Organized by:

Lothar von Falkenhausen

Professor

UCLA

lothar@humnet.ucla.edu

Xu Hong

Professor

Institute of Archaeology, CASS

Recent work on Bronze Age archaeology using a variety of new approaches has incrementally changed our perspectives on this formative period.  In order to generate a dialogue among specialists with different backgrounds, the organizers have invited a number of mostly junior scholars to present cutting-edge research.  Themes to be addressed include: Origins of Chinese metallurgy and its role in the genesis of state-level social complexity; the advent of writing, its cultural role, and the connections between texts and archaeological finds; local cultural sequences vs. centripetal sociopolitical trends; settlement history; the development of economic systems and trade; transasiatic connections.

 

Organized by: Li Liu and Xingcan Chen

Liu Li

Professor

La Trobe University

Xingcan Chen

Professor

Institute of Archaeology, CASS

Archaeological data from East Asia have accumulated rapidly in recent years, providing great opportunities for comparative research between this region and other parts of the world. This panel aims to bring together archaeologists who conduct research with broad geographic range in world archaeology and are interested in general patterns of social change from a cross-culture perspective. Participants are encouraged to compare archaeological data from different regions in East Asia, as well as East Asian research findings, as appropriate, with those from other parts of the world. We intend to cover diverse themes, ranging from the origins and development of food production, sedentism and material technologies (lithics, pottery, etc.), to socio-political change and early state formation.

 

Rowan Flad

Harvard University

rflad@fas.harvard.edu

In the last two decades discoveries in Sichuan , Yunnan , Guizhou , and adjacent areas have documented a variety of evidence for complex societies in the late Neolithic, Bronze Age and early Imperial Period in this previously understudied region.  This panel seeks to present these various new bodies of evidence and explore what these data illuminate about the nature of social complexity in the region.  Papers will consider the definition and identification of social complexity, craft specialization, interregional interaction, urbanization, gender and ethnicity, regional integration, corporate ideologies, and related issues. 

 

Organized by: Gideon SHELACH

Professor, Department of East Asian Studies

The Hebrew University                           

msshe@mscc.huji.ac.il

This panel focuses on the archaeology of the Chifeng region of Northeast China. Cumulatively the papers addresses processes of economic adaptation and socio-political transformations that occurred in this region from the beginning of agriculture and sedentary life way, during the 7^th and 6^th millennia BCE, to the maturation of the Bronze-age societies during the 2^nd and 1^st millennia BCE.  Many papers in this panel are by members of the Chifeng International Collaborative Archaeological Project (CICARP) and analyze data that was generated by this project. Supplementing them are papers by scholars who work on other projects in this region and had access to different data sets. Together we hope to illuminate the multifaceted nature of the processes we address and to make the archaeology of northeast China more accessible to people working in other parts of East Asia and other parts of the world.

 

Organized by: Fu Xianguo, Lu, Lie Dan and Li Guo

Fu Xianguo

Professor

Institute of Archaeology, CASS

Lu Lie Dan

Associate Professor

The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Li Guo

Associated Professor

City University of Hong Kong

The prehistoric archaeology of South China and Southeast Asia is important for us to understand cultural development and human diaspora in prehistoric Asia and the Pacific. It is an area with rich natural resources, unique lithic technologies and ceramic tradition, as well as diversified subsistence strategies and food cultures. This panel aims to provide a forum for scholars working on various aspects and different areas in this region to exchange new data and new ideas, and to identify new directions for further archaeological and multi-disciplinary research.

 

Organized by: Dr. Barbara Seyock

Senior researcher

Dep. of Asian Studies Munich University (Germany)

Questioning the notion of the sea as a barrier or as a means of exchange and communication, this panel attempts to examine the archaeologies of smaller islands round the East Asian coasts from a comparative perspective. Issues such as movements of people and/or cultural elements, spread of technologies and know-how, seafaring, maritime trade and exchange, development of cultural specifics, island-mainland relations, island landscapes and environmental change are brought together here. The dichotomy of islands as places of interaction and isolation thus serves as a framework for a discussion of the distinctiveness of island cultures.

 

Organized by: Francis Allard

Assistant Professor

Indiana University of Pennsylvania

allard@iup.edu

 

 

Le Lien Thi
Senior Researcher

Deputy-Head, Department of Historical Archeology

Institute of Archaeology (Vietnamese Academy of Social Sciences)

lelien_thi@hotmail.com

 

Organized by: YUAN Jing, Richard H. MEADOW, and Ajita K. PATEL

Yuan Jing

Professor

Institute of Archaeology, CASS

Richard H. Meadow

Director, Zooarchaeology Laboratory and Senior-Lecturer on Anthropology

Peabody Museum, Harvard University

meadow@fas.harvard.edu

Ajita K. Patel

Research Assistant in Zooarchaeology

Peabody Museum, Harvard University

akpatel@fas.harvard.edu

Thousands of excavations carried in East Asia have produced masses of animal remains from sites of all periods. Study of these materials includes varied approaches and techniques that range from taxonomic identification through statistical and taphonomic analysis to seasonality, isotopic, and genetic studies. Issues concern exploitation of wild resources, transition from hunting and gathering to animal husbandry, development of different kinds of pastoral lifestyles and their spread, provisioning urban settlements, movement of humans and animals across the landscape, among many others. This panel is provides an opportunity to discuss these issues and methodologies in the context of the multi-faceted archaeology of East Asia.

 

Organized by: James Lankton and Phyllis Lin

James Lankton

Honorary Senior Research Fellow

UCL Institute of Archaeology                        

jwlnet@yahoo.com

While glass artefacts and, in a few cases, evidence for primary and secondary glass production (making glass from raw materials versus the craft production of vessels and beads), have been found at sites in East Asia, the interpretation of this glass data has lagged behind, since it depends on an understanding of both the archaeological context and the excavated glass itself.

This panel will examine the ways to study glass artefacts, particularly in terms of chemical composition, with a focus on newer, less invasive methods. In addition, case studies will illustrate how glass compositional evidence can greatly increase our understanding of the past.

 

Organized by: Pochan Chen and Maa-ling Chen

Maa-ling Chen

Associate Professor

Department of Anthropology, National Taiwan University

maalingc@ntu.edu.tw

Pochan Chen

Assistant Professor

Department of Anthropology, National Taiwan University

Due to some new developments in the theories and methods of world archaeology, a new generation of Taiwanese archaeologists emerged and started to practice some new research approaches in dealing with Taiwanese archaeological data.  This is in an attempt to make a dialogue with these theories and methods as well as with archaeologists in other areas.  The other purposes are to evaluate the adoptability of these approaches to Taiwanese archaeology and to establish a new understanding of Taiwanese archaeology and history.  These studies cover a time period from prehistory to history, and the topics include the site formation process, spatial analysis, analytical unit of archaeological research, ceramic technical chain operation and chronological definition, population immigration and its impact on indigenous cultures, and Jade technology.  All these gave rise to a new generation of Taiwanese archaeologists who aim to reach out to world archaeology and bring enlightenment to archaeological research in order to gain more knowledge on the establishment of archaeology.

 

Organized by: Dr. Guolong Lai

Assistant Professor of Chinese Art and Archaeology
University of Florida

Discussants: Dr. Audrey Spiro and Dr. Suzanne Cahill

Most theoretical writings on mortuary studies have been focused on prehistoric and protohistoric periods. This panel, however, with four papers on the Warring States and Han to Tang mortuary data presents some of the theoretic issues in the mortuary studies of the historic periods in Chinese archaeology. These issues center on such key concepts as the arrangement and transformation of burial space and the dynamics of cultural interaction and social symbolism in mortuary practices. This panel as a whole also attempts to examine diachronic transformations in mortuary practice in ancient China, and to address methodologically the challenges in combining material, visual, and textual data in mortuary studies.

 

Organized by: Ariane Perrin

Research Associate

UMR 8173  China-Korea-Japan  EHESS-CNRS

aperrin79@hotmail.com

The study of the various burial traditions followed during the 4^th and 5^th centuries in Northeast Asia is as yet difficult to apprehend since this region was a zone of interaction occupied by several groups whose migrations and territorial boundaries are not precisely known. Through analysis of burial remains associated with the Xianbei, the Puyo, the Han commanderies and Koguryo, this panel seeks to determine how and to what extent mortuary practices can be associated with a specific group, a culture or a region. Are there local characteristics in the construction, furnishing, and decoration of burials within the same group? The panel aims at identifying the tangible elements with which to help classify these various funerary traditions.

 

Organized by: Takao Itoh and Mechtild Mertz

Takao Itoh

Emeritous professor

Kyoto University, Japan

titoh4517@yahoo.co.jp

Mechtild Mertz

College of Wood Science and Technology, Nanjing Forestry University

 

Organized by: Tim Schadla-Hall and Akira Matsuda

Tim Schadla-Hall

Reader

Institute of Archaeology, University College London

t.schadla-hall@ucl.ac.uk

Akira Matsuda

PhD candidate

Institute of Archaeology, University College London

akira-m@gd5.so-net.ne.jp

This panel examines aspects of public archaeology in the present and recent past in East Asia (China, Japan and Korea) by highlighting the importance of understanding the wider role of archaeological work within society, in terms of political, social and economic aspects of our subject and emphases the need for archaeologists to examine their wider roles within, and impacts upon the public. A particular stress is placed on the discussion of how archaeology is (or is not) associated with the identity of people living in East Asia, and whether there is any inter-regional similarity and/or difference in this association.

 

Organized by: Elizabeth Childs-Johnson

Old Dominion University

 

Organized by: Hyung Il Pai

Hyung Il Pai

Visiting Research Professor 07-08

International Research Center for Japanese Studies

hyungpai@nichibun.ac.jp

Discussant; Fumiko-Ikawa Smith (Mc Gill University, Canada)

This panel reviews how the politics of colonialism and nationalism have impacted a century of Japanese art and archaeological surveys, the inventorying and exhibitions of objects and the ranking and re-constructions of treasures and monuments. By taking an inter-disciplinary and inter-regional approach to the multi-dimensional facets of heritage management, we will cover issues : tourist development vs. site preservation, emperor system and buried properties administration, the introduction of photography as a classificatory and recording tool, and how museum collections have impacted the cultural landscape from the People’s Republic of China, to Korea and Japan today.

 

Organized by: Gary CRAWFORD, Hiroki OBATA, Zhijun ZHAO

Zhao Zhijun

Professor, Institute of Archaeology, CASS

zzzhangy@public3.bta.net.cn

This panel focuses on several new issues in East Asian archaeobotany including the domestication of millets (foxtail millet, broomcorn millet and barnyard millet), the cultigen status of early rice remains found in China (Shangshan site, Jiahu site, Tianloushan site, etc.), the origin of early crops found in the Russian Far East (barley and millets), the origin and characteristics of early agriculture in Korea, the origin of agriculture in Japan (including the issue on the beginning of the Yayoi agriculture), etc. Speakers will include scholars who study plant remains from East Asia. The goal of this panel is to promote discussion and comparison of recent archaeobotanical research results in East Asia.

 

Organized by: Zhang Liangren

Zhang Liangren

post-doc

University of Southern California

zhlr31@hotmail.com

 

 

Organized by: Ekaterina Pechenkina

Assistant Professor
Department of Anthropology, Queens College of the City University of New York

A principal objective of this panel is to provide an international group of scholars a forum in which to discuss the roles of local mobility and long distance migration in shaping the lifeways of ancient communities in East Asia. Some of the specific themes include: the introduction and distribution of new pathogens; changes in subsistence and food processing techniques; as well as the dynamics of growth during childhood, along with early morbidity and mortality.

 

Roundtable forum at the Society for East Asian Archaeology meeting

Organized by: Luisa Mengoni and Magnus Fiskesjö

Luisa Mengoni

Research Fellow

Archaeology, University College London

l.mengoni@ucl.ac.uk

Magnus Fiskesjö

Associate Professor

Anthropology, Cornell University

nf42@cornell.edu

Cultural heritage is becoming increasingly important in the cultural, political and social life of China. This panel aims to explore how concepts of the past have developed and being promoted in modern and contemporary China, and how these notions have affected national policies, international relations and local practices, especially in a period of rapid economic development and increasing globalisation. The promotion of world heritage sites, the rapid growth of national and private museums, the increase in management plans for archaeological sites, and the development of cultural tourism are only the most visible aspects of a larger phenomenon, which is contributing to shape new forms of identity and belonging within and outside China.

 

Chen SHEN (PhD, Curator, Royal Ontario Museum) chens[at]rom.on.ca
GAO Xing (Professor, The Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences)

The proposed session will present recent studies on archaeological materials of the Late Pleistocene period in order to evaluate new evidence for issues on the transition to Upper Palaeolithic and the origin of modern human in China. Our particular focuses will be on new data referring to a period between 100,000 to 50,000 BP. Given the increasing numbers of archaeological sites with human fossils found in the Three Gorges/western Hubei mountainous region, this area has become a focus of research on the local evolution of anatomically modern human in East Asia. Derived from these new data, our discussion will be extended to formulate new approaches and new perspectives to researches on adaptive behaviors of modern human and variability of lithic technology of the Upper Palaeolithic. We hope to put together a series of studies to test the evolutional model of the "continuity with hybridization." New findings from China will continue to stimulate what hopes to be a fruitful debate on the issue of the human origin

 

Organized by: Junzo Uchiyama (RIHN), Hideyuki Onishi (Dr., RIHN), Ilona Bausch (Dr., Leiden University, Holland)

Junzo Uchiyama

junzo@chikyu.ac.jp

Research Institute for Humanity and Nature (RIHN), Kyoto, Japan

Considering that the concept of "cultural landscape" has become an important issue in various national/international protection programmes in recent years, it is crucial to understand the cultural formation mechanisms from the viewpoint of landscape archaeology.  Taking the broadest definition of landscape including both a cultural and a natural side, this panel discusses what kind of landscape shifts occurred at the ages of prehistoric socio-economic changes, and assesses their influences.  The focus area will be the East Asian inland sea, i.e. the Japan Sea and the East China Sea rims, covering major inter-regional trading and collision spots of East Asia.