Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Food practices and social stratification at the Shang period Bronze Age site of Anyang

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Under the direction of Dr. Ian Hodder, Katrinka Reinhart will analyze data from the early Bronze Age archaeological site of Anyang in Henan province, China. Anyang flourished as a capital city during the Shang dynasty, the first historical dynasty in China, from roughly 1200 - 1050 BCE. The site is well known for its great artistic and technological achievements: its grand burials, large elevated buildings, sophisticated bronze ritual vessels, and 'oracle bone' texts. These elaborate features contrast markedly with material culture, dwellings, and burials at the site that are smaller, plainer and generally more functional. Such stark contrast in cultural remains reveals a deepening division between social classes at Anyang and depicts a ruling class whose lifestyle and position in society differed greatly from those of lower social status.The current research project questions how this intensification of social inequality at Anyang was established and maintained. Investigation is aimed at a scale more personal than institutional, looking at differences in everyday practices between people from different classes. How did individuals at Anyang experience such deep inequality in their day-to-day lives? Research will specifically focus on differences in practices surrounding food between people of different social status. The aim is to see how politics play out in the domain of food - how what people ate, how they prepared food, how the types of utensils they used, and how the symbolic and ideological associations with food served to identify, distinguish, and separate social groups thereby strengthening the domination of the elite class.Food habits of Anyang residents from different social classes will be analyzed through several methods: residue analysis, paleodiet analysis, and typological analysis of pottery. Data for each procedure will be collected from different social classes. First, food residues retained in the pores of pottery vessels will be analyzed through the technique of gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC/MS) to determine what types of foodstuffs were cooked. Second, human bone will be analyzed through the stable isotope technique in order to determine diet. Third, the style and function of utensils used in food preparation and consumption will be examined. These analytical procedures will be complemented with a study of texts recovered from Anyang.This project will be of interest to both scholarly and general audiences. The topics and analytical methods combine theories and methods from both the social sciences and the hard sciences and will thus be relevant to an interdisciplinary academic audience. Public outreach will be also an important aspect of the project. Knowledge distribution will include the construction of a museum exhibit small enough to travel between the US and China in addition to a website describing the project, currently under construction at: http://www.chinesearchaeology.org. It will be fascinating to see what foods were eaten by various people at the beginning of Chinese civilization, but moreover, since food is something we all relate to, this study has the ability to convey to the lay-person ideas about how politics play out in daily life. Finally, the project will be undertaken in collaboration with scholars from China and will thus further scholarly exchange of ideas and ties between the two nations.