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This study concerns ritual feasting at the site of Yanshi Shangcheng, an Erligang (early Shang) urban center in the middle Yellow River valley of northern China. The related rituals of divination, sacrifice, and feasting are often framed as elite practices in this region. Quantitative analysis of ceramics and contextual analysis of archaeological finds from an elite palace and a potters’ neighborhood are applied to the question of whether Yanshi elites held a monopoly on ritual feasting. Dominant statistical findings support a picture of exclusionary elite feasting that contrasts with potters’ simpler foodways. However, “statistical outliers” and strong contextual evidence demonstrate that Yanshi potters were also conducting ritual feasts. Using a feasting typology that includes a range of feasting types from large-scale elite feasting to small-scale community feasts and symbolic feasting, this paper argues that Yanshi elites conducted large-scale feasting while Yanshi potters practiced community-based and household feasts that were empowering to their group. A trend in augmenting social power of artisans can be seen through time at Yanshi and also through the Shang dynasty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We review the state of research on human-environment interaction in Holocene China. • We demonstrate the benefits of a multidisciplinary, regionally focused approach. • We conclude datasets must be local and specific, and integrate data on multiple scales. • China is large, well-documented, and critical for understanding social-natural systems. This paper reviews recent archaeological research on human-environment interaction in the Holocene, taking continental China as its geographic focus. As China is large, geographically diverse, and exceptionally archaeologically and historically well-documented, research here provides critical insight into the functioning of social-natural systems. Based on a broad review of the field as well as recent advances and discoveries, the authors reflect on research themes including climate change and adaptive systems theory, spatial and temporal scale, anthropogenic environmental change, risk management and resilience, and integration of subdisciplines. These converge on three overarching conclusions. First, datasets relevant to climate change and ancient human-environment interaction must be as local and specific as possible, as the timing of environmental change differs locally, and the human response is highly dependent on local social and technological conditions. Second, the field still needs more robust theoretical frameworks for analyzing complex social-natural systems, and especially for integrating data on multiple scales. Third, for this work to contribute meaningfully to contemporary climate change research, effective communication of research findings to the public and to scientists in other disciplines should be incorporated into publication plans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Around the globe, archaeological settlement pattern survey has brought a new spatial, diachronic, and theoretical vantage to the study of early civilizations. This paper provides a new perspective on the rise and reorganization of complex societies in northern China through the synthesis of 11 years of systematic regional survey in southeastern Shandong Province. Based on our surface findings, we suspect that the agricultural colonization of this coastal region occurred primarily during the later half of the Neolithic and was rapidly followed by the development of a four-tiered settlement hierarchy with two primary centers during the Early Longshan period. We also document the reorganization of this regional system during the Bronze Age, and the eventual political integration of this study area under polities centered to the west (and outside the region surveyed). We argue that southeastern Shandong was not merely a backwater or periphery throughout its history, particularly in regard to the Early–Middle Longshan periods when there were centers of great size. Through our long-term and broad-scale perspective, we provide new evidence of how complex societies arose and changed over millennia in northern China. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]