Archaeology of East Asia: The Rise of Civilization in China, Korea and Japan

By Gina L. Barnes

Archaeology of East Asia constitutes an introduction to social and political development from the Palaeolithic to 8th-century early historic times. It takes a regional view across China, Korea, Japan and their peripheries that is unbounded by modern state lines. This viewpoint emphasizes how the region drew on indigenous developments and exterior stimuli to produce agricultural technologies, craft production, political systems, religious outlooks and philosophies that characterize the civilization of historic and even modern East Asia.
This book is a complete rewrite and update of The Rise of Civilization in East Asia, first published in 1993. It incorporates the many theoretical, technical and factual advances of the last two decades, including DNA, gender, and isotope studies, AMS radiocarbon dating and extensive excavation results. Readers of that first edition will find the same structure and topic progression. While many line drawings have been retained, new color illustrations abound. Boxes and Appendices clarify and add to the understanding of unfamiliar technologies. For those seeking more detail, the Appendices also provide case studies that take intimate looks at particular data and current research.
The book is suitable for general readers, East Asian historians and students, archaeology students and professionals.

Praise for The Rise of Civilization in East Asia:

“… the best English introduction to the archaeology of East Asia … brilliantly integrates the three areas into a broad regional context.” Prof. Mark Hudson

• Language: English
• Publisher: Oxbow Books
• Release date: Oct 31, 2015
• ISBN: 9781785700712

Gina L. Barnes

Gina L. BARNES: Professor Emeritus, Durham University, Barnes earned her PhD in Anthropology at the University of Michigan, followed by a career teaching East Asian Archaeology at Cambridge and Durham Universities. In addition to her cultural studies (State Formation in Korea, State Formation in Japan, Routledge 2001, 2007), she has always been involved in landscape archaeology and geoarchaeology. After taking a late BSc in Geology with the Open University, she formulated the subdiscipline of Tectonic Archaeology with her publications on Japanese Island geology, earthquake archaeology, tsunami archaeology, and now tephroarchaeology. She is a Professorial Research Associate at SOAS University of London, and an Affiliate of the Earth Sciences Department at Durham University. Her major publication, Archaeology of East Asia (Oxbow, 2015) is widely used as a textbook, and the Society for East Asian Archaeology (SEAA), which she founded in 1996, is the major professional venue for archaeologists of China, Korea and Japan.

Book preview

Published in the United Kingdom in 2015 by

OXBOW BOOKS

10 Hythe Bridge Street, Oxford OX1 2EW

and in the United States by

OXBOW BOOKS

908 Darby Road, Havertown, PA 19083

© Gina L. Barnes 2015

Illustrations © Gina L. Barnes, except for those illustrations which have been reproduced here under Public Domain or Creative Commons licenses – these are offered here under those same licenses.

Hardback Edition: ISBN 978-1-78570-070-5

Digital Edition: ISBN 978-1-78570-071-2

Kindle Edition: ISBN 978-1-78570-072-9

PDF Edition: ISBN 978-1-78570-073-6

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Barnes, Gina Lee.

  [China, Korea, and Japan]

  Archaeology of East Asia : the rise of civilization in China, Korea and Japan / Gina L. Barnes.

      pages cm

  Originally published under title: China, Korea, and Japan : the rise of civilization in East Asia. 1993.

  Also published under title: Rise of civilization in East Asia : the archaeology of China, Korea and Japan. 1999.

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  ISBN 978-1-78570-070-5 (hardback) -- ISBN 978-1-78570-071-2 (epub) -- ISBN 978-1-78570-072-9

(mobi) -- ISBN 978-1-78570-073-6 (pdf ) 1. East Asia--Civilization. 2. East Asia--Antiquities. I. Title.

  DS509.3.B37 2015

  931--dc23

2015021194

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the publisher in writing.

Printed in Malta by Melita Press Ltd.

For a complete list of Oxbow titles, please contact:

Oxbow Books is part of the Casemate Group

Front cover: Suzakumon, the southern gate to Heijo Palace, Nara. Photo: GL Barnes 2008

Contents

List of Boxes

List of Figures

List of Tables

Preface

Multiple editions; Where is East Asia?; Dating preferences; Language issues; Note on referencing; Note on indexing; Acknowledgments

1    Orientation

Grounding

Starting from the Yellow Sea; Mainland geography; The loesslands; The Northern Zone; Westward ho!; Eastward bound; North–south divisions

National chronologies

With or without writing?

Prehistoric archaeology; Protohistoric archaeology; Historic archaeology

East Asian cultural successions

The Chinese sequence; The Korean sequence; The Japanese sequence

2    Archaeological Organization

Archaeology as a government endeavor

Japan; Korea; China

East Asian archaeology since 1990

Science and theory; Multiple archaeologies; Cooperative projects; Conferences; Journals

3    The Earliest Inhabitants (2,000,000–40,000 years ago)

The peopling of East Asia

The first peopling, or Out of Africa

What peoples?; Habitats, habits and habitation; Their tool kits

Intermediate peoples

The second peopling, or Out of Africa 2

How far east did Pleistocene hominins go, and when?

4    Innovations of Modern Humans (40,000–10,000 years ago)

Modern peoples and their accoutrements

Upper Palaeolithic climate and chronology

New lithic strategies

Significance of prepared-core technologies; Blade varieties and assemblages

What were they hunting?

A mobile lifestyle

Harbingers of the Neolithic

Edge-ground axes; Plant utilization; Coastal living; The invention of pottery

5    Earlier Holocene Subsistence Patterns (10,000–5000 years ago = 8000–3000 BC)

Settling down

Earliest villages; Feedback loops between food and sedentism

‘In-between’ societies

Exploiting Holocene forests

The importance of nuts; Timbers, houses and woodworking tools

Living on Holocene shores

Anatomy of a shellmound; Fish stories

Pen/Insular species management

Jomon husbandry; Chulmun husbandry

Mainland cereal growers

Northern millet cultures; Southern rice culture; Mainland broad-ranging subsistence

Food studies

Proportional food resources; Isotope analyses

6    The Mid-Holocene Social Mosaic (5000–2000 BC)

Introduction

The Middle Jomon phenomenon

A regional exchange network; Core villages

The Loesslands tradition

Yangshao villages; Loesslands pottery

The East Coast tradition

Dawenkou villages; East Coast ceramics

The Hongshan enigma

Dimensions of social status

Gender distinctions; Ritualists; Social hierarchies; The importance of commensality

Summary

7    Emergence and Decline of Late Neolithic Societies (3300–1900 BC)

Introduction

Periodization; Agriculture, monumental architecture and social stratification; What is a state?

Urbanizing settlements

Of walls and terraces; Southern powerhouse: Liangzhu site complex; Intermontane Taosi; Liangchengzhen, Eastern Longshan; Quick comparisons

Site hierarchies

Central Plain polity development

Walled settlements; Sacrificial interments; Settlement system

The dramatic end of the Late Neolithic

The opening of the steppes

The western and central steppes; From west to east; Establishment of the Early Metal Province

8    Bronze Age Beginnings (2000–850 BC)

Bronze Age time span

Bronze and agro-pastoralism

Qijia and Siba cultures; Zhukaigou; Lower Xiajiadian

Bronze and Erlitou

The Erlitou site (1850–1550 BC); Erlitou culture and polity; Significance of Erlitou bronze vessels

The Shang bronze tradition

Shang bronzes

Southern bronze cultures

Lower and Middle Yangzi; Sichuan Basin: Sanxingdui

The Northern Bronze Complex

In conclusion

9    Early State Florescence (1500–770 BC)

Dynastic successions

Was Erlitou the Xia capital?; Early, Middle and Late Shang; Royal Zhou

Early inscriptions

Shang state organization

Shang capitals; The late great capital of Yinxu; Territorial expansion; Political organization

Royal Zhou and enfeoffments

Zhou in the Zhouyuan; Early Zhou socio-political organization; Yan – a royal enfeoffment

Early Zhou architectural contributions

Sacrifice and warfare

Sacrifice at altar and tomb; Of horses and chariots

Early state overview

10  Eastern Zhou and Its Frontiers (1st millennium BC)

Eastern Zhou (771–221 BC)

State autonomy; Warfare tactics

Zhou and ‘non-Zhou’ identity formation

From huaxia to Han; Peripheral origins

Zhou border states

The eastern state of Qi; The southern state of Chu; Qin to the west; Jin in the northwest

Commercial endeavors

Bronzes: deterioriations and advances; Iron: the beginning of an industry; Salt; A cash economy

The Northern Zone

From Rong and Di to hu; Northern signifiers: animal art and gold

11  Pen/Insular Rice, Bronze and Iron (1300–200 BC)

Contributions from the China Mainland

Upper Xiajiadian; Yueshi culture

Establishing Mumun culture

Transmission of rice farming; Dolmen and cist burials; Final addition of bronzes to the funerary goods

Middle Mumun (850–550 BC) settlement and society

Taepyong-ri site; Komdan-ri site; Songguk-ri site

Late Mumun / Early Iron Age transitions (500–200 BC)

The Slender Bronze Dagger culture; Arrival of iron

From Jomon to Yayoi

Yayoi beginnings; Yayoi expansion; Craft advancements; Jomon resistance to wet-rice agriculture

12  The Making and Breaking of Empire (350 BC–500 AD)

Qin, the Unifier

Warring states reforms; United China

The Han Dynasty

Establishment of unified rule; Imperial capitals; Han burial innovations

Roads as arteries to the empire

Road to the west; Road to the south; Continuing northern border problems; Northeastern relations

Turmoil at the end of Han

Fragmentation of the empire; Succeeding polities

13  The Yellow Sea Interaction Sphere (400 BC – 300 AD)

Trade and tribute relations

Meeting the Hui and Mo; Han domination

Northeastern horse-riders

Puyo in the central Manchurian Basin; Early Koguryo in the eastern Manchurian massif

The Lelang commandery

Commandery sites; Relations with Shandong and Liaodong; Lelang tombs; From Gongsun to Wei rule

The Samhan of the southern Korean Peninsula

Commandery connections; Ceramic advancements; Iron production; From the Three Han to the Three Kingdoms

Yayoi bronze cultures

Renewed continental connections; North Kyushu continental gateway

14  Mounded Tomb Cultures (2–5c AD)

Pen/Insular state formation

On the Peninsula

Koguryo and Paekche origins; Kaya and Silla origins

In the Islands

From mound-burials to mounded tombs; Daifang and Queen Himiko; Kofun bunka: the mounded tomb culture (MTC) of Japan

Early state relations

Warfare; Writing

New tombs and art

Corridor-chamber tombs; Mural tombs

Expansion of Silla and Yamato

Administrative incorporation by Yamato; Military conquest by Silla

15  East Asian Civilization (3–7c AD)

Rapid transformations

On the Mainland; In the Pen/Insulae

Buddhism

Buddhist grottoes; Pen/Insular Buddhism; Temple excavations

Law and administration: a Yamato case study

Territorial control

Gridded cities; Provincial systems; A new field system; Taxation

Technological developments

Cosmopolitan lifestyles

16  Epilogue: Ancient East Asia in the Modern World

Why study East Asian archaeology?

Sharing of religious philosophies

Friction dating to earlier times

The problem with Mimana; Keyhole tombs in Korea; Koguryo split between two states

The importance of national heritage

Appendices

Endnotes

Sources for Illustrations and Box and Table data

Bibliography

List of Boxes

List of Figures (including various maps)

List of Tables

Preface

Multiple editions

The first edition of this book was published in hardback in 1993 as China, Korea and Japan: the rise of civilization in East Asia (London, Thames & Hudson, 1993). In 1999, that version was reprinted in paperback under a better title using the word ‘archaeology’: The rise of civilization in East Asia: the archaeology of China, Korea and Japan (London, Thames & Hudson, 1999). Only very minor corrections within word count were made in the paperback edition, and these first two editions have exactly the same pagination and format; I refer to them collectively as ‘CKJ’.

This current offering is a revised edition of the content of CKJ after twenty years. Most of the text has been rewritten; many photographs are also replaced, since those originally published in CKJ mainly belonged to the Thames & Hudson files. Colleagues and others have been most helpful in supplying photos and illustrations with proper copyright for inclusion here. Other illustrations, particularly line drawings, have been re-used from CKJ when nothing better has superseded them.

In trying to bring this book up to date, I have encountered three hurdles. One is the vast amount of information published since 1990, resulting in more detail, in changes of emphasis in the available data, and in changes in our perspectives in viewing those data. Second, it was much easier to condense broad swaths of prehistory into a few paragraphs when I knew less myself. Third, method and theory have become more important in writing any kind of archaeology, so that the setting of East Asian data within these frameworks has become necessary. Data were intentionally selected to illustrate general trends in development, areas of scholarly disagreement, and outstanding florescence in material culture – with a vision of an East Asian Civilization at the end of the process. With the increase of information available on the internet, it is no longer necessary nor feasible to indulge in long descriptions of individual sites or cultures – easily obtained elsewhere with a couple of clicks and most likely with enviable color illustrations.

Thus, this revision is much more technical than CKJ, though it remains an introduction and is not designed to be comprehensive despite the inevitable generalizations. I have striven to follow the same pattern of discussion as in CKJ, and have also tried to identify corrections to CKJ (in footnotes), particularly in terms of advances in knowledge. I hope that the general reader and beginning student will find the deeper level of detail in this volume still accessible within the overall framework of tracing the development of East Asian societies from the Palaeolithic to the early historic period. If not, read CKJ first! If so, the framework of time/space/content outlined here will allow deeper forays into those areas of particular interest to the new reader via the Further Readings and the Bibliography.

This series of books has two main readerships: those coming from East Asian studies, and those from archaeology. Accommodations have been made for both groups: explanation of many archaeological methods and concepts for the former, and source information from English-language works as much as possible for the latter. Please forgive these indulgences.

CKJ = the same book in hardback and paperback editions but with different titles:

Barnes, Gina L. (1993) China, Korea and Japan: the rise of civilization in East Asia. London: Thames & Hudson (hardback)

Barnes, Gina L. (1999) The rise of civilization in East Asia: the archaeology of China, Korea and Japan. London: Thames & Hudson (paperback)i

Where is East Asia?

Commonly this term refers to the territories of the modern states of China, Korea and Japan. However, state boundaries are meaningful to prehistory only in terms of the investigating organizations and the languages in which reports are written today. The locations of sites are usually (but not in this work) given in terms of modern prefectures and provinces of the individual countries, which are displayed in the maps in Figures 2.1–2.3 for reference. Because of the boundary (or boundless) problem, we will often stray into Mongolia, the Altai, Central Asia and Vietnam to illuminate what was happening in East Asia as strictly defined. However, this work does not deal much with the archaeology of the far west and south Mainland; in particular, Silk Road archaeology is entirely another field which deserves separate treatment.

Dating preferences

One of the most difficult things for newcomers to archaeology anywhere is shifting between BP or ‘years ago’ and BC/AD (BCE/CE) dates – a 2000-year difference. BP (before present) specifically refers to the ‘present’ as 1950 – the date when radiocarbon dating began – and is used primarily for radiocarbon dates (Appendix A). There are several such methods of scientific dating, and dates tend to be given in ‘years ago’ (BP), whereas archaeologists tend to talk in terms of calendar dates BC/AD or BCE/CE.

This book will use two forms of notation: ‘years ago’, and BC/AD; dates for the Pleistocene and Palaeolithic are given as ‘mya’ (million years ago) and ‘kya’ (thousand years ago) in Chapters 3 and 4. Beginning in Chapter 5, dates will be given as BC/AD. Remember, a 2000-year span separates these two systems of ‘years ago’ and ‘BC’, so that the newly dated end of the Pleistocene (see below) at 11.6kya is 9600 BC – quite different from the previously used Pleistocene/Holocene divide of 10,000 years ago or 8000 BC. As far as possible, calibrated dates (see Appendix A) are cited (as cal.), but often it is difficult to tell from publications whether they are calibrated or not, and conventional radiocarbon dates produced decades ago often are missing metadata that allows them to be calibrated. Thus one must remain flexible in dealing with dates due to the many problems in their calculation and presentation; those presented here are only approximations.

Other conventions adopted here are using a small ‘c’ to denote century/centuries and a small ‘m’ for millennium/millennia, as in 5c BC (5th century BC) or 1m AD (1st millennium AD). This saves a lot of text space!

A different problem surrounds the designation BC/AD. These are Christian terms specifically referring to Before Christ and Anno Domini (Year of our Lord). There is a recent trend to amend these to BCE (Before Common Era) and CE (Common Era) to get away from the Christian implications. However, this does not solve the problem since the dividing line is still the birth year of Christ in the Gregorian calendarii – very inappropriate for East Asia where there is nothing ‘in common’ about the Christian division. This book will follow the original system of BC/AD merely because it is more visually distinct and therefore potentially less confusing. The date 0 AD refers here to the dividing line between BC/AD, though there is no Year 0; and while it is proper to put ‘AD’ before the date, I am choosing to put it after, as with BC.

The overall chronological scheme for East Asia is offered in Table 0.1 (below).

Language issues

Out of respect for tradition, I have generally presented East Asian personal names with surname first and given name last. But many East Asian scholars now adopt Western practice and write their surname last. To avoid confusion, when both occur together, I give the surname in small capitals (e.g., ABE Satoshi, Li Liu). Some early individuals are known by only one name.

Many abbreviations frequently used in this book are explained in Appendix B.

Romanization of foreign words in this book employs the Pinyin system for Chinese, the McCune-Reischauer system for Korean, and the Revised Hepburn system for Japanese. These systems are explained, with examples given, in Appendix C.

• For Chinese (indicated in the text as C.), Pinyin is the government-approved transcription system in use since 1979. Wade-Giles, the system previously used by most Western scholars of China, is found in older works and can still crop up in texts by recalcitrant scholars. The Yale system is rarely used except by linguists.

Table 0.1a National periodization schemes for East Asia: early half. See Tables 1.1–1.7 for detailed dates.

Table 0.1b National periodization schemes for East Asia: late half. See Tables 1.1–1.7 for detailed dates through the 8c.

• For Korean (K.), the South Korean government’s currently preferred system is difficult for foreigners to use to reconstruct pronunciation despite its internal logic. Therefore, the McCune-Reischauer system will continue to be used here by this recalcitrant scholar, though without diacritics – as explained in Appendix C.

• For Japanese (J.), the Japanese government developed its own scheme of romanization (Kunreishiki), which is very misleading for native English speakers for some pronunciations (compare Wadati and Wadachi, where the latter better reflects the actual sound), so the more congenial Hepburn system is used here.

Appendix C provides further basic information on pronunciation and alternative spellings used in the text. Conversion charts for the variations in national romanization schemes can be found online.

Note on referencing

Chapters have both footnotes (identified by lower-case Roman numerals) and endnotes (Arabic numbers). The former are substantive comments at the bottom of the page that should be read as the chapter progresses; the latter identify references drawn on for data and interpretations in the main chapter text and are presented in the Endnotes section. References for illustrations and data in Figures, Tables and Boxes are given in the Sources section. Each chapter also has a Further Reading list of relevant published materials. All of these different citations are given in the general bibliography. Exploring all these works will obviously yield far more information than can possibly be included in a general introductory survey such as this.

A conscious effort has been made here to leave out the names of authors of other works in the text for the simple reason that the text is already loaded with geographical and cultural names that are difficult to assimilate. I apologize to my fellow scholars for not identifying them in the usual in-text manner, and even more so for not being able to cite many of their works that I would have liked to include. Omitting author names in the text means that passive voice constructions are the norm, to many a grammarian’s dismay. A second point is that I have incorporated far more footnotes in this revision than in CKJ. This is to give clear guidance as to where data are being drawn from and what resources can be accessed to follow up the ideas revealed here.

Note on indexing

My indexing is a labor of love; it aspires to be exhaustive if not comprehensive. The entries form special study units in and of themselves; and there are many crossreferences, so any topic can be approached from several directions. An idiosyncratic combination of simple alphabetical and compound categorical listings is used; this means that if a particular word or concept is not listed alphabetically, it is probably incorporated into a category. Seek and ye shall find!

Acknowledgments

This book and its predecessor would never have been written but for the education, support, and encouragement offered by teachers, mentors and colleagues, especially those in East Asia who have unstintingly shared with me their data, ideas and camaraderie over five decades. I am eternally grateful to their continued interest and communication, and I welcome new contacts with younger scholars whose investigations have opened up vast new areas for consideration.

For the preparation of this volume, several colleagues have read and commented on draft text, discussed fine points of debates with me, or sent me references or material. I am very grateful for their guidance, but errors and differences of opinion remain my own responsibility. In addition, many colleagues and institutions have donated illustrations or permitted their work to be re-used for this volume (see Sources section); their generosity is greatly appreciated. For all these collaborations, I offer sincere thanks (in alphabetical order) to Y. Abe, BAE Kidong, Martin Bale, Robert Bednarik, Gwen Bennett, Peter Bleed, Mark Byington, Gary Crawford, Paola Demattè, Robin Dennell, DING Pin, DING Zhongli, Erdenebaatar Diimaajav, Dorian Fuller, Junko HABU, Mark Hudson, Fumiko Ikawa-Smith, IWASE Akira, KOBAYASHI Ken’ichi, KOIKE Hiroko, KUDO Yuichiro, KUSUMI Takeo, Gyoung-Ah LEE, LEE Yung-jo, John Lienhard, Kathryn Linduff, Li Liu, LUAN Fengshi, Henry de Lumley, MATSUZAWA Tsugio, MORISAKI Kazuki, NAKAZAWA Yuichi, Mark Lewis, OH Youngchan, ONUKI Shizuo, Bob Ramsey, QIN Ling, Christopher Ramsey, Chen SHEN, SHIN Kyung Cheol, SHODA Shinya, TSUTSUMI Takashi, Anne Underhill, WANG Shijiang, WANG Youping, Mike Waters, and ZHOU Liping. This volume’s Sources section credits the specific sources of materials from these scholars and many others used in Boxes, Figures and Tables.

Clare Litt at Oxbow Books has been an ideal commissioning editor, giving me free rein to write as much as I wanted and include as many illustrations as I liked, though she might regret the dense index. And I particularly appreciate the late decision to publish in color – I’m sure to my readers’ delight. Sarah Ommanney at Oxbow Books assisted with the illustrations, while Ana Marques helped with last-minute re-drawings. Val Lamb, typesetter, worked closely with me to lay out the book in as lively a manner as possible; her swift and accurate renditions are a work of art and much appreciated. Most important have been my two technical editors, Andrea Greenaker and David Hughes, who have acted as my grammer; punchewation: an spellin police and have also pointed out inscrutably written passages for revision. They checked all picture/caption/citation correspondences and worked hard with me to get all the bugs out of the manuscript, but if any remain, those bugs are all mine. I further owe David, my ever loving and supportive partner, much gratitude for releasing me from many obligations because you’re writing a book! He has made all this effort worthwhile.

i The preface to the paperback edition (p. 15) gives out-of-date information concerning the University of Durham. The current URL for the Society for East Asian Archaeology is www.SEAA-web.org. Dates for an Early Palaeolithic in Japan have since been discredited.

ii Though Jesus might have been born in 5 BC according to astronomical calculations (Humphreys 1991).

To Richard Pearson, who demonstrated to me that it is possible to study all three East Asian countries at once

Chapter 1

Orientation

Prior to nation-states, geography was broad and unbounded, with peoples traveling and intermixing at will. Despite the development of multitudinous regional ‘cultures’ and even states across East Asia, interaction was the name of the game. Thus geography is the basic referent for discussing human occupation of the landscape (Figure 1.1). Since most archaeological reports, however, discuss finds in terms of modern provinces and prefectures, these are given in Figures 2.1–2.3.

Now, let’s take a tour of East Asia to get oriented.

Grounding

Starting from the Yellow Sea

The central geographical point of reference for this text is the ‘Yellow Sea Basin’. The Yellow Sea grades into the East China Sea to the south, but for our purposes, the Yellow Sea Basin is defined as beginning at the Shanghai Delta in the southwest and extending to southern Kyushu in the southeast. The Ryukyu Islands are sandwiched by the East China Sea on the west and the Pacific Ocean on the east. The Yellow Sea is made yellow by the deposits of loess coming off the China Mainland and deposited into Bohai Bay in the northwest, the Bay being formed by the pinching in of the Shandongi and Liaodong peninsulae.ii The Yellow River has changed course many times over the millennia, sometimes draining into the Yellow Sea below the Shandong peninsula. The northeastern Bohai Bay receives the Liao River runoff, draining the Manchurian Basin. East of the Korean Peninsula lies the Eastern Sea, more commonly known as the Japan Sea. The Korean Peninsula and Japanese Islands are divided by two straits on either side of Tsushima Island:iii the Korea Strait and the Tsushima Strait, respectively ca. 120km and 65km wide at their narrowest points. These will simply be referred to here as the Korea Strait.

Figure 1.1 The geography of East Asia

formally defined as the modern nations of China, the two Koreas, Taiwan and Japan. Mongolia and the Russian maritime region are indicated here. Deserts are marked with dashes. Although the Tibetan Plateau and Tarim Basin form a large part of modern China, their archaeologies are not specifically dealt with here. East Asia, as covered in this book, can be thought of as centered on the Yellow Sea.

CP = Central Plain, surrounded by NCP = North China Plain

Several terms have been devised here to refer to parts of East Asia without using modern nation-state designations. The ‘China Mainland’ (or just ‘Mainland’) refers to most of the modern state of China, though the far west (Xinjiang province), the southeastern coast, and Tibet are not dealt with here. I devised the terms ‘Pen/Insular’ and ‘Pen/Insulae’ to refer to the combined areas of the Korean Peninsula and the Japanese Islands, whereas the term ‘Peninsula(r)’ (capitalized) is used specifically to refer to the Korean Peninsula; other peninsulae are not capitalized to make that difference clear. On that Peninsula, names of the five major rivers (the Yalu, Taedong, Han, Kum and Nakdong) are used as geographical locators. The term ‘continent(al)’ embraces both the China Mainland and the Korean Peninsula, and possibly other regions, in contrast to the Japanese Islands.

Within the Japanese archipelago, areas on the main island (Honshu) are often referred to by sub-regions: Tohoku, Kanto, Chubu, Tokai, Hokuriku, Kinai, and San’in. In addition, the Inland Sea area can be referred to as the Seto region and divided into western and eastern portions. Honshu itself is effectively divided into east and west by the ‘waist of Honshu’ at Nagoya City. Finally, I’ve coined three new terms to refer to the land areas underlying the Yellow Sea and Inland Sea when they were exposed as broad Plains during the glacial phases of the Pleistocene (Ice Age) period: first, the Yellow Plain and Seto Plain; then, I refer to the entire northeastern landmass that was exposed during the maximum period of lowered sea level in the Pleistocene as East Asialand, comparable to the Southeast Asian Sundaland.

Mainland geography

The ‘China Mainland’ is divided into the Manchurian Basin in the northeast, the Inner Mongolian steppes in the north, the North China Plain (NCP in Figure 1.1), the Yangzi Basin in central China, and the Sichuan Basin in the southwest. The Yellow River is best used to find oneself in Mainland geography. Rising in the northern Tibetan Plateau, it bends north around the arid Ordos region and then south to meet the Wei River flowing in from the west; it then flows through a narrow passage, which I have named the Huanghe Corridor, onto the North China Plain. Huanghe is the Chinese name meaning ‘yellow river’. Where it emerges from the Huanghe Corridor, the area is traditionally called the Central Plainiv (Zhongyuan, CP in Figure 1.1), considered the heartland of Chinese civilization. Since the Bronze Age, the Yellow River has laid down about 10 meters of alluvium on the North China Plain, burying the ancient landscape and making archaeological recovery extremely difficult. Perhaps because of the multiple changes of course, Neolithic and Bronze Age settlement on the China Mainland concentrated in the Wei River valley, the Central Plain, and the Huai River valley between the Yellow and Yangzi Rivers.

The Qinling Mountains and the Huai River served at different times to mark the division between the north and south Mainland. My term ‘East Coast’ breaches this divide, signifying the coastal region inclusive of the Shandong peninsula to below the Shanghai Delta. The Yangzi Basin and Shanghai Delta developed rice-based cultures different from the Yellow–Wei River drainage millet-based cultures. Influences from this southern region stimulated the development of rice-growing cultures in the southern Pen/Insulae, but how this technology was diffused is still debated.

The loesslands

Aeolian sediments blown in from Central Asian deserts accumulated in areas of the central and northeastern Mainland. These deposits could be up to hundreds of meters thick and form an important locus of Palaeolithic research as well as a major resource for Neolithic millet farmers. It is a landscape unfamiliar to most Westerners, heavily dissected by erosion since the Neolithic.

The Northern Zone

In the northern Mainland lie the Manchurian Basin in the northeast, the Mongolian Plateau to the north, and the Tarim Basin in the northwest. The Bohai Corridor (now often called the Liaoxi Corridor) connects the North China Plain to the lower Manchurian Basin, drained by the Liao River; historically, the regions to the west and east of the lower Liao River were respectively designated Liaoxi and Liaodong. The upper Manchurian Basin is drained to the north into the Amur by the Sungari River.

This entire northern region is characterized by increasing aridity from the coast toward Inner Asia, with Manchurian forests grading into Mongolian steppe, steppe desert, and of course the Gobi Desert. The Tarim Basin has as its core the Taklamakan Desert, with steppe to the north and oases lining the southern edge. In the past, the central and western arid areas were once colonized by greater tracts of forest and grasslands, leading to patterns of human settlement rather different from those seen today.

Westward ho!

East-west travel on the China Mainland would seem naturally to follow the Yellow River and the Yangzi River (called in Chinese the Changjiang ‘long river’), but this is not necessarily so. The major route to the west starts from the Huanghe Corridor and follows the Wei River into the Gansu Corridor (now often referred to as the Hexi Corridor). This is the route of the old Silk Road leading from the Central Plain into the Tarim Basin. From the Wei River valley, there is also a route south, across the Qinling Mountains into the Sichuan Basin; this allowed steppe-culture influence to reach this southwestern area, unlike other areas of the southern Mainland.

Eastward bound

Travel across the seas could be accomplished by island-hopping from Taiwan through the Ryukyu archipelago to Kyushu, though this was a little used route. Leapfrogging from the Shandong to Liaodong peninsulae provided another crossing point. The most treacherous crossing was directly across the Yellow Sea from the Shanghai Delta region to North Kyushu or the southern coast of the Korean Peninsula; boats therefore often hugged the shore of the Yellow Sea instead, but some evidence hints at direct crossings. The Korea Strait was always open, even as a large river in periods of lowest sea level, and required a boat crossing; but the northern Japanese Islands were connected to the Russian maritime region in glacial times, providing a northern entrance into the Japanese archipelago.

North-south divisions

All three areas of East Asia are subject to clear north/south divides extending from the prehistoric to the present. These divisions are partially determined naturally, by climate and resources, but cultural factors are also at work – responding not only to local climates but to proximate peoples.

On the China Mainland, the Qinling Mountains nominally divide North and South China. These mountains separate southern species of animals from northern; even after the introduction of domestic animals, sheep and goats were confined to the north and water buffalo to the south. The North is traditionally characterized by millet and wheat production, while rice was grown in the South. The North includes the loesslands and deserts; northern pottery was made from fine-grained sedimentary deposits derived from these regions. The South has a more volcanic-derived geology, which facilitated the development of high-fired ceramics and porcelain. As we shall see, there are also differences in north–south house structures in certain regions to accommodate such variables as high water tables, cold winters, and timber availability.

On the Korean Peninsula, the divide is not so obvious climatically, but one consistently finds cultural differences throughout pre- and protohistory between the northern and the southern societies. Even in times of early historic ‘unification’ in the United Silla and Koryo periods, the northern boundary was positioned farther south than today’s separation with China. The boundary of the pre-modern Choson state along the Yalu River might be seen as an aberration of the natural differences between north and south persisting throughout prehistory and manifesting itself in the two Koreas today.

In the Japanese Islands, northeast and southwest supported different cultural milieus from prehistoric times onward. The major Jomon settlement was in the northeast, while the major Yayoi tradition belonged to the southwest. The indeterminate boundary, somewhere in the middle of Honshu, even today distinguishes dialects, food preferences and which side of the escalator to stand on!

National chronologies

Despite the fact that cultural developments occurred across this broad East Asian landscape without regard to modern state boundaries, the cultural histories of the different states are divided into chronological sequences peculiar to each state. Table 0.1 illustrates the different periodization schemes beginning with the earliest Palaeolithic to the present (see also Appendix A for dating conventions). The entity called ‘East Asian civilization’ emerged in the 8c AD; at that point the maturation of governmental systems in all three areas was based on a shared religion (Buddhism), state philosophy (Confucianism) and bureaucratic structure (founded on ‘administrative law’).

Prior to the 8c AD, there is a clear divide between the developmental trajectory of the China Mainland and the Pen/Insular region. State societies appeared on the Mainland by the mid-2m BC, while it was only after the collapse of the successors to those states in the 3c AD that we have state formation in the Pen/Insulae. Thus, there is a 2000-year time lag in socio-political development between these areas which makes generalization at any one temporal slice across East Asia most difficult. A previous reader of CKJ commented that it jumps around a lot chronologically. This is inevitable given the developmental nature of the region and an inability to describe everything simultaneously, so the chronological chart in Table 0.1 has to be the anchor for following the different cultural sequences through time and across space. Also, it must be noted that this is a standard chronology, but the literature is rife with alternative dates and period names – so, think flexibly!

Another problem with regional chronologies is the use of Western terms to describe East Asian phenomena. The term Neolithic (‘new stone’ age) was originally applied to Europe to distinguish the onset of polished stone-tool manufacture from the chipped stone-tool manufacture of the Palaeolithic ‘old stone’ age. Later, ‘Neolithic’ came to encompass pottery and agriculture in its definition. It is now recognized across Eurasia that pottery precedes the emergence of farming and should be considered a hunter-gatherer innovation.¹ ‘Ceramic hunter-gatherers’ are no longer anomalous and, as we shall see below, neither are hunter-gatherer producers of food.

East Asia defies the Western three-age classification (stone > bronze > iron) on several grounds: polished stone-tool production and ceramics existed in the Palaeolithic, and ceramics without agriculture in the Jomon and Early Chulmun. China has a Bronze Age, as does Korea, but in both cases, iron comes into the sequence while bronzes are still in prime place of use. In China, iron appears around 800 BC in the historic period, by which time dynastic period names (such as Zhou) replace general archaeological period names (such as Bronze Age). In Korea, however, the Late Bronze Age (when this designation is used) overlaps with the Early Iron Age, the two running concurrently for the latter centuries BC. Then the Late Iron Age overlaps with the Samhan period, a historical designation for the first centuries AD. All this is unnecessarily complicated and needs refining. In Japan, bronze and iron were introduced from the continent within a short time of each other, around 300 BC during the Yayoi period. The Yayoi, originally a ceramic designation, is now an agricultural designation, so Japan has no Neolithic, Bronze or Iron Age comparable to the West. The mismatch of Western terms with the East Asian sequence can cause much confusion, but it particularly highlights the fact that cultures did not develop linearly through the Thomsen sequence everywhere in the world.²

With or without writing?

Another classification concerns the differences between prehistoric, protohistoric and historic periods. Prehistoric archaeology is concerned with periods for which there are no written records; all of our interpretations are drawn from the material record, be it artifactual or environmental in nature. For societies illuminated by texts, there are basically two kinds of written records: documents that have been excavated or retrieved from archaeological sites, and transmitted texts that have been handed down through the generations. The ways these are used to inform on past societies are variable, and distinctions are hard to make. However, in general, societies that are written about by other peoples in transmitted texts but which lack their own written documents are treated as protohistoric; those with transmitted texts are treated as historic.

Prehistoric archaeology

The Palaeolithic is the earliest prehistoric division, starting on the China Mainland at 1.66 million years ago but not until about 40,000 years ago in the Japanese Islands – as populations made their way eastward (Chapter 3). Each of these areas has supplied different kinds of data for our investigation. For example, most fossil remains are from the China Mainland, enabling research on the evolution of our ancestral species (Homo erectus) and the appearance of our modern form (Homo sapiens) (Chapter 4). Or in another example, the main artifacts of the Early Palaeolithic period are rough core-and-flake tools,v mainly known from the China Mainland. However, Late Palaeolithic stone tools, focusing on blades, are primarily known and researched in Japan (Chapter 4).

Previously, the Palaeolithic (archaeological) period was concomitant with the Pleistocene (geological) period, but new discoveries have revealed several artifact types once thought not to occur until the Neolithic but now dating back into the Pleistocene – including the earliest ceramics in the world (Chapter 4). Moreover, in the period designated as the Neolithic on the China Mainland, the major attribute of Neolithic society – agriculture – is recognized to have taken a long time to establish (Chapter 5). Previously a sharp distinction was drawn between the early agricultural societies of the Mainland and the hunter-gatherers of the Peninsulae.vi Now the cultures between 15,000 and 5000 BC are seen to have focused on broad spectrum hunting and gathering with an increasing emphasis on plant foods. The distinguishing factor was that the Mainlanders chose plants that were eminently domesticable, while the Jomon peoples in the Japanese Islands chose plants that did not translate into intensifiable crops.

Traditionally for prehistoric periods in East Asia, either lithics or ceramics serve as the basis for determining relative chronologies, first of sites and then of cultures. There has been a tendency in both China and Japan to divide the post-glacial landscape into ‘cultures’ defined first and foremost by pottery types named after a ‘type site’ (see Tables 1.1 and 1.6 below). Chronologies based on the succession of ceramic types were later filled out and refined with reference to other artifacts, though there are splitters and lumpers so that cultural nomenclature is quite variable. Such ceramic ‘cultures’ have then graduated to ‘phase’ or ‘period’ status (Table 1.3); for example, the Dawenkou culture is also known as the Dawenkou period, but in fact this temporal designation only applies to the area of Dawenkou culture along China’s east coast, and the Yangshao culture/period applies contemporaneously to the Neolithic cultures inland. Thus, it is important to distinguish between pottery, site, culture, and time period – all of which might bear the same name.

Protohistoric archaeology

The concept of ‘protohistory’ is little known and even less understood. But there is a great divide between researching prehistoric societies for which no written records exist at all, and researching societies about which some form of history is written. The latter may take the form of limited inscriptions and fragmentary documents created within the society itself, but more usually ‘protohistoric’ refers to societies that are discussed in the records of fully historic societies. Either way, societies covered only tangentially by written records are termed ‘protohistoric’, and very often, they incorporate one of the most important social transformations: state formation.

In societies that have developed their own script, such as the Shang of the China Mainland, the advent of writing marks a tremendous watershed in their modus operandi as well as in the archaeologists’ role in elucidating it (BOX 1.1). To be able to draw on the records of the people themselves not only gives us insight into how they thought, but also provides us with innumerable details not recoverable through the excavation of decayed and incomplete material remains. Nevertheless, in the case of Shang, these records are extremely limited – consisting only of inscriptions on oracle bones and bronzes, both elite objects. In the Zhou period, bronzes and texts on bamboo and wooden slips are similar in providing windows into the elite mindset. However, many transmitted texts are known for the later Zhou period, so that only Shang and Early Zhou periods are considered here to be ‘protohistoric’ (Chapter 9).

For societies discussed by others in transmitted texts, we must remember that we are seeing those societies through alien eyes, subject to the interests and biases of the texts’ authors. This is especially important in East Asia, where the Chinese dynastic records written from the Han period onward discuss events and peoples in all of the surrounding cultures from the northeast through the Korean Peninsula and Japanese Islands to the southern continent. Thus, the Pen/Insular Samhan and Yayoi peoples are protohistoric, with much ethnographic information recorded about them in the Han and Wei Dynasty chronicles (Chapter 13).

Finally, once societies become fully historical with written histories, these are often extended backward in time to document early peoples and reigns, mixing myth, legend and fact. It