Page 525 - The Golden Age of Chinese Archaeology: Celebrated Discoveries from the People’s Republic of China

mainly in northern China, and we have evidence that copper dominated the metallurgy of
cultures that were contemporaneous with the Xia dynasty. No copper object dating prior to the
Xia dynasty has been found to date in the lower Yangzi region. Among the Erlitou culture — the
most advanced of its contemporary cultures in metalworking — bronzes constitute 83 percent
of metal objects. Bronzes similarly dominate metal objects unearthed from a burial site of the
Siba culture at Huoshaoguo (71.8 percent); by contrast, copper dominates the metal objects
excavated from another burial site of the Siba culture—at Donghuishan, Minghe. Cultural con-
tacts between China and the West began during the Xia period, but copper objects were made
and used in China more than 1000 years prior; the transition to the Bronze Age in China was
in fact fully realized in the second millennium BCE. These data indicate that copper and bronze
metallurgy in China were indigenous inventions, and there is evidence as well that many an-
cient cultures in China developed copper metallurgy and made the transition from copper to
bronze independent of one another.
We have evidence that villages were a form of social organization as early as the Laoguan-
tai culture (c. 6000 BCE). Data regarding social organization prior to the Laoguantai period are

sparse, and we know little about the structure of small settlements or about how villages came
into being. We know that around 6000 BCE, clans were the predominant form of social organi-
zation; kinship and property were transmitted matrilineally. A thousand years later (c. 5000
BCE), we find society organized in three levels: household, clan, and tribe; households were ma-
trilineal and functioned relatively independently of the clan. By the time of the Xiyin culture
(c. 4000 BCE), the matrilineal system of household organization and transmission of property
had been replaced by a patrilineal system, a system that characterizes Phase IV of the Banpo
culture (c. 3200 BCE) and finds its full expression around 2200 BCE with the appearance of
polygamous burials.
The identification of the origins of "Chinese civilization" have been a hotly debated mat-
ter since the mid-KjSos. Early China was characterized by two distinct patterns of social and
economic organization, one based on agriculture and the other on herding. Herding was con-
centrated in the region currently defined by the Great Wall; to the west, herding developed out
of agriculture, while to the east it developed out of a hunting and gathering economy. The
herding civilization did not develop until the Xia period (and is thus outside the scope of this
article). What follows concentrates on "agricultural civilization."
Elements of civilization necessarily predate the formation of civilization itself. Scholars
generally agree on two points: that Chinese civilization can be traced back to several points of

origin that followed parallel lines of development, with contacts and mutual influences; and
that different cultures developed at different rates. Increasingly scholars have identified the
study of the origins and formation of civilization with guozhi dashi zai siyu rong ("ritual and war
are the most important business of the state"), rather than simply characterizing early civiliza-
tion as a society founded on slavery. Though situating the formation of civilization in time

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