Under the supervision of Dr. Stephen Kowalewski, Xinyu Ren will conduct six months of archaeological research centering on an ancient walled town, Huangtucheng (3000-2000 B.C.) in the Middle Huai River region. The Huai River valley is a rich ecotone and it is also a major geographic boundary between northern and southern China. However, the Huai River region receives little archaeological attention for its own cultural development and its role in the interaction between the better-studied Yellow River and Yangtze River regions. Little is known about the origins of state and civilization in the Huai River region. This project will provide new information on past human settlements and artifacts, and these data will help us understand how and when complex societies arose in China.
Most ideas about state formation in China have been drawn from historical texts and have been focused on presumed core zones along the Yellow River. Recently, however, new approaches to state formation have come from studies outside core zones, from earlier time periods, and from new archaeological methods, including archaeological surface survey, in which all the land in a given area is walked systematically and every site from every time period is recorded. Recent archaeological excavation findings in the middle Huai River region, including writing marks and statues as early as 5300 B.C., have shown that this area is an important place to search for the origin of the state. This study will use new methods (full-coverage survey, Geographic Information Systems) and new theoretical approaches to study the changing settlement pattern. By identifying the fundamental changes in settlements, this survey will answer one of the basic questions: how and when did Huangtucheng arise as a walled town? Was it a center for surrounding rural towns and villages or did few people, live outside the walls, perhaps because of warfare? Or did the use of the rural area change over time?
This proposed study will be the first full-coverage archaeological survey in the Huai River region. Xinyu Ren and her trained survey crew will map, describe, collect and date every visible archaeological site in an area within a 7 km radius of Huangtucheng. Her project will produce new data and insights into chronology and artifact distributions in Central China. This will be the first study to describe the long history of human settlements in this region. It will help us understand how civilization arose in different environments. Did civilization and the state emerge here as early as it did in the more famous Yellow and Yangtze River valleys? Or was the Huai River a periphery or border between North, South and Coastal China? Or did its role change over time? In addition, this project will provide a case study for comparative studies with other important regions in the world.
In terms of its broader impact, this research will bring new anthropological perspectives to the study of state formation in China. The results of this field research will be published both in Chinese and English in various forms, including website, newsletter and scientific journal. It will bridge the gap between the research methods and theories in Chinese archaeology and North American archaeology and enhance the communication between Chinese archaeological institutes (Henan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology and Wuhan University) and the Co-PI's host institution in the United States. This project will be influential as a demonstration of state-of-the-art full-coverage and GIS for archaeologists who are unfamiliar with these methods. Graduate assistants and other cooperative professional archaeologists will get training in these methods. More important, it will help the Chinese and English public to know more about the history of this important region of China.
