Collaborative Research: Social and Economic Differentiation in Hongshan Core Zone Communities

在美国国家科学基金会的支持下，克里斯蒂安·E.作者：Robert D. Drennan，Lu Xueming和一个国际团队的同事将在中国东北进行三个季度的考古调查和挖掘。他们将调查红山时期（公元前4500-3000年）的社会，这是世界上最早的“酋长”或复杂的社会。红山文化核心区的大型宗教和墓葬结构证明了巨大的社会不平等和大量劳动力的存在。洪山时期有多个小的地方政权，但仅限于远离洪山核心区的地区。关于建造和利用核心区遗迹的人类社区的直接证据从未被收集过。因此，我们根本不清楚这些最发达的红山社区是什么样的，也不清楚是什么社会、政治、经济或意识形态力量促成了这种发展。核心区的社区可能比外围社区大得多。他们可能有高度发达的工艺专业化。贫富家庭之间的生活水平可能存在巨大差距。萨满或其他类型的宗教人物可能与其他人口有着鲜明的对比。这些特征曾被推测，但事实上，只有仪式平台和墓葬与精心雕刻的玉器是已知的。这个项目将集中在三个不同的任务，在外地收集所需的信息，以描述红山社区。首先，围绕东山嘴遗址核心区开展150平方公里的区域性聚落调查。调查将记录这一中心地区周围居住的区域分布情况，并提供社区人口和空间范围的指示。第二，区域调查揭示的红山聚落区域内密集的表面人工制品收集将确定单个家庭的位置，并产生人工制品遗骸，以评估他们之间在财富，地位和经济活动方面的差异。第三，地层测试发掘将提供更好的年代控制，至少可以一瞥与各种家庭手工艺品组合相关的特征，越来越清楚的是，早期酋长遵循着高度不同的发展轨迹，它们之间的比较有助于更好地理解人类社会的这一根本性转变。本研究所搜集的资料，将使红山社会与其他土司社会作比较成为可能，除了学术贡献外，所提出的研究也将产生更广泛的影响。作为夏威夷大学和匹兹堡大学以及辽宁省考古研究所的共同努力，它将促进更密切的国际学术合作。它将为中国和外国考古学学生提供在中国不广泛使用的方法的培训和实地经验;它将使外国学生接触中国的考古学。它将为当地文化遗产工作者提供有系统的考古调查经验，调查结果将有助于他们努力清点他们寻求保护和保存的文化遗迹。

With National Science Foundation support, Drs. Christian E. Peterson, Robert D. Drennan, Lu Xueming, and an international team of colleagues will conduct three field seasons of archaeological survey and excavation in northeast China. They will investigate the societies of the Hongshan period (4500-3000 BC), which represent the earliest "chiefdoms" or complex societies in their part of the world. Monumental scale religious and burial structures in the Hongshan cultural core zone testify to dramatic social inequality and the presence of large labor forces. Multiple small regional polities are known for Hongshan times, but only in areas far from the Hongshan core zone. Direct evidence about the human communities that built and utilized the monuments of the core zone has never been collected. It is not at all clear, then, what these most developed Hongshan communities were like, or what social, political, economic, or ideological forces produced this development. Core zone communities may have been much larger than peripheral ones. They may have had highly developed craft specialization. There may have been wide gaps in standard of living between rich and poor families. Shamans or other kinds of religious figures may have been sharply set off from the rest of the population. Such characteristics have been speculated about, but in fact only ritual platforms and burials with elaborate jade carvings are known.This project will focus on three different tasks in the field in order to collect the information needed to describe Hongshan communities. First, a regional settlement survey of 150 km2 will be carried out around the core zone monumental site of Dongshanzui. The survey will document the regional distribution of habitation around this central place and provide an indication of the community's population and spatial extent. Second, intensive surface artifact collection within Hongshan settlement areas revealed by the regional survey will identify individual household locations and yield artifactual remains to assess differ-ences between them in terms of wealth, status, and economic activities. Third, stratigraphic test excava-tions will provide better chronological control and at least a glimpse of the features associated with varied household artifact assemblages.It is becoming ever clearer that early chiefdoms followed highly varied trajectories of development, and that comparisons between them can contribute to better understandings of this fundamental trans-formation in human societies. The information collected by this project will make it possible to place Hongshan societies alongside other chiefdoms for comparison.Beyond its intellectual contributions, the proposed research will have broader impacts as well. As a joint effort of the universities of Hawai'i and Pittsburgh and the Liaoning Province Institute of Archaeology, it will foster closer international scholarly collaboration. It will provide training and field experience for both Chinese and foreign archaeology students in methodologies not widely employed in China; and it will give foreign students first-hand exposure to archaeology in China. It will provide experience to local cultural patrimony workers in systematic archaeological survey, and the survey results will contribute to their efforts to inventory the cultural remains they seek to protect and preserve.