Chinese Society in the Age of Confucius (1000–250 B.C.): The Archaeological Evidence (review)

Archaeology today makes many claims, not least that it can create new knowledge about the past. Whether framed as a humanistic or a social science discipline, or both, archaeology employs common research designs, fieldwork practices, and analytical strategies to wring data from sites and objects and then to apply those data to questions of human history broadly conceived. Lothar von Falkenhausen's Chinese Society in the Age of Confucius (1000–250 B.C.): The Archaeological Evidence represents one of the most creative and productive efforts in all of recent Chinese archaeological research. Fully engaged with the archaeological data flowing from the PRC, the author is committed to a self-conscious and critical exploration of their potential. Von Falkenhausen has written the most thorough and rigorous analysis of the social fabric of the "Zhou culture sphere" during the late Bronze Age known to this writer. Although new reports that supplement the book's discussions have already appeared, the substance of this work and its insights will stand for many years. This volume is nothing less than essential reading for anyone who hopes to understand the "Age of Confucius."

Organization and Scope

The targets of investigation are social formations—social structure, social interaction, social change (p. 1)—in the eight centuries of the Zhou kings, 1000–250 B.C. (p. 3). The discussion complements previous historical and political narratives such as H. G. Creel's Origins of Statecraft (1970), Hsu Cho-yun's Ancient China in Transition (1965), Western Chou Civilization by Hsu and Katheryn M. Linduff (1988), and Li Feng's recent Landscape and Power in Early China (2006). For readers familiar with these works, von Falkenhausen's volume both amends standard accounts, sometimes in unexpected ways, and fleshes out topics heretofore only dimly perceived.

The author organizes Chinese Society in the Age of Confucius around three large subjects, each explored in three chapters. Part 1, "New Standards of Ranking and Their Application," focuses on changes in elite lineage organization during the late Western Zhou period (ca. 850 B.C.; chapter 1), distinctions of rank and gender among several lineages cemeteries (ca. 1000–650 B.C.; chapter 2), and a single community (ca. 800–450 B.C.; chapter 3). While chapter 1 concentrates on the late Western Zhou, chapters 2 and 3 together span the entirety of the Western Zhou and the first centuries of the Eastern Zhou period. In these chapters, von Falkenhausen unfolds five archaeological case studies: the hoard of bronzes at Zhuangbai, Fufeng, Shaanxi (chapter 1); cemeteries of the Yu state near Baoji, Shaanxi; the tombs of the lords of Jin at Tianma-Qucun, Shanxi; and excavations at the Guo state cemetery at Shangcunling, Henan (chapter 2); and the Shangma cemetery tracts of more than 1,300 tombs near Houma, Shanxi (chapter 3). All these sites lie in northwestern and northern China, the heartland of the royal Zhou and their most prestigious territorial lineages (see map 1, p. 5). Methodologically, von Falkenhausen starts with inscriptions from the Zhuangbai hoard, moves on to the three cemeteries mustering epigraphic and artifactual data, and then concludes with an extended analysis of a "statistically representative" data set, a great rarity praised as "an epoch-making achievement" (p. 130 n. 7).

In part 2, "Internal Coalescence and Outward Delimitation," the author extends the chronology and broadens the geography. Chapter 4 identifies differences between clans within Zhou society (ca. 1050–500 B.C.), while chapter 5 addresses data for "ethnic contrasts" (ca. 1050–350 B.C.). The author sketches the expansion of Zhou society (ca. 1050–250 B.C.) into non-Zhou areas in chapter 6. Thus, chapters 4 and 5 augment the discussion of Western Zhou society introduced in chapters 2 and 3, carrying the topic into the Warring States period, while...