Chinese Bronze Age Political Economies: A Complex Polity Provisioning Approach

Editorial: Origins, foundations, sustainability and trip lines of good governance: Archaeological and historical considerations

“…As early as the Chinese Late Neolithic Liu (2004, p. 247) encountered what she referred to as "group-oriented chiefdoms" (cf. Campbell et al, 2021). While autocracy dominated state-building during the subsequent Three Dynasties period, it was challenged by the Confucian critique of aristocratic governance that was instituted as state orthodoxy during the Han dynasty (Yates, 2001;Feinman et al, 2019).…”

The Political Economy of Livestock in Early States

“…The killing of large numbers of animals is an element of statecraft that appears repeatedly across early state societies, whether through feasting (more common in the Ur III case) or through dramatic immolation (as in many Inca state rituals). In some cases-as with the sacrifice of cattle at the late Shang capital of Anyang (Campbell et al 2021)-there was a reliance on the pastoralist sector to finance these state performances, while in other cases-for instance, the capture and sacrifice of wild predators for Mesoamerican states like Teotihuacan and Copan (Sugiyama et al 2018)-such rituals relied upon formalized networks of hunting and long-distance trade. As the ritualized killing of wild animals outside the state's urban centres, hunting formed an additional mode for mixing political performance with political economy, particularly through its enactment of elite claims over particular species and/or rural spaces (Allsen 2006).…”

Bronze Age Maritime and Warrior Dynamics in Island East Asia

“…Bronze Age China therefore had several aspects which seem to emphasise the ritual side of society, yet warfare and violence were still defining features of the period with numerous finds of bronze weapons in the archaeological record. Moreover, new research has critiqued the traditional emphasis on bronze as centrally distributed prestige goods and emphasised increasing commercialisation in Bronze Age China (Campbell et al 2021).…”

“…In comparing civilisation and its barbarian 'twin', I do not mean to suggest that either condition was fixed or rigid; both conditions could encompass considerable variation (see e.g. Hudson 2020a; Campbell et al 2021). The fluid dialectic between civilisation and barbarian analysed by scholars such as Barnes, Di Cosmo, Smits and Yü is rejected by the neo-Toynbeean proponents of Japanese 'civilisation theory' (cf.…”