Human Settlements and Changing Landscape in Northern China

文明在世界上许多地区独立产生，考古学家希望了解造成这种现象的潜在过程。为了实现这一目标，他们努力重建每个单独的案例，然后对它们进行比较，以寻找共同的模式。在中国北方，这种发展在商朝的出现中达到顶峰。虽然中国考古学家已经研究了商朝生产的陶瓷和其他物品，并把重点放在了商朝最后的都城安阳等主要遗址上，但对于这个复杂的社会是如何发展和运作的，人们知之甚少。在美国国家科学基金会的支持下，拉普博士和他的中国合作者将针对这个问题启动一个长期合作项目。本研究有两个方面。第一项是对安阳所在的环河流域进行区域调查。初步工作表明，这里有许多考古遗址，其中一些可以追溯到旧石器时代。通过研究遗址的分布、它们的年龄和它们在景观中的位置，可以描绘聚落系统，推断社会和经济关系，并确定这些关系如何随着时间的推移而变化。科考队将进行广泛的调查和有限的挖掘，他们将收集许多沉积物岩心。考虑到河谷的地质活动性和数千年人类影响的累积效应，我们不能假设今天观察到的地貌和植被模式在过去是不变的。通过对岩心的分析，有可能深入了解这些变化。这项工作将辅以一项广泛的环境重建计划。这将包括取芯，地貌分析，收集和检查花粉和大型植物遗骸。磁化率测量将用于重建气候变化。这项研究之所以重要，有几个原因。它将增加我们对导致文明兴起的过程的理解。它将提供许多考古学家感兴趣的数据，并将有助于向中国考古学介绍一套在美国广泛使用但在中国很少使用的技术。

Civilization arose independently in many areas of the world and archaeologists wish to understand the underlying processes responsible for this phenomenon. To achieve this goal they have worked to reconstruct each of the individual cases and then compare them to look for common patterns. In Northern China this development culminated in the emergence of the Shang dynasty. While Chinese archaeologists have studied the ceramics and other objects produced by the Shang and have focused on major sites such as Anyang, the last Shang capital, very little is understood of how this complex society developed and functioned. With National Science Foundation support Dr. Rapp and his Chinese collaborators will initiate a long term collaborative project directed at this question. The research has two aspects. The first involves a regional survey of the Huan River valley in which Anyang is located. Preliminary work indicates the presence of numerous archaeological sites some of which date back to Paleolithic times. Through a study of the distribution of sites, their age and their location in the landscape it is possible to delineate settlement systems, to infer social and economic relationships and to determine how these changed over time. The team will conduct extensive survey as well as limited excavation and they will collect many sediment cores. Given the geologically active nature of river valleys and the cumulative effect of thousands of years of human impact, one can not assume that the landforms and pattern of vegetation one observes today were constant over time. Through the analysis of cores it is possible to gain insight into such changes. This work will be complemented by an extensive environmental reconstruction program. This will include coring, geomorphological analysis, and collection and examination of pollen and macro botanical remains. Magnetic susceptibility measurements will be used to reconstruct climatic changes. This research is important for several reasons. It will increase our understanding of the processes which led to the rise of civilization. It will provide data of interest to many archaeologists and it will help to introduce into Chinese archaeology a set of techniques widely used in the United States but rarely employed in China.