From its Neolithic roots to early imperial eras, the archaeology of ‘China’ has traditionally emphasised the Central Plains in the Yellow River Valley region. This situation has been changing in recent decades, as it has become clear that the story of ancient ‘Chinese’ civilisation requires consideration of adjacent and ‘borderland’ regions, as well as their intertwining trajectories of local, cultural change. Ongoing research in varied regions by scholars such as Alice Yao continues to refine our understanding of emergent Chinese civilisation, showing how the archaeological story of China includes enormous geographic and cultural diversity.
In this volume, Yao deftly blends textual knowledge, ethnographic and ethnohistoric accounts, and a growing archaeological database to reconstruct the lifeways of societies in south-west China during the Formative Bronze Age of the first millennium BC. The result is a significant and welcome contribution along two major fronts. First, the book augments our knowledge of the region's late prehistory, placing the Yunnan area into a wider regional context. Second, using the area as a geographic anchor, Yao employs theoretical frameworks to contemplate the ways in which past societies perceived, constructed and negotiated time and memory. In doing so, she demonstrates the potential efficacy of such approaches while providing a textured perspective of local cultural practices.
Building on her past work, Yao's volume furnishes nuanced appraisals of the available evidence. The book directly examines several related research themes, including identity, resistance to imperial ambitions, frontier interactions and the intersection between archaeological and historiographical modes of inquiry. The resulting dynamic study will be of value for all those interested in the wider region during a time of pivotal flux and Sinitic imperial formation. The book moves the reader through a logical progression; the chapters in Part I introduce issues related to historicity, temporality and linkages with the archaeological record. Part II deals with the material data of south-west China, offering descriptions of Bronze Age ‘histories’ and local conceptions of politics and time; these chapters prepare the reader for Yao's portrayal in Part III of dynamic native agencies in the face of Han rule.
The third century BC witnessed the ascendance of an imperial Qin (and subsequent Han) polity with the conclusions of the Warring States period. From contemporaneous Sinitic records, we have a window into attitudes and perceptions about the ‘barbarian’ others inhabiting southern areas that would eventually succumb to imperial conquest. Examining archaeological and textual evidence, Yao's work adds nuances to our understanding of relationships between the Central Plains and the myriad communities located along the southern fringes of Sinitic imperial power. As Yao persuasively points out, societies of these adjacent regions shared overlapping cultural practices, symbolic systems and material culture. Indeed, as she maintains, one could even argue for “a distinctive Bronze Age historical trajectory, were it not for conquest” (p. 8). As an archaeologist working on the late prehistoric contexts of northern Vietnam, an area constituting the southernmost limits of this so-called ‘barbarian’ world, I was particularly intrigued by Yao's treatment of overlapping cultural spheres, along with her emphasis on the importance of bronze drums throughout the region during the first millennia BC and AD.
A particularly insightful aspect of the book is its overview of micro-scale repertoires of mortuary practice, such as mound-building and the heirlooming of objects such as jades and bronze drums, and how these ceremonial practices might reflect local perceptions of time and identity. Yao's research suggests such practices underwent transformation as they became interdigitated with larger, macro-scale and regional patterns of socio-political change. The book thus provides finer-grained analyses to highlight the incorporation of extra-local cultural elements by local agents into their perceptions of histories, legacies and ancestor commemorations. Mortuary ceremonies and the creation of funerary landscapes served to entangle inhabitants across generations into a common “politics of time” (p. 106). Beyond this, her study also affords a discerning perspective on highland-lowland dichotomies, illustrating how a combination of both geographic and social topographies helped to shape decisions made by community agents in promoting their cultural views.
Yao's appraisal of changes over time for Mimo and Dian societies in imperial frontier areas is especially illuminating; she presents data regarding post-conquest, Han-period funerary practices, wherein local agents viewed and negotiated, challenged and exploited new meanings of temporality. Their local perceptions, along with associated rituals and notions of identity, were intimately tied to shifting extra-regional political contexts. Just as importantly, as Yao argues, these agents found ways to resist participation in this new imperial context of temporality, indicating that native subjects “mediated the tensions and contradictions of imperial time” in ways accordant with “their own logics” (p. 216).
Through a notion of ‘politics of time’, Yao's book should be of interest to archaeologists working on how perceptions of time can shape the production and maintenance of identities. Recognising the need to optimise the “potential richness” of archaeological data, she encourages researchers to use various methods to access “memory, temporal dispositions, and social practices” (p. 46). In that spirit, the book presents compelling evidence that local agents were not only negotiating attitudes about identities, but were also inscribing ‘narratives’ into landscapes in the form of mounds and embedding different materials in order to crystallise notions of ancestral legacies. The book therefore challenges us to rethink connections between the tangible archaeological record and the varied emic motivations of those responsible for producing diverse aspects of that record. Yao's handling of time is innovative and refreshing, and the examination of south-west China may be relevant for other global cases of colonialism, imperialism and frontier politics, at least where sufficient data are available. In those cases, it could be instructive to scrutinise the relationships between social memories, perceptions of time and choices related to mortuary and mnemonic practices.
One line of inquiry that could have been developed further pertains to the impact of violence. While the book does deal with the long-term process of Han conquest and related episodes of violence, it would have been helpful to know more about localised, pre-conquest forms of violence. As Yao asserts, after 500 BC we see evidence for increasing social differentiation, as indicated by a corpus of bronzes (e.g. drums, weapons and farming tools), cowries and other materials. It is within these eras that funerary ceremonies seem to undergo amplification, hinting at “a formalized rank system and a new ideology of death” (p. 142). But beyond weapons as grave offerings and martial iconography on bronzes, are there other material signatures suggesting the importance of coercive power and practices involving violence?
Yao's book is eloquently written and well produced, furnishing a variety of maps, photographs and drawings of sites and artefacts. The concluding chapter gives us important ways to frame material traces against a backdrop of “varying historical scales” (p. 233). Through her efforts, she succeeds in making the past come alive, while simultaneously challenging researchers to consider novel theoretical approaches in our interpretations of the material record.
