre-imperial late Shang and Zhou eras, the early imperial Qin and Han eras, and then a brief discussion covering the period through the 11th-c. CE. The Element focuses on the evolution of concepts, illness categories, and diagnostic and treatment methodologies evident in the newly discovered material and reveals a side of medical practice not reflected in the canons. It is both traditions of healing, the canons and the currents of local practice revealed by these texts, that influenced the development of East Asian medicine more broadly. The local practices show there was no real evolution from magical to non-magical medicine. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
241 kr
Skickas inom 7-10 vardagar
Recent interdisciplinary studies, combining scientific techniques such as ancient DNA analysis with humanistic re-evaluations of the transcultural value of bronze, have presented archaeologists with a fresh view of the Bronze Age in Europe. The new research emphasises long-distance connectivities and political decentralisation. 'Bronzisation' is discussed as a type of proto-globalisation. In this Element, Mark Hudson examines whether these approaches can also be applied to East Asia. Focusing primarily on Island East Asia, he analyses trade, maritime interactions and warrior culture in a comparative Eurasian framework. He argues that the international division of labour associated with Bronze Age trade provided an important stimulus to the rise of decentralised complexity in regions peripheral to alluvial states. Building on James Scott's work, the concept of the 'barbarian niche' is proposed as a way to model the longue durée of premodern Eurasian history. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.
241 kr
Skickas inom 7-10 vardagar
Gendered archaeology in Asia has been studied by archaeologists since the 1990s and scholars have posed questions such as the role and construction of gendered identities in ancient societies. In this Element, the authors review secondary literature, report on to what stage the research has evolved, evaluate methodologies, and use the concept of networking to examine the issues across East Asia, including China, Mongolia, Korea, Japan, and Taiwan. Interestingly, those literatures are not entirely parallel with each other – the authors found, for example, that archaeological investigation was largely bound by national guidelines, by local intellectual traditions, and by changing historiographic interpretations of past events, as well as funding. The complexion of recent studies on gender and archaeology in Asia has often been focused on providing a framework for a grand narrative of each national 'civilization' as the emergence of institutional political structures, including traditional values placed on men and women.