Sedentary Neolithic Societies

Gideon Shelach’s article deals with the construction of two sedentary Neolithic societies and their social structure by taking an anthropological approach. Because his goal is the search for early Neolithic cultures, he chose to not only focus on pre-Hongshan cultures, but also use them as a comparative model because the Hongshan culture has attracted much attention in both China and the West. The two cultures he focuses on are Xinglongwa and Zhaobaoguo in northeast China. In doing this, Shelach hopes that the differences found in these societies can be used to examine the differences in cultures of the world today.

Shelach starts his article by describing some of the main features of these cultures, such as rectangular houses, the use of

Ultimately, Shelach promotes that other archaeologists use anthropologically derived models to deepen our understanding of early sedentary Chinese communities which in turn will help us have a better grasp of human behavior and the choices of individuals and societies (342). The paper, written by the Zhejiang Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, surveys the water control system of the ancient Chinese city called Liangzhu in order to understand the social and economic conditions of the city and the society that lived there. The authors argue that these dam systems were indeed built by a Neolithic culture and were not only created for the Liangzhu people to take advantage of the resources around them, but also directly contributed to their economic and social

First, there was the excavation of the Tangshan Site, which yielded a rich amount of jade and stone artifacts. Archaeologists argue that Tangshan was actually built to control the flood, but the Zhejiang Provincial Institute argues that with the discoveries of other cultural features, the site could have been used in a variety of ways. Ganggongling was another site that was a dam-like feature. It is dated to Liangzhu culture because of not only the potsherds that were found there, but also the fact that a sample of straw-wrapped mud was dated to be from 4900 BP. A general description of the dam clusters of Tangshan, and where sites are located in relation to these dams also show us that certain areas were used for water retention, while others were used in jade processing. This paper also describes the dam clusters of Ganggongling and Liyushan, with a detailed description of each individual dam and their stratum. As this is a report of the information of the dams gathered at this point, this paper only gives a preliminary understanding of what these “pieces” of archaeological evidence tell us. To date the dams, the excavations of the sites have led to “solid stratigraphic evidences and a rich assemblage of cultural remains” (116). Samples of localities were also sent in for carbon dating, the results of which place the dams within the time period of Liangzhu Culture. The technology