The Governance Of The South By The Shang And Zhou Dyansties During The Late Shang And Early Western Zhou Period In The Archaeological Perspective

The Middle Yangtze Region which locates in central China is a place for cultural interactions for people from all directions. Also, there are full of copper mines which are very important for the elites in the central plain during Shang and Zhou Dynasties. The governance of this region had been successfully undertaken by the Shang and Zhou Dynasties during the Early Shang and Early Western Zhou Periods. This dissertation focuses on the distribution of the sites that can be affiliated to the Late Shang and Early Western Zhou periods, and analysize the settlement patterns of this region to investigate the differences between the governance tactics taken by the Shang and Zhou royal courts, and we found that they had chosen a different main route to connect the north and the south to ensure the governance to be successful.This dissertation includes several parts listed below:Introduction, in this part we explain the statement of purpose, provide a review of the history of the related archaeological findings and reaches and define the temporal-spatial frame of this dissertation.Chapter Ⅰ, analysis of typical Late Shang and Early Western Zhou sites in the Middle Yangtze Region. In this chapter, we did a periodization of each typical site based on the pottery excavated, added up the proportion of each kind of cultural elements to define the character of the site, thus we can affiliates all the sites into the same temporal-spatial frame.Chapter Ⅱ,-analysis of the Late Shang and Early Western Zhou Bronzes from the Middle Yangtze Region. In this chapter, we examine the basic information of the bronzes.Chapter Ⅲ, the governance of the south by the Shang and Zhou Dynasties in the perspective of settlement patterns. First, we examine the relationship between the south and the courts in the central plain recorded in ancient wrriten records and bronze inscriptions. Then we provide an overview of the settlement patterns of the Middle Yangtze region and examine the changes of settlement patterns in different phases. At last, based on the settlement patterns, we demonstrate that the modes of leadership and governance tactics taken by the Shang and Zhou royal courts are different. Beside, we also discuss the transportation routes between the south and the central plain. There have been several important routes connecting the south and the north since Neolithic Period; however there is a main route in each period, and the main routes chosen by the Shang and Zhou courts are different.Conclusions, in this part we generalize the main views of this dissertation.