Understanding Ancient China

This 20th Anniversary Lecture is a hybrid event hosted by the International Centre for Chinese Heritage and Archaeology (ICCHA) and will take place in Room 612, sixth floor of the UCL Institute of Archaeology and also online via Zoom. Registration for the Zoom event is via the booking link above. This event is free and open to all. All welcome!

Abstract 

China is not easy to understand.  It is vast, hugely diverse, immensely old and composed of many people.  Those who are interested in historical context of ancient China often start by wondering how we can possibly begin to understand something on such scale.  While there has been considerable momentum in understanding the prehistory of the nation, mainly through archaeological work, the current geopolitical environment highlights the urgency of such understanding at the deeper and structural level.  Drawing from recent archaeological discoveries, Dr Liu Xinyi will try to make a few tentative guesses about the origins and enduring essence of this civilisation.  He shall not view ancient China through the lenses of Chinese alone, but through contracts and comparisons -- those structural relations are illuminated from the deep past to inform the future.  

About the Speaker

Dr LIU Xinyi is an archaeologist of food and environment working in Chinese environment and broadly Asian contexts.  He is an Associate Professor and the Associate Chair of the Department of Anthropology, at Washington University in St. Louis.  He gained his PhD degree in 2010 at Cambridge and subsequently conducted postdoctoral research at Cambridge’s McDonald Institute before moving to the United States in 2014.  His recent work has focused on the origins of food production, its early globalisation, human-environment dynamics in the global south, and historical trajectories of ancient China.  He is Associate Editor of Archaeological Research in Asia, Environmental Archaeology and on various other editorial and professional boards.