Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Guan River Valley Regional Full-Coverage Survey

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Under the supervision of Dr. Stephen A. Kowalewski, Yanxi Wang will conduct an archaeological survey in the Middle Guan River valley in Nanyang, China. This study will map, describe, collect and date artifacts from the earliest human occupation, at least 8000 years ago, up to historic time. The ground surface of the Guan River valley is stable and free of vegetation in the winter months, which allows the project to find and date most of the ancient cities, towns, villages, and temporary camps occupied during its long history. The goal is to reconstruct the settlement and population history. Ms. Wang wishes to understand how China's agricultural system and rural and urban life developed. This is relevant for understanding the origins and later development of agriculture, urbanization, and land-use and landscape history in the regionThe study area is situated at the geographical transition of millet-growing North China and rice-growing South China. The Middle Guan River valley has received little archaeological attention, considering its rich cultural heritage and its geopolitically strategic location in the development of Chinese history. In contrast to some of the archaeologically better-known parts of China, with loess plains and broad river valleys, the Guan River and its nearby upland hills has a more diverse natural environment, which probably played an important role especially in the early development of the Neolithic way of life - the first villages and the development of an economy based on domesticated plants and animals. The project will use full-coverage pedestrian survey as the major data collection method to achieve the research goal. Regional survey, which is much less costly and more protective of cultural heritage compared to excavation, will help record archaeological sites and environmental conditions, and produce collections of ceramics, stone tools, and other artifact types. This information will be used to create settlement pattern maps by time period. Combined with documentation of historic and modern population, agriculture, and other land-use practices, the survey will provide data measuring prehistoric population size, and assess the temporal changes in the relationship between community, environment, and agricultural economy. The survey will provide information at the appropriate long-term and broad spatial scale necessary to address how human societies responded to the impacts generated by agriculture and maintained agricultural systems from incipient to more intensive and developed stages. Results will be published as a report in Chinese and English, and then a more detailed report in the form of doctoral dissertation. The project will provide valuable but unfamiliar Chinese archaeological data to Western audiences. It will bridge the gap between the research methods and theories in Chinese archaeology and North American archaeology and enhance communication between research institutions. More importantly, it will also help the Chinese and English public learn about the diversity and complexity of ancient China and the past of human society.