Historically, discussions of brush calligraphy for early China have been limited due to the scarcity of examples of ink writing prior to the Eastern Han Dynasty (23–220 c.e.). In recent decades, however, the discovery of large caches of ink manuscripts, most belonging to the Warring States period (453–221 b.c.e.), has attracted attention, although calligraphic issues have rarely been specifically addressed. This dissertation focuses on such calligraphic issues, asking what this new corpus of recovered texts can tell us about the nature of brush writing, scribal skills, and conventions, and the training and tradition entailed in these skills and conventions at this early stage.

In contrast to early calligraphic norms in bronze inscriptions before the Warring States period, the Warring States manuscripts show a variety of calligraphic practices that could be called “innovative.” My hypothesis is that behind these many innovations in brush writing, there existed different scribal traditions which were rooted in “master–disciple” relationships. From various examples of Warring States-era calligraphy, including bronze inscriptions and manuscripts, we see the strong possibility of multiple workshops reflecting different master–disciple calligraphic teaching lineages.

This study develops an appropriate technical framework for analyzing these early calligraphic data, and applies it to reveal cases where multiple hands share traits that indicate a common master–disciple tradition, as well as where they may reflect distinct traditions. This model of pre-Imperial scribal traditions, based in workshop practice, can serve the heuristic function of providing conceptual tools for the analysis of an otherwise unwieldy corpus, and play an important role in our understanding of how ink brush calligraphy became a self-conscious art during this period.

The legal institutions of the short-lived Qin dynasty (221 b.c.e.–207 b.c.e.) have been vilified by history as harsh and draconian. Yet ironically, many Qin institutional features, such as written statutory law, were readily adopted by subsequent dynasties as the primary means for maintaining administrative and social control. How did the influential Qin legal institutions based on written law develop? This dissertation will utilize both traditional received texts and archeologically excavated legal materials in an attempt to ascertain first, what socio-political conditions provided the rationale for the production of law in written form in the kingdom of Qin; and second, to consider how the intended function of written law influenced the linguistic composition of legal statutes, as well as their physical construction.

From amidst the endemic warfare of the aptly named Warring States Period (481–221 b.c.e.) one kingdom, the Qin, rose to successfully consolidate its authority over the other kingdoms through military conquest. In so doing, it established the first imperial dynasty of China administered by a centralized, impersonal bureaucratic government. The success of this consolidation depended upon the effective implementation of government policies, whose origins predate the unification of 221 b.c.e., that were to replace the increasingly defunct systems of aristocratic political order based primarily on the reciprocal obligations defined through lineage affiliation. Over time, such lineage affiliations weakened, and resulted in the rise of powerful ministerial families capable of directly challenging the authority of the ruler and sometimes leading to rulers being deposed or even assassinated. The new order envisioned by the Qin would be headed by a central government represented in and connected to the periphery through an impersonal bureaucracy of officials with legally defined jurisdictions. The establishment of various socio-political institutions of the Qin, such as universal standards for all regions (e.g., axle widths, weights, written script), were also vital to the effort of creating a level of institutional homogeneity and administrative predictability within geographic boundaries formerly governed by disparate institutions. This grand- scale restructuring over such a large territory required a high level of social and administrative control. This was secured through a legal framework in which bureaucratic and social existence came to be defined and judged according to written legal statutes.

Yet how did writing come to be used for the purpose of composing and transmitting law? And how were laws composed so as to maximize their efficacy in attaining the desired goals of the legislative drafters? This dissertation seeks to answer these two questions by applying a function and form approach to the study of excavated legal manuscripts from Qin. To understand the function ascribed to law by the Qin, I draw upon theories from Law and Society literature to illustrate the ways in which social and political changes influence legal changes, and also how responsive legal reforms can be directed to elicit targeted social or political change. The received philosophical literature and traditional Chinese histories recording the socio-political milieu of Qin provide evidence with which we can reconstruct certain elements of these socio-legal processes. The addition of new sources of Qin law in the form of archeologically excavated legal manuscripts over the past seventy years allows us to further refine such reconstructions. With a clearer understanding of the role of law in Qin culture, I then turn my attention to the form of written laws by applying legal-linguistic methods to a codicological and linguistic analysis of a corpus of legal documents from the tomb of a county-level Qin official discovered by archeologists in 1975. Such an approach allows me to demonstrate how the envisioned function of legal statutes directly influenced the linguistic composition and physical production of such legal texts. In this way, this dissertation elucidates the role of writing in the conceptualization and composition of written law in Qin.

The spread of an agricultural lifestyle played a crucial role in the development of social complexity and in defining trajectories of human history. This dissertation presents the results of research into how agricultural strategies were modified during the spread of agriculture into Southwest China. By incorporating advances from the fields of plant biology and ecological niche modeling into archaeological research, this dissertation addresses how humans adapted their agricultural strategies or invented appropriate technologies to deal with the challenges presented by the myriad of ecological niches in Southwest China. This dissertation uses ecological niche modeling to examine the options and constraints associated with practicing different types of agriculture in the specific ecological niches of Southwest China. The predictions made by these models are then tested against archaeobotanical data from a series of sites from across the region. This approach allows one to understand how the spread of agriculture took place in its particular social and economic contexts. Using this modeling, this dissertation argues that the spread of rice agriculture into Southwest China was delayed by several millennia because of the difficulty involved in moving this crop into areas of higher altitude and cooler temperatures. Difficulties in moving water management systems into these areas also slowed the spread.

Throughout Southwest China, millet appears to have played an important role in facilitating agriculture's spread. However, millet was not a match for the cooler temperatures present on the Tibetan Plateau. Here, it is argued that while millet was experimented with for brief periods of time, it eventually fell out of the diet to be replaced by two cold and frost tolerant crops: wheat and barley.

Confucianism is often presented as a primarily moral philosophy. Recent work on Confucianism has been mainly concerned with unearthing core Confucian ethical concepts, like de (virtue), ren (humaneness or benevolence), and li (ritual propriety), from which implications about Confucian political thinking are drawn. Differently from this conventional view, I focus in this dissertation on the passages on government and politics in the early Confucian texts. I present Confucianism as a political philosophy, and argue that its political dimension is neither secondary to, nor does it directly follow from, its ethical dimension. More specifically, I contend that the central motivating concern of Confucian political thought is the preservation and promotion of political order. Political order can be separated into two levels: on a basic level, order is the absence of disorder, chaos, and war. In pursuit of order, the Confucians countenance the hereditary succession to the throne or, alternatively, the rule of hegemons. They also favor the imposition of strict but restricted punishments, and the pursuit of welfare policies aimed at fulfilling the basic needs of the common people. Ideally, however, the Confucians prefer a more complex level of order that is also more lasting: they recommend the establishment of a ritual system that, by assigning social roles according to ability and making social distinctions visible, encourages the division of labor in society, prevents conflicts over scarce resources, and promotes harmony. Contrary to the conventional view, the development of virtue for all members of society is not the goal of Confucian government, even when it aims at harmony. The common people are not typically expected to become virtuous though they are encouraged, through welfare policies, and through rituals, to develop qualities of loyalty and productiveness. It is the Confucian gentlemen, the junzi, for whom politics is an arena for the development of virtue, as they seek, and obtain, roles as ministers. This role is to be sought even under a corrupt ruler since the aim of the Confucian gentleman is not only to develop his personal virtue, but also to promote political order in society.

The authors of divination manuals dating to early China (c. 220 b.c.e.–c. 400 c.e.) treated divination as a technology to gain access to hidden empirical knowledge. By transcribing this knowledge in cosmological language and through the use of diagrams, the authors of these manuals attempted to standardize knowledge for capable readers. The manuals thereby mark a crucial departure from ancient China (c. 1600–c. 300 b.c.e.), when divination authority was invested in privileged individuals, whose skills were monopolized by the wealthy and powerful. The standardization of divinatory techniques and hidden knowledge in these manuals fits the context of bureaucratic expertise and the expanding scope of influence of written culture in the early imperial period. Using an historical approach, I argue that the knowledge recorded in divination manuals points to a view of divination as a perfectible technique for the discovery of practical knowledge. I carefully differentiate such information from the imagined perspective of the manual authors and the manual users. Each chapter focuses on selections from texts containing divination manuals. The texts I will draw on originate from three caches: the “Dream Divination Book” from the Yuelu cache of bamboo slips dating to the Qin dynasty (221 b.c.e.–206 b.c.e.); five divination sections from tomb 6 at Yinwan, Jiangsu Province, and dating to 11 b.c.e. (the Han Dynasty 206 b.c.e.–220 c.e.); and a section from the manuscript Pélliot-Chinoise 2856 (Recto) discovered in the Mogao caves at Dunhuang, Gansu Province, dating to c. 400 c.e.). Using specific examples from each cache, I discuss how the texts disclose specific methods for using divination as a technique for readers to interpret their dreams, choose auspicious dates for various activities, and heal their bodies from illness.

The identification of cultural groups in the archaeological record, and the reasons for and mechanisms of contact between them, have been major topics of discussion in archaeology since its beginnings as a discipline. The methodological and theoretical aspects of these questions have largely been argued on the basis of ethnographic studies and socio-anthropological theories, but they are notoriously difficult to apply to archaeological research. To bridge this gap between socio-anthropological models and the material record, this dissertation starts from a concrete body of archaeological material that reflects the lives and movements of various groups of people living at a crossroad of different contact routes.

The Liangshan area in Southwest China is located at the intersection of several cultural-geographic regions and is crisscrossed by many rivers connecting it to places in the far north and south, while the high mountain ranges divide it into many microclimates. In spite of many different kinds of contact and exchange over long distances, most cultural phenomena therefore tend to be localized, making the Liangshan region an ideal case study for research on cultural groups and their relationship with the local environment on the one hand, and directions and mechanisms of short- and long-distance contacts on the other.

Research in the region has been hampered by the fact that a multitude of groups has lived in, passed through, and intermingled here since the late Neolithic, leaving a complex archaeological record that is still not well understood. For the first time, this study compiles a comprehensive catalog of all prehistoric material of the Liangshan area, providing separate analyses of all types of artifacts and archaeological features, and offering a chronological scheme for the whole region. Furthermore, this study relates the archaeological material to the geographical context and discusses local, regional, and supra-regional cultural developments.

This study starts at the micro-level of single objects, considering their technical properties of production and function, before widening the scope to the intermediate level of sites and features, and finally moving toward the regional and supra-regional picture. At each level this study questions the geographic preconditions and patterns of human–environment interaction that contribute to the formation of the archaeological record. One of the main methods employed in this endeavor is computer-aided spatial analysis (GIS) together with traditional archaeological methods of typology and statistics. This combined approach gives a third, spatial dimension to problems of chronology and cultural assignation, on which traditional approaches of classification and multivariate analyses provide insight.

Through the application of a variety of methods to this very special body of material, this study is able to re-conceptualize the objects and features in their geographical, temporal, and cultural context, and sketch out local developments, while at the same time answer questions about the mechanisms and underlying reasons for inter-group contact. This study thus makes valuable contributions both to theoretical and methodological discussions on the nature of cultural groups and inter-group contacts, and their identification in the archaeological record.

This dissertation analyzes the food redistribution systems of the Qin and Han periods, finding accordance and discordance among ideologies, policies, and their implementation. During the Qin and Han periods, food was given by the emperor to his subjects through various redistribution systems: salaries, rations, relief, gifts, and feasts. In chapters 1 to 4, I introduce each form of food redistribution that directly or indirectly influenced food consumption and the dietary conditions of people of various statuses: officials, soldiers, elders, widows, victims of natural disaster, and convicts. Using recently excavated documents, received texts, and archaeological remains, I analyze what ancient Chinese people of various statuses experienced under the governmental food system, which pursued moral justification and political, social, and economic benefits both for the rulers and the ruled.

The first chapter investigates the regulations on grain storage in the central and local governments, using the Shuihudi 睡虎地 Qin legal texts. The “Statutes on Granaries” (Cang lü 倉律) and the “Statutes on Food Rations at Conveyance Stations” (Zhuan shi lü 傳食律) are compared to administrative documents from Liye 里耶 and Xuanquan 懸泉 to prove that there were significant discrepancies between these statutes and the actual distribution of food.

Chapter 2 examines the reconstructed salary list and the “Statutes on Bestowals” (Ci l ü 賜律) from Zhangjiashan 張家山 to see how the idea of discriminatory distribution was reflected in the salary system of the Han and how the system was maintained in spite of the problem of too little salary for the lower officials. The military salary system, which was combined with the ration system, and imperial gift food are examined in the context of a solution to secure the food supply to military families on the frontier and to the lower salary-grade officials.

Chapter 3 concerns the food distributed to commoners, especially those in distress or danger. This chapter analyzes the welfare food distributions for the aged, female heads-of-household, and victims of natural disaster. I suggest that comfort-food and relief-food policies were actually geared toward pursuing social stability by saving able-bodied peasants and preventing social mobility, rather than having been designed simply to demonstrate filial piety in an emergency situation.

Chapter 4 deals with ancient Chinese feasting as a method of food redistribution. This chapter examines the two different styles of feasting, the yan 宴 feast and the pu 酺 feast, by applying current anthropological theories of feasts to the roles of ancient Chinese feasts. After theoretical examination, the economy of leftover food after ritualistic feasting is analyzed based on recently discovered documents from Liye. I argue that by using the leftovers and byproducts, the rulers fed people of inferior status who suffered from poor dietary conditions.

The food redistribution system in early imperial China was ideally designed to benefit all people under heaven “equally” within the framework of the social hierarchy, meanwhile providing extra resources to those of lower status and to people in distress. However, the ideology of the regulations and their actual implementation were frequently out of sync, as laws were applied flexibly and human greed worked every possible step of food redistribution.

This dissertation investigates how and why bronze mirrors from 500–200 b.c.e. Middle Yangzi Region of China were designed and manufactured. Study of the designs and manufacturing techniques of mirrors reveals the decision-making process of the producers and the organization of their factories. Before 500 b.c.e., mirror decorations were executed via freehand carving on molds or models. After 500 b.c.e., however, such direct carving of decorations was superseded by a technique called the “multiple-transfer method,” which enabled the mass production of mirrors. The invention of this method implies that there was likely a market demand large enough to encourage mass production. By reconstructing the production processes of the method, tracing the histories of diverse designs, and relating the producers’ choices of designs to manufacturing techniques, we can postulate that there were at least two systems competing simultaneously in the mirror market. This dissertation revisits prevailing art historical and archaeological assumptions and offers new trajectories of research that incorporates socio-economic analyses in studies of ancient China. It also attempts to create methods of conducting experiments with images.

Settlement spatial organization in China has yet to be intensively investigated for the critical transition between the end of the Neolithic and the beginning of the Bronze Age, two periods which usually constitute separate fields in Chinese academia. In order to conduct a thorough study of the settlement patterns during this period, this dissertation synthesizes the vast and growing corpus of excavation and mapping data of archaeological sites (within a database of more than 6,000 sites) in order to highlight variations of spatial occupation and changes of population dynamics. This includes a comprehensive definition of the chronological and geographical parameters of these periods that integrates previous research with a systematic GIS database, generating an original atlas of more than 150 maps.

A statistical and spatial analysis of settlement distribution within the entire Central Plains throughout the Longshan, Erlitou, and Shang period shows the development and fall of regional centers, and, to some extent, the passage from a polycentric political organization (Longshan) to a more centered one (Erlitou and Shang). The spatial analysis and a special focus on the natural features and resources are used as a basis for the reconstruction of the exchanges network that structured the human occupation.

A subsequent regional-scale analysis allows us to analyze spatial occupation density and demographic evolution. This local history of settlement reveals the important differences between the different region of the middle and lower course of the Yellow River between the second half of the third millennium b.c.e. and the end of the second millennium b.c.e. The landscape and natural resources have been exploited in very different ways by human groups in the Central Plain, from Shandong to the Wei River valley, from the Taihang mountains to the Nanyang Basin.

These analyses help to build new paradigms for understanding multi-rhythm temporality in early China and redefine the main characteristics of the significant transition period between the end of the Neolithic and the Early Bronze Age through a multi-scalar perspective.

Although in the classical Chinese outlook the world can only be made sense of through the means devised by the ancient sages and handed down by the tradition, the art of exegesis has long been a neglected subject. Scholars have been all too eager to dispute what their chosen text says than to pay attention to the nuanced ways in which it hones its tools. This dissertation aims to somewhat redirect the discipline's attention by focusing on Xu Shen's Shuowen Jiezi. I approach this compendium of Han philology, typically regarded as a repository of disparate linguistic data, as underlain by a tight theoretical framework reducible to one simple idea. I begin with the discussion of the competing visions of the six principles, for two millennia the basis of instruction in the arts of letters.

I identify the relationship between abstraction and representation and the principle of convergence as the main points of contention. I take Xu Shen's convergence to pertain to the Han practice of relating words through sound similarity. This in turn I interpret as one particular manifestation of dispositional categorization (類情), a fortunes-turning term in the exegetical tradition of the Change.

The third chapter illustrates Xu Shen's twin techniques of relating and differentiating along with the worldview of the Change from which they derive. It introduces the concepts of matching and extension, and pits them against their counterparts of mirroring and analogy. The leitmotifs of the fourth chapter are Xu Shen's argument against the arbitrariness of sign and the relationship between linguistic and cognitive categorization. The fifth chapter compares the Shuowen to other works of Han lexicography, character primers in particular. The phenomenon of paronomastic glossing is examined here in detail. I argue that Xu Shen's ordering of classical vocabulary on the basis of graphic resemblance and the concomitant explanations are but projections of paronomasia into the realm of semiotics. The final chapter situates this likeness-driven interpretative strategy against earlier attitudes to language. I close by intimating the creative potential entailed in Xu Shen's recasting of fragmentary diachronic knowledge as a comprehensive synchronic system.