Chinese archaeology has progressively back-dated the birth of the state to ever earlier Neolithic cultures, chiefly by citing monumental construction and wealthy elite burials — the ceremonial complex of the Hongshan culture and the walled city and hydraulic system of Liangzhu. Xu and Zhang (2019) argued that this practice rests on a vague concept of the 'ancient state', weak integration with international frameworks such as the chiefdom model, and a linear, dynasty-centered narrative, and proposed in its place a two-stage model for the origin of the state in East Asia. The wider debate documented by the works cited below leaves the underlying open problem threefold and unresolved: (1) no accepted, operational archaeological criterion determines whether massive religious constructions and public works demonstrate coercive, institutionalized state power or could have been organized by non-state, ritual-based (corporate) social systems; (2) the concept of the early state in Chinese archaeology remains unaligned with comparative anthropological theory; (3) the relationship between the earlier regional polities and the later Erlitou entity — indirect influence, total replacement, or selective incorporation, i.e. how deep the fracture in cultural continuity runs — is still contested between rival scenarios backed by serious field evidence.

Background

In anthropological archaeology, a state is a centralized polity with institutionalized, territorially based authority and internal social stratification, while a chiefdom is a ranked, kin-organized society that can mobilize labor and produce monumental works without a specialized bureaucracy or monopoly of force — the kind of corporate, group-oriented social formation that can also organize large collective works. Whether the earliest Chinese polities crossed this boundary is the founding question of Neolithic-to-Bronze-Age Chinese archaeology. Two pre-Bronze-Age cases anchor the debate. The Hongshan culture (roughly 4700–2900 BC, northeast China) built the Niuheliang ceremonial complex — grouped stone tombs, a 'goddess temple' and altar — long read as evidence of a territorially integrated polity, while systematic regional survey around Niuheliang instead supports its role as a pilgrimage center sustained by scattered settled communities. The Liangzhu culture (roughly 3300–2300 BC, lower Yangtze) left a fortified city with massive earthen walls, a large dam system for flood control and irrigation, the Mojiaoshan earthen palace platform, and spectacular jade-rich elite cemeteries such as Fanshan; Renfrew and Liu (2018) called it possibly the earliest state society in East Asia, even though it lacked writing and metallurgy — the two hallmarks traditional definitions borrowed from Mesopotamia. After these regional centers declined, the Erlitou site (roughly 1900–1500 BC, Central Plains; the traditional candidate for the Xia dynasty) shows palatial compounds and bronze casting, and Chinese scholarship has often framed all of this as a single linear sequence toward dynastic civilization. Comparable claims surround other late Neolithic walled centers that are regularly recruited into the same narrative — Taosi (a large walled settlement of the Longshan cultures, the late Neolithic societies of the Yellow River basin, c. 2300–1900 BC) and Shimao (a massive stone-walled city on the northern Loess Plateau of the Yellow River basin). Xu and Zhang (2019) attacked that frame: classical texts and nationalism have pushed the identification of the 'ancient state' ever earlier, the term itself is conceptually vague and poorly aligned with international frameworks (e.g., chiefdoms), and they instead proposed a two-stage model for the origin of the state in East Asia. Their critique, and the two-sided debate documented below, leave open the concrete evidentiary question at its core: archaeologists must decide, from material remains alone, which organizational form produced the monuments, and how the Erlitou polity relates to what came before it.

Problem Statement

From material remains alone, establish defensible and operational criteria for recognizing state-level political authority — centralized, institutionalized, coercive political power — in prehistoric East Asia, and apply them to the decisive cases. The problem is jointly posed in three parts: (1) determine whether the massive religious constructions and public works of the Hongshan culture (the Niuheliang ceremonial complex in its regional settlement context) and of the Liangzhu culture (the city walls, dam system, Mojiaoshan palace platform, and elite cemeteries of the Liangzhu ancient city) demonstrate coercive, institutionalized state power, or whether these works could equally well have been organized by non-state, ritual-based or otherwise corporate social systems; (2) clarify the concept of the 'ancient state' used in Chinese archaeology and its integration with international frameworks such as the chiefdom model, so that the classification question is well posed; and (3) determine the nature of the relationship between the earlier regional polities (Hongshan, Liangzhu, and their contemporaries) and the later Erlitou entity — rival scenarios advanced in the cited literature range from indirect influence to total replacement to selective incorporation — thereby fixing the depth of the fracture in cultural continuity across the transition from the Neolithic regional cultures to the first Central Plains polity, and adjudicating whether the trajectory to statehood in East Asia is better described as a linear, dynasty-centered succession or as parallel, partly independent regional developments.

References

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