Colloquia
Named after a type site discovered at Zhengzhou in 1951, the Erligang civilization arose in the Yellow River valley around the middle of the second millennium B.C.E. Shortly thereafter its distinctive elite material culture spread to a large part of China’s central plain, in the south reaching as far as the banks of the Yangzi. Source of most of the cultural achievements familiarly associated with the more famous Anyang site, the Erligang culture is best known for the Zhengzhou remains, a smaller city at Panlongcheng in Hubei, and a large-scale bronze industry of remarkable artistic and technological sophistication. Bronzes are the hallmark of Erligang elite material culture. They are also the archaeologist’s main evidence for understanding the transmission of bronze metallurgy to the cultures of southern China.
This symposium brings together scholars from a variety of disciplines to explore what is known about the Erligang culture and its art, its spectacular bronze industry in particular. Participants will ask how the Erligang artistic and technological tradition was formed and how we should understand its legacy to the later cultures of north and south China. Comparison with other ancient civilizations will afford an important perspective.
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Symposium Program
Saturday, 26 April 2008
101 McCormick Hall
Registration and coffee
8:30–9:30 am
Welcome
Jerome Silbergeld
Director, Tang Center and P.Y. and Kinmay W. Tang Professor of Chinese Art History, Princeton University
Morning Session
The Erligang Civilization
Chair: Kyle Steinke, Princeton University
9:30 am–12:30 pm
Erligang Bronzes and the Discovery of the Erligang Culture
Robert Bagley
Professor of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University
Erligang Bronzes: A Perspective from Panlongcheng
Zhang Changping
Deputy Director, Hubei Provincial Museum
Discussant:
Alain Thote
Directeur d’Etudes, Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris
Afternoon Session
Erligang in Anthropological and Comparative Perspective
Chair: Magnus Fiskesjö, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Cornell University
2:00–5:30 pm
Erligang in Regional and Diachronic Context
Rod Campbell
Visiting Research Scholar, Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, New York University
Discussant:
Li Yung-ti
Research Fellow, Academia Sinica
China’s First Empire? Interpreting the Material Record of the Erligang Culture
Wang Haicheng
Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for Chinese Studies, University of California, Berkeley
Discussant:
John Baines
Professor of Egyptology, University of Oxford
Sunday, 27 April 2008
101 McCormick Hall
Morning Session
The Artistic Legacy of the Erligang Bronze Industry
Chair: Jay Xu, Pritzker Chairman of the Department of Asian and Ancient Art, Art Institute of Chicago
9:30 am–12:30 pm
Erligang and the Southern Bronze Industries
Kyle Steinke
Ph.D. candidate, Princeton University
Discussant:
Robin McNeal
Associate Professor of Chinese History, Language, and Literature, Cornell University
Bronzes and the History of Chinese Art
Maggie Bickford
Professor of the History of Art and Architecture, Brown University
Closing Remarks