Culture contact and social change along China's ancient southwestern frontier, 900 B.C.--100 A.D.
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文摘
This dissertation examines culture contact, imperialism, and social change along the southwestern frontier of ancient China from 900 B.C.--A.D. 100. Using archaeology and textual sources to investigate dimensions of cross-cultural interaction between indigenous tribal societies and the Han Empire, this research develops models for understanding variable trajectories of culture change in the ancient world beyond frameworks of acculturation, persistence and resistance. The Bronze Age societies of my research, traditionally referred to as the Dian culture, occupy the Yunnan/Guizhou plateau, which hosted the 'Southwest Silk Road' linking China and mainland Southeast Asia. Through an examination of mortuary ritual at two major Bronze Age cemeteries from the Qujing Plateau in Yunnan, this dissertation showed how the construction of personal identity and group affiliation in funerary symbolism shifted from the pre-contact period to the post-conquest period. Local response to Han incorporation was highly dependent on existing structures of vertical and horizontal differentiation, which internally mediated and constrained the kind of culture change. Contrary to the patterns of sinicization explicit in historical texts, this study showed that culture change was not a unitary phenomenon and likely to be differentially configured at the personal, communal and regional level. In the mortuary domain, existing consumption patterns adopted Han technologies and materials by evaluating its commensurability within native regimes of value. The reconstruction of existing Bronze Age funerary rituals provided a more comprehensive framework to innovatively explain the formation of composite cultural practices in the ancient world.