October 23, 2020

Early China Seminar Lecture Series

Title: “Understanding Hongshan Core-Zone Households and Communities”
Speaker: Christian E. Peterson, University of Hawaii at Manoa
Time: October 23, 2020 (4:30-6:30 PM EST)
The event will be held via Zoom. Please click on “Request Pre-circulated Paper” to register for the event.

Hongshan period (4500-3000 BCE) societies of northeastern China’s Western Liao River Valley are well known for their ritual architecture and burials accompanied by jade artifacts carved in supernatural themes. Over the past two decades, systematic regional-scale settlement surveys and intensive surface collection of ancient household garbage have provided new information about the social, economic, and ritual organization of the Neolithic communities that made and used Hongshan ritual monuments and paraphernalia. In this presentation, I will summarize and compare the results of these surveys, surface collections, and other research, and discuss its relevance to understanding the emergence, organization, and development of early complex society during Hongshan times.