Ancient Central China

Rowan K. Flad is Professor of Anthropology at Harvard University. He has received grants from the Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, the Luce Foundation, the Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation and the American Philosophical Foundation, among others. He has been a traveling lecturer for the Archaeological Institute of America and has published extensively on archaeology in China in many edited volumes and journals, including Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Current Anthropology, The Holocene, Antiquity, the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, the Journal of Field Archaeology, Asian Perspectives, the Journal of East Asian Archaeology, the Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, Kaogu and Nanfang Minzu Kaogu. He co-edited a book on specialization in the series Archaeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association, and is the author of Salt Production and Social Hierarchy in Ancient China: An Archaeological Investigation of Specialization in China's Three Gorges, published by Cambridge University Press in 2011. Pochan Chen is Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at National Taiwan University. His major research focus is the Neolithic to Han Dynasty of China and Neolithic Taiwan. He has published several papers in journals such as Asian Perspectives, Bianjiang Minzu Kaogu Yu Minzu Kaoguxue Jikan, Diaro de Campo, Kaogu, Nanfang Minzu Kaogu, Nanfang Wenwu, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Xinshixue and Yanyeshi Yanjiu, and in book sections of Salt Archaeology of China, Volume 1, and Sel, Eau et Forêt: D'hier à Aujourd'hui.

• 1. Introduction: centers and peripheries in the ancient Yangzi River Valley; Part I. Setting the Stage: 2. The environment of Central China; 3. Historiography and the topography of research: a history of archaeology in Central China; Part II. Political and Cultural Topographies: 4. The Sichuan Basin: Shu and its predecessors; 5. The Middle Yangzi: the archaeology and history of Chu and its predecessors; 6. Periphery at the center: the Ba and archaeological cultures in the Three Gorges; Part III. Topographies of Economic Activity and Ritual: 7. Economic topographies: production, exchange, and the integrating role of salt; 8. Ritual topographies: sacrifice and divination; 9. Ritual topographies: burials and social identity; 10. Conclusion: landscapes of interaction and the interaction of landscapes.

'Ancient Central China is replete with up-to-date information (especially on Sichuan and the Three Gorges) and the authors' work at Zhongba and on the Chengdu Plain is a shining example of what is possible in Chinese archaeology. The history of scholarship in the region is especially rich and the authors' synthesis of palaeo-climate and geography is the best I know of in Chinese archaeology … Ancient Central China contains simultaneously some of the most stimulating theoretical proposals in Chinese archaeology and a much needed synthesis of an understudied region presented in provocative fashion.' Antiquity