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Rediscovering the settlement system of the ‘Dian’ kingdom, in Bronze Age southern China

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Alice Yao  and
Jiang Zhilong
Alice Yao
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto Mississauga, Room 396 Terrence Donnelly Health Science Complex, 3359 Mississauga Road North, Mississauga, ON L5L 1C6, Canada (alice.yao@utoronto.ca)
Jiang Zhilong
Affiliation:
Yunnan Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, 15-1, Chunmingli, Chunyuanxiaoqu, Kunming, Yunnan 650118, China
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Extract

Surface collection, exposed sections and the use of irrigation wells and channels enabled the authors to map the settlement pattern of the elusive Dian kingdom before it became a subsidiary of the Han empire. The pattern showed that the Dian were already hierarchical, with settlements of different sizes and a political centre in which ritual bronzes featured. The empire redrew the landscape, with settlement migrating away from the wetlands into the hills where it could oversee the routes of communication into Southeast Asia.

Keywords

south ChinaYunnan provinceYizhouDianBronze Agefirst millennium BClandscape surveysettlement hierarchy
Type
Research article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 86 , Issue 332 , June 2012 , pp. 353 - 367
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd. 2012

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