With National Science Foundation Support, Dr. Alice Yao, Dr. Henry Wright and the Yunnan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology in China will conduct one season of archaeological research on the Lake Dian Basin. The team brings together U.S. and Chinese specialists in archaeology to investigate the origins of a powerful Bronze Age polity known as the as the Dian Kingdom. Located in the well-protected high altitude basin of Lake Dian, the Dian Kingdom emerged as a formidable independent polity occupying an important communication node between ancient China and mainland Southeast Asia. The Dian Kingdom and neighboring polities appeared to have achieved prominence during a dynamic period of escalating interregional warfare and trade across ancient China and Southeast Asia. Current archaeological research seeks to determine the impact these regional political developments may have had on the sociopolitical formations in the Lake Dian basin. Was this sociopolitical complexity directly introduced by Chinese states or motivated by competition and trade with its immediate neighbors? Only the recovery of Bronze Age occupation sites in the Lake Dian can address the enigmatic origins of the Dian Kingdom. This project provides a first-ever international effort to search for possible prehistoric occupations in this region.
Solving the nature of Dian origins requires a solid understanding of the timing of sociopolitical developments within the Lake Dian basin. The goals of the project are 1) to identify prehistoric occupation sites from archaeological field survey and satellite imagery, 2) to provide radiometric dates from these discovered sites that would contribute toward a chronology for the Dian polity, and 3) to collect materials from surfaces and exposed cuts to document the nature of cultural activities at these sites. The survey approach employs high resolution satellite imagery taken before the introduction of mechanized agriculture to guide a controlled field survey in target areas showing greater promise of site recovery. This exploratory investigation can potentially chart the genesis of the Dian region from its prehistoric beginnings to its florescence as a Bronze Age polity.
If successful, the direct intellectual merit of the research will be the discovery of prehistoric occupation sites in a region of China where few sites have ever been documented. The recovery of these sites would provide the spatio-temporal framework necessary to chronicle the socio-political developments of a poorly understood region in China. This groundwork would then stimulate the development of working models for secondary formations in the ancient world. Beyond the scientific value of discovering ancient Dian sites, the project anticipates broader impact by promoting scholarly exchange between the US and China through this first time archaeological collaboration in Yunnan province. In addition, the development of cost-effective reconnaissance methods that are simultaneously non-intrusive can be easily adapted to fit the needs of public archaeology and heritage management.
