Keightley David N. (ed.) The Origins of Chinese Civilization

University of California Press Ltd., 1983 — 635 p. — ISBN: 978-0520042292.The seventeen contributors to this interdisciplinary volume bring to the study of early China the analytical concerns of archaeology, art history, botany, climatology, cultural and physical anthropology, ethnography, epigraphy, linguistics, metallurgy, and political and social history. Readers interested in such topics as the origin of rice or millet agriculture, the origin of writing, the nature of the tribe, and the processes of state formation will find much of value here. They will find, too, major hypotheses about the cultural importance of ecogeographical zones in China, Neolithic interaction between the east coast and Central Plains, the remarkable homogeneity of early Chinese crania, and the links between Hsia, Shang and Chou dynasties.Relying on recently published archaeological evidence and the insights gained from carbon-14 and thermoluminescent datings, the authors provide original and significant interpretations of the nature of Chinese civilization in its formative state and the processes by which civilizations form.