David Pankenier's work is the first monograph-length study in a Western language of Chinese archaeo-astronomy. Working primarily from archaeology, myth, comparative anthropology, and scant evidence from later textual sources, Pankenier's focus is the pre- and early-historic periods, though where he does venture beyond the third century bc (esp. chapters 10, 11, and 14) he proves himself a competent historian to boot. A reworking of his articles from the past decades, this volume synthesizes the highlights of Pankenier's long career with the newest source materials and scholarship providing the reader, as per the author's intent, with an excellent introduction to the field.

The book is divided into fourteen thematic chapters (twelve of which derive from earlier publications) and capped by an introduction, epilogue, and appendix translation of the Grand Scribe's Records' “Treatise on the Celestial Offices”. Along the way, Pankenier manages to treat every major topic within Chinese archaeo-astronomy: the Taosi neolithic “observatory” complex; the mythology and astro-meteorological imagery of dragons; the cardinal orientation of cities and tombs; celestial gods and the cultural symbolism of the polestar and Northern Dipper (UMa); the sighting of out-of-sight points via other stars; the use of poorly- or unattested instrumentation; Yi ethnoastronomy; the zhen “divination” – ding “settle” – ding “tripod” – zheng “statecraft” word family; the origins of writing; portent astrology; astrological city planning; the mingtang “Luminous Hall” ritual complex; the locating of elements of Chinese mythology in the sky, and vice versa; and classical Chinese notions of time, causality, fate and the cosmos. While its length, price and rigour identify this as an academic oeuvre, the eschewal of the Chinese language, the inclusion of boxed-off keys, asides and glossaries, and the reliance on theory, Western-language scholarship, and cross-cultural comparison suggests that it is intended for a broader audience of scholars than sinologists alone.

Pankenier's work is something of an answer, or companion volume, to Sun Xiaochun and Jacob Kistemaker, The Chinese Sky during the Han: Constellating Stars and Society (Leiden: Brill, 1997). The author's central thesis, true to both legend and the writings of Mircea Eliade, is that the Chinese built their civilization from celestial archetypes rather than, as Sun and Kistemaker argue, vice versa. He presents a full accounting of early emperors' directives to model the features of their capitol (Xianyang/Chang'an) upon celestial archetypes, for example, and the case for the astral inspiration of myths and mythic creatures, specific character forms, and even writing and the imperial model itself. Throughout, Pankenier gives particular emphasis to the constitutional role he argues that three five-planet conjunctions occurring in 1953, 1576, and 1059 bc played in the formation of Chinese traditions of political history and philosophy. The reader is left with the impression that the planetary conjunction offers us a key by which we may unlock the very meaning and telos of East Asian civilization: the author not only frames the historical period as a series of such conjunctions (205 bc, ad 750, 967, and 1524), he ends the book with an apocalyptic prophecy for the People's Republic of China slated for September 2040. Lest too absolute a distinction be drawn between his and Sun and Kistemaker's approach, of course, it is important to note that Pankenier tempers his message, in chapter 7, with a nuanced discussion of the tautological nature (i.e. social construction) of celestial archetypes and, in chapter 10, the counter-example of how celestial geography was made to accommodate the expanded ken of empire.

From the perspective of a historian, this book's main demerit is that, by the very nature of archaeo-astronomy, its criteria of argumentation are somewhat free and loose. For example, Pankenier makes a sweeping conclusion about “the kinds of temporal awareness in daily life” based on one anecdote concerning one non-elite man in the sixth century bc as written by and for elites in a layered and problematic text dating to the fourth century bc or later (pp. 354–5). Furthermore, we often find the author declaring what pre- or early-historic actors must have done, seen, felt, meant, thought, or concluded while, at the same time, wondering to himself why evidence is either in short supply or in conflict with the self-evident – e.g. “These massings of planets ... would surely have impressed observers throughout the ancient world, although no other ancient records of their sighting from either Egypt or Mesopotamia have so far been found” (p. 195) – and rejecting contradictory declarations by other scholars as simply “subjective” or “overstated” (e.g. pp. 61 n.45, 75 n.62, 106, 159 n.23, 206 n.28, 337–40, 379).

From the perspective of a historian of astronomy, there are elements of this book that stand out as grossly outdated. Amidst discussion of divination, iconography, funerary culture and astral lore, for example, the author frequently pauses to arbitrate on what is and is not “science” (e.g. pp. 5, 28–9, 57, 157, 217, 254, 301). Throughout his work one also sees an uncritical reiteration of the old sinological axiom that the astral sciences were practised by a small guild/cabal of professionals in secret government laboratories (pp. 246–51, 300, 422) – a yarn which has, in the last two decades, been thoroughly refuted and which, even more to the point, contradicts the author's own statements concerning universal access to and knowledge of seasonal indicators (pp. 95, 154, 257), the popular currency of omenology (pp. 311–3), and indeed the very existence of the wealth of archaeological materials that are the subject of his study in the first place.

Of course, to hold a book like this by the standards of another field is not only unfair, it misses the very point: it is interpretive, and it is speculative, but there is an elegance to the hubris with which this book weaves together six millennia of history, prehistory and future and, so too, an infectiousness of the beauty and imagination that brims from its every page.