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  1. Home
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  3. Violence, Kinship and the Early Chinese State
  • Cited by 25
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
May 2018
Print publication year:
2018
Online ISBN:
9781108178563
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108178563
Subjects:
East Asian History, Area Studies, Asian Studies, History, Archaeology, Archaeology of Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa and The Pacific
Information

Book description

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.

Reviews

‘… this book puts scholarship on the Shang on an entirely new level. It is a must-read for any scholar interested in early China or in exploring how Chinese evidence can reshape theoretical paradigms in history and the Social Sciences.’

Lothar von Falkenhausen Source: Journal of the American Oriental Society

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Contents

Contents
  • Chapter 1 - Being, Society and World: Toward an Inter-Ontic Approach
    pp 1-14
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  • Chapter 6 - Violence and Shang Civilization
    pp 178-211
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