Conservative Style, Liberal Production: Hemudu’s Binary System for Maintaining its Scapular Shovel Tradition in the Southern Yangzi Delta, 7000–6000 BP

In the past two decades, archaeological studies of knowledge and skill transmission for pottery and lithic production in preindustrial societies have significantly improved our understanding of how technological traditions were transmitted and how the transmission processes influenced technological persistence and changes. However, case studies of craft transmission for osseous technology are rare despite their equal importance to pottery and lithic industries in preindustrial societies. Our research fills the gap by examining early Hemudu Culture’s (7000–6000 BP) scapular implements in the southern Yangzi Delta to understand the linkage between learning and maintaining the scapular shovel tradition in Hemudu’s socio-economic context. We first traced the history of scapular tools to the precedent Kuahuqiao Culture (8200–7000 BP), then used published experimental results to identify the product traits pertinent to craft learning and infer Hemudu scapular shovel blades’ learning and production patterns. Hemudu scapular shovels had a unique, complicated hafting style and an evidential raw material preference for old water buffalo scapulae. However, the blades’ morphological details and technical solutions varied significantly. In addition, most finished products display manufacturing mistakes resulting from crafters’ lacking skills, experience, and intervention. Practice pieces are rare compared to finished and used products. Although additional evidence implies that practice might have been more common than the studied sample suggested, it was carried out with less-than-ideal bones and insufficient for developing technical competency. We argue that the Hemudu societal norms for a scapular shovel applied only to the highly visible aspects of the implement. The shaft and ligatures could reduce the visibility of many manufacturing flaws on the shovel blade to reach the desired visual effect of the shovel. The shovel blades were made by household crafters emulating from an artifact or a memorized template but had insufficient training and practice in manufacturing. Communities of practice were minimal to nonexistent among the shovel makers; alternative mechanisms to maintain the technical norms or hold a high product standard were also lacking. Therefore, we concluded that the scapular shovels were less important as a technical implementation than a visual communicator of social identity. The binary system of conformist style and material preference mixed with loose quality control in the shovel blade production reveals that social conformity and the associated learning pattern are circumstantial and fluid even for a community’s iconic implement. Further research with other artifact types in Yangzi Delta would help shed light on whether similar learning patterns were applied besides the creation of scapular shovels.

Cultivating Decline: Agricultural Modernization Policy and Adaptive Resilience in the Yangzi Delta

Since it was initiated in the mid-2000s, the Chinese central government’s agricultural modernization policy has had fundamental impacts on China’s agricultural system. Premised on creating a foundation for long-term sustainable development, modernization has broadly expanded large-scale, mechanized farming. Historically, however, China’s Yangzi River Delta achieved long-term sustainable development without capital-intensifying and mechanizing technological innovation. Rather, diverse and autonomous land use and grassroots governance practices facilitated knowledge-sharing, knowledge-building, and adaptation. Drawing on this history as a reference point for analysis, I examine the influence of agricultural modernization policy on adaptive resilience using a case study of a Yangzi Delta township that was an early recipient of central government funding in support of its contemporary effort to expand large-scale farming. I find that the implementation of agricultural modernization policy reform in Ruilin has undermined its resilient practices and features, rendering the township vulnerable to disturbance.

Establishing a Literati Spirit-Writing Altar in Early Qing Suzhou: The Optimus Prophecy of Peng Dingqiu (1645-1719)

In recent years the Suzhou literatus Peng Dingqiu (1645-1719) has attracted scholarly attention as a figure embodying the rich diversity of elite religiosity in the early Qing dynasty Yangzi delta. The present article employs Peng Dingqiu’s previously neglected manuscript autobiography Shijiang gong nianpu to hone in on a prophecy he claimed to have received in 1674 of his two-fold optimus success in 1676. It provides detail on the social conventions of verification of spirit-altar communications and probes the challenges Peng Dingqiu’s solitary method of communicating posed to communal verification. Concurrently, the article establishes a baseline of historically plausible events and identifies the narrative elements most likely modified by Peng Dingqiu and his admirers after the achievement of the prophecy.

The Sinitic Repertoire

Chapter 9, “The Sinitic Repertoire,” offers the second of three studies in various repertoires of political legitimation. Sinitic universalism, based on Sinitic classical philosophy and the model of the Han Empire, is well studied and understood. This chapter emphasizes the tensions within the Sinitic repertoire in the Jiankang regime: between military and suasive approaches to building a Sinitic universal empire; between frugal and ostentatious approaches; and between the traditional Central Plains–centered political geography and one that was transposed to the Yangzi delta, an effort that was undertaken in earnest beginning in the fifth century. Daoist approaches, both huahu (conversion of the barbarians) and millenarian, are also considered as a variant of Sinitic universalism. The concluding analysis argues that the adoption of Sinitic universalism posed numerous intractable difficulties for the imperial throne, especially following the rise of an assertive Central Plains–based regime in the late fifth century.