Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: A Network Approach In Analyzing Early State Organization

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Qingzhu Wang of Yale University, along with colleagues, will investigate the agency of past local elites in "peripheral" regions that might have contributed to the dynamics of state organization from the perspective of the production, circulation, and consumption of highly valuable goods.. The discipline of archaeology is well suited to investigation of social dynamics over long periods of time and identification of significant socio-political and economic change, especially for understanding the operation of political processes. Research in multiple areas of the world emphasizes how central state administrators legitimate their power and incorporate local elites into state order by controlling the production, circulation, and consumption of valuable goods. Wang and his research team will focus on power available to local elites, and investigate how local elites might actively negotiate with the state to accomplish their own goals. Wang's research project focuses on investigating social dynamics in Shandong province during the Shang period, to the east of the core Shang areas of power in Henan province, from the perspectives of bronze production, distribution, and consumption. Instead of accepting the traditional view that sees Shandong as an incorporated part of the centralized Shang state, the research team will test an alternative Negotiation Model that emphasizing the agency of local elites and the broader social networks and institutions that structure social interactions and internal state organization. Applying a multi-proxy approach for data collection and analysis, the team will investigate how bronze production and consumption in Shandong acted to reinforce or renegotiate group identities and social ties, and how these changed on a localized and inter-area basis over time. This research also considers how the local elites in Shandong might have actively negotiated with the Shang royal court in Henan during the Middle and Late Shang periods, and how the negotiation potentially contributed to the dynamics of the Shang state. By investigating the socio-political and economic organization of the Shang Dynasty from the perspective of interaction between local elites in Shandong and high elites in the royal capitals from the perspective of production, distribution and consumption of bronze objects, this research will provide a new understanding of the operation and development of early states in China. Furthermore, it will contribute to a comparative perspective on early states in anthropology and archaeology as a whole, since few theories of early state processes have drawn upon Chinese materials.