Delta on the Move
Team
Main Themes
The Early Chinese History and Archaeology Cluster is an interdisciplinary research initiative within the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences (IHSS). This cluster focuses on the profound transformations and developments in early China, employing innovative methodologies and approaches to investigate historical phenomena, social configurations, and material during the development of early China. With a diverse range of experts from various disciplines, including history, digital humanities, quantitative analysis, and archaeology, our cluster aims to contribute to a deeper understanding of the origins of Chinese civilization, the evolution of state power, and the long-term impact of early societal structures.
The advent of new archaeological discoveries, unearthed manuscripts, and the digitization of historical texts have necessitated working with both traditional historical records and novel forms of data. Recognizing the importance of integrating textual analysis with archaeological evidence, the cluster strives to offer fresh insights into enduring challenges and innovative concepts within the fields of early Chinese history and archaeology.
The Early Chinese History and Archaeology Cluster focuses on several key research areas:
- Quantitative Analysis and Digital Humanities in Early China: Utilizing quantitative methods, such as spatial analysis, time series analysis, and social network analysis, alongside artificial intelligence, to advance archaeological and historical research. This includes geocoding the past world, digitizing low-resource historical materials like oracle bones and bronze inscriptions, and investigating human sentiment and cultural psychology through AI-driven methods.
- State Power, Governance, and Institutional History: Revisiting the governance, state power, and institutional history of early imperial China, particularly the Qin and Han empires. By utilizing newly unearthed administrative and legal manuscripts, researchers unveil the social configurations, administrative communications, and the materiality of rulership during these formative periods.
- Prehistoric Society and Archaeological Analysis: Analyzing the complexity and inequality of prehistoric Chinese societies based on archaeological materials. This involves archaeometric studies, such as the analysis of provenance and firing temperature of potteries, to reflect cultural beliefs, funerary practices, and cosmological ideologies of early inhabitants.
- Settlement Patterns and Human-Environment Interactions: Examining the transformation of ancient Chinese settlements from the Xia to the Eastern Zhou dynasties. Research in this area explores how political power influences human-environment interactions and the spatial organization of early societies using Geographical Information Systems (GIS).
Leveraging the Institute’s network in Humanities and Social Sciences, the Cluster aims to foster international collaborations and interdisciplinary studies, spanning diverse fields such as history, archaeology, sociology, and digital humanities. We are also committed to promoting educational initiatives and raising public awareness regarding pre-modern Chinese history, Chinese archaeology, and cultural heritage.
EVENTS AND ACTIVITIES
The Early Chinese History and Archaeology Cluster actively promotes collaboration and intellectual exchange through workshops, seminars, lectures, and conferences. These platforms provide opportunities for scholars, researchers, and students to present their work, receive constructive feedback, and engage in meaningful discussions.
Early Chinese History and Archaeology Seminar Series (Coming Soon)
This seminar series aims to provide researchers, teachers, and students with an intellectual platform to keep up to date with the latest research in the field, promoting the dissemination of research findings and the interdisciplinary use of new methods, such as digital humanities and archaeometry, in historical and archaeological research.
EVENT HIGHLIGHTS
Exploring the Materiality of Rulership and Administration
The Cluster actively engages in comparative studies of material text cultures. Recent collaborative efforts have focused on the interplay between non-textual material attributes of administrative documents and political authority in early China, advocating a “material approach” to understanding ancient governance.
Advancing AI and Quantitative Methods in Humanities
Members of the Cluster have been at the forefront of integrating artificial intelligence and quantitative methods into humanities research. Recent presentations and workshops have highlighted the use of large language models to unearth coordinates of early China from texts and the application of social network analysis to understand the hierarchical structures of noble lineages in ancient dynasties.
