Violence, kinship and the early Chinese state : the Shang and their world / Roderick Campbell.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Campbell, Roderick (Roderick B.), author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Violence--Social aspects--China--History--To 1500.

Violence.

Kinship--China--History.

Kinship.

China--History--Shang dynasty, 1766-1122 B.C.

China.

China--Civilization--To 221 B.C.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (pages cm) : digital, PDF file(s).

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2018.

Summary:

Situated between myth and history, the Shang has been hailed both as China's first historical dynasty and as one of the world's primary civilizations. This book is an up-to-date synthesis of the archaeological, palaeographic and transmitted textual evidence for the Shang polity at Anyang (c.1250-1050 BCE). Roderick Campbell argues that violence was not the antithesis of civilization at Shang Anyang, but rather its foundation in war and sacrifice. He explores the social economy of practices and beliefs that produced the ancestral order of the Shang polity. From the authority of posthumously deified kings, to the animalization of human sacrificial victims, the ancestral ritual complex structured the Shang world through its key institutions of war, sacrifice, and burial. Mediated by hierarchical lineages, participation in these practices was basic to being Shang. This volume, which is based on the most up-to-date evidence, offers comprehensive and cutting-edge insight into the Chinese Bronze Age civilization.

Contents:

Being, society and world : towards an inter-ontic approach : Shang civilization, historiography and early China

Cities, states and civilizations

Central plains civilization from Erlitou to Anyang

The great settlement Shang and its polity : networks, boundaries and the social economy

Kinship, place and social order

Violence and Shang civilization

Constructing the ancestors : the social economy of burial

Technologies of pacification and the world of the great settlement Shang.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 29 May 2018).

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN:

1-108-18717-X

1-108-17856-1

1-108-19558-X