At the end of the second millennium BC, the Late Shang state (ca. 1250–1046 BC) was one of the most powerful polities in the ancient world, exerting substantial influence throughout early China from their capital at Anyang (Yinxu). Through the transition from the Late Shang to the Western Zhou, the political landscape experienced a deep rupture and a profound realignment through the turn of the first millennium BC. This significant shift from the Shang state at Anyang to the Zhou (ca. 1046-221 BC) centered in the Guanzhong and Luoyang Basins held immense implications for trajectories of social change in early China. Systematic investigations into the Shang-Zhou transition remain limited in anthropological archaeology. The nature of the impact of this transition on communities caught within a collapsing Shang state and an expanding Zhou state, moreover, is poorly understood.Through the development and application of an archaeology of immanence, the objective of this dissertation is to map the constellations of power that were integral to the processes underlying the Shang-Zhou transition. I engage in a wide-ranging archaeological synthesis of published materials on the social, political, and economic dynamics of early China supplemented by pottery analyses of utilitarian pottery vessels. I argue that the transition is an ongoing accumulation of interrelated events and encounters emerging throughout early China during the late second and early first millennia BC. In elucidating sociopolitical dynamics in the Shang and Zhou periods, I put forward the concept of an affective state. In this model, a state is a political form always in process, incessantly changing and, critically, a historically contingent form that is beholden to the myriad of human and non-human beings that occupy the landscape, their becomings, and their embodied potentialities. I also contend that the complex, overlapping social and economic networks interwoven in what would become the Zhou ancestral landscape provided fertile grounds for the rise of the Western Zhou state. Through a framework focusing on trauma, I also demonstrate how the rise of the Western Zhou society was contingent on the becomings of the Shang people in the wake of conquest.

During the first decade of the twenty-first century, the number of repatriation requests from foreign governments to museums in the United States greatly increased, and several landmark cases involving looted cultural heritage were decided in favor of the source nation. These transactions have been changing how American museums, private collectors, and art dealers acquire cultural heritage material, particularly when it has an archaeological origin. This study examines the history of collecting, discusses how efforts to prohibit the trade in illicit antiquities are affecting the way in which institutions and individuals acquire cultural heritage material, and supports a broader goal of identifying future strategies for collecting and stewardship.

Chinese antiquities that are popular with art collectors are used as a sample group to represent the trade in archaeological material. Three general questions form the cornerstone of this research: (1) What is the impact of the increased use of cultural heritage legislation on the trade in archaeological objects, and can it be quantified? (2) What does the future of collecting look like for American museums and private collectors? How are museums and collectors changing their policies and approaches as a reaction to new legal actions and changing ethics? (3) What role does China play in the protection and consumption of Chinese cultural heritage?

Qualitative data are drawn from interviews with 31 stakeholders. To ground the stakeholders’ concerns in fact-based research; quantitative data are collected from 86 auctions of Chinese antiquities held between 2000 and 2016. Both data sets show that stakeholders interested in acquiring Chinese antiquities are increasingly concerned with provenance, that verifiable provenance increases the value of an object, and that Chinese buyers play a significant role in auctions in the United States.

It will be challenging to curb the demand for archaeological materials, and this study concludes with a discussion of the future of collecting in the United States, outlining current programs and examining new strategies aimed at changing how collectors view antiquities. Three potential approaches for reducing the demand for illicit antiquities are evaluated: government-controlled markets, reproductions, and long-term loans.

This dissertation aims at exploring the trade strategy and center-periphery relations in the process of state formation in early China. The focus is the Longshan and Erlitou periods (ca. 2300-1520 BCE). Instead of a center-based perspective, this research focuses on peripheries and discusses the impact of peripheral societies on the formation of the political-economic landscape of early states. By taking resource extraction and distribution as a departure point, I discuss the production modes, economic forms and social contexts in three resource-rich regions, which were significant sources of key resources in early China. Based on my estimation on scales of mining and mining landscapes, I argue that turquoise and copper mining and mining-related productions were all local, small-scale and village-based activities during the two periods. The current evidence shows that early states did not place direct control over resource extraction and distribution in these peripheral regions. Moreover, based on the arguments and comparative cases in other regions of the world, I further argue that the strategy of resource procurement of early states was never monopolistic. Rather, the Longshan and Erlitou-period states adopted a decentralized strategy to procure key resources. By considering Erlitou as a phenomenon of regeneration after Longshan collapses, I argue that the center-periphery relations maintained a strong continuity in this transitional period.

My dissertation seeks to elucidate the nature of power relationships between the Spanish, the Tagalog and the Chinese in Manila during the early Spanish colonial period (i.e., late 16th to early 17th centuries). Scholars often highlight Manila as a critical link among global networks during this pivotal period in world history; however, little attention has been paid to the colonial lives in Manila. To remedy this gap, I applied postcolonial theory to offer a brand new picture of ethnic relationships in colonial Manila.

Two sets of data were analyzed: the illustrations of the Boxer Codex, a Spanish manuscript containing images of people in the Philippines and other surrounding areas, and various ceramics excavated previously from sites representing Intramuros (the Spanish walled city) and Parian (the Chinese quarter). The results show that (1) The Spanish with high social-economic status enjoyed high-quality customized Chinese products, whereas others with lower class lived with a different consumption pattern. (2) Compared with the Spanish sites, the material culture in the Chinese quarter shows a strong connection between the Chinese and their homeland. However, some evidence indicates that the Chinese also wove in the colonial society. (3) The cultural continuity and change of the Tagalogs before and after the Spanish arrived could both be observed. The early modernity of the Tagalog should be considered from the perspective of labor relationships in the colonial setting. The research attests the early hybridity of Spanish Manila, which was contributed by all main ethnic groups in the society. The physical condition and natural settings of the city, the pre-Manila past of each group, the colonial structure, and the dynamics of the outside world all mattered regarding the process of hybridization.

This research improves the understanding of Philippine history by filling the gap between the pre-Spanish period and the late colonial period. It enriches our knowledge about early modern global history by giving voice to non-elite Spanish, Chinese diaspora and indigenous communities who left little trace in historical documents. It enhances the postcolonial theory in the archaeological study by providing a case study in an East and Southeast Asian setting.

The primary goal of this dissertation is to explore various possible interaction patterns between Erlitou and its neighboring regions through the approach of contextualization. Under the presupposition that Erlitou was the political center of ancient China, the interregional interaction between Erlitou and its neighboring regions were always interpreted as a “center-periphery” relationship. Instead of Erlitou-centered perspective, this dissertation attempts to adopt the approach of contextualization, investigating how the three main core areas in ancient China, namely the Henan Region in which Erlitou was located, as well as the Hedong Region and the Henei Region which were two major neighboring regions of Erlitou, interacted with each other during the second quarter of the second millennium BC. In the past, scholars put more emphasis on how the center influenced its peripheries. However, this dissertation will also investigate how the peripheries influenced the center and how peripheries interacted with each other. The approach of contextualizing exotic artifacts within local settings provides crucial insights, helping us to reexamine the interaction patterns between the Henan, Hedong, and Henei Regions. The research results reveal a highly complicated interaction network between these three regions during the Erlitou Period. First of all, the relationship between the Henan Region and the Henei Region was getting tense over time due to military conflicts. Besides, the Henei Region revealed a greater influence on the Henan Region. Second, the relationship between the Henan Region and the Hedong Region may have been marked by competition over the metal resources for casting bronze objects. However, the Henan Region seems to have displayed a greater influence on the Hedong Region. Finally, the relationship between the Hedong Region and the Henei Region seems to have been steady. Probably these two regions maintained a situation of peaceful coexistence for a long time in the Erlitou Period.

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