The Yale Council on Archaeological Studies invites you an Archaeology Brown Bag Lecture on FRIDAY, March 4, 2016, at 12 PM.
Rowan Flad, John E. Hudson Professor of Archaeology in the Department of Anthropology at Harvard University, will be presenting the talk “Urbanism as Technology in Early China.” Please see flyer and description below:
Sanxingdui in Guanghan, Sichuan and Yinxu in Anyang, Henan are two mid to late second millennium sites that are typically considered urban. What does urbanism mean in these two contexts given the varying amount of information known about these sites? Are their “urbannesses” comparable? This paper reviews attributes and concepts that are often equated with or seen as essential to urbanism and assesses their relevance to our understandings of Sanxingdui and Yinxu. Following Arthur (2009), urbanism is argued to be a technology in multiple senses of the word: on one level cities are a means of fulfillment of certain purposes, particularly related to economic and ritual relations among inhabitants; on a different level of abstraction, cities represent an assemblage of certain types of practices and components, and urbanism can therefore be considered a technological field.
Refreshments and food will be served.