Description
Book SynopsisMany Worlds Under One Heaven analyzes a wide range of newly excavated materials to offer a new perspective on political and cultural change under the Western Zhou. Examining tombs, bronze inscriptions, and other artifacts, Yan Sun challenges the Zhou-centered view with a frontier-focused perspective that highlights the roles of multiple actors.
Trade ReviewIn a highly scholarly work, with a masterly command of archaeological detail, Yan Sun illustrates the diversity of northern China that the Zhou, following their conquest of the Shang in 1045 BCE, had to bring under control. In drawing the different groups together, the Zhou laid one of the foundations for today’s China. -- Jessica Rawson, University of Oxford
More than a refutation of the center-periphery model, Sun’s percipient study of Western Zhou’s northern frontiers points the way forward as it draws on archaeological and textual data to reveal remarkable variation in how different regions, ethnic groups, and even individuals charted their own complex responses to the Zhou presence in their lives. -- Francis Allard, Indiana University of Pennsylvania
Deeply engaging,
Many Worlds Under One Heaven is an important analysis of the northern frontier as controlled by the Western Zhou. Through impressive evidence, Zhou explores the larger social dynamics of antiquity. -- Constance A. Cook, author of
Ancestors, Kings, and the DaoOne of the exciting developments of recent decades in the study of Western Zhou cultural history has been the discovery of numerous cultures on the frontiers of the Zhou cultural sphere. Whereas our understanding of Zhou culture was once largely limited to the capital area, Yan Sun draws on the latest scholarship to show us that the Zhou world was dynamically multiethnic and multicultural. -- Edward L. Shaughnessy, University of Chicago
Many Worlds Under One Heaven is an important and fascinating contribution to the study of Early China. It is a welcome addition to recent research and presents a nuanced and variable picture of this formative period of Chinese civilization. Sun is doing masterful work in integrating archaeological and epigraphic data with anthropological theory to deconstruct the homogeneous image of the Western Zhou. -- Gideon Shelach-Lavi, author of
The Archaeology of Early China: From Prehistory to the Han DynastyTable of ContentsList of maps
List of figures
List of tables
Acknowledgments
Reign Dates of Western Zhou Kings
Introduction
1. An Old Frontier and New Challenges in the Northwest
2. A Frontier Close to Home: Lineage Polities in the Western Baoji Region
3. The North-Central Frontier: Political Integration and Cultural Homogenization
4. The Northeastern Frontier: Colonization, Confrontation, and Collaboration
5. The Emerging Frontier in the Far West: The Upper Wei and Xihan River Valleys
Conclusions
Notes
Bibliography
Index
