Ten Meters Down: Antiquarian Geologics in Song China
Jeffrey Moser gave a Brown Bag Lunch presentation on Wednesday, February 28, at 12:15 pm. His talk is entitled “Ten Meters Down: Antiquarian Geologics in Song China.”
In 2006, archaeologists in the northwestern province of Shaanxi uncovered what is to date the largest medieval family cemetery ever discovered in China. Containing twenty-nine tombs spanning five generations of the Lü clan, whose members included some of the most prominent statesmen and intellectuals of the Northern Song era (960–1127), the cemetery is yielding extraordinary insights into the material lives of elite society in medieval China. Among the most notable discoveries is the tomb of the antiquarian and Neo-Confucian scholar Lü Dalin, who authored the world’s earliest extant illustrated catalog of antiquities. The construction of the tombs in the cemetery, and the grave goods found therein, demonstrate that the family had a sophisticated awareness of the ancient Bronze Age burials from which their collections came, and possessed a stratigraphic understanding of subterranean depth as a measure of time. In tunneling deep into the earth, they endeavored to lay their dead in the time of the Sages of high antiquity. In this talk, Moser explores the evidence for this antiquarian “geologic,” and considers its implications for the spatiotemporal dynamics of the medieval Chinese imaginary.
Jeffrey Moser is Assistant Professor of the History of Art and Architecture at Brown University. A specialist in the artistic and intellectual history of China during the Song-Yuan era (tenth to fourteenth centuries AD), his research focuses on the ways in which sensory engagement with material things transformed historical approaches to the challenges of making, reasoning, and knowing. His interest in the catalytic potency of objects extends from the historical dimensions of his research to the contemporary challenges of university and museum education. Prior to joining the faculty at Brown in 2015, Moser taught at McGill University and Zhejiang University. He is currently completing a book manuscript entitled Nominal Things: Bronzes, Schemata, and Hermeneutics of Facture in Northern Song China. His research articles have appeared in the Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Journal of Song-Yuan Studies, and elsewhere. In spring 2018 he will be a Research Fellow at Bard Graduate Center. During this time Moser will be focusing on his new project Excavating China’s First Archaeologist, a micro-historical study of a prominent Northern Song (960–1127) clan of scholar-officials and antiquarians based on the material remains of their recently uncovered cemetery.
Zhao Feng: Textile Archaeology on the Silk Road
Textile Archaeology on the Silk Road: Comparison of Textiles Found in Northwest China and Israel
Zhao Feng, China National Silk Museum
Noble Group Fellow
This lecture will give a brief introduction to the textile archaeology in the northwest of China, especially the Xinjiang area around the Taklamkan Desert. The sites where the textiles were found include the Small River site from the 20th century BC, to the Yingpan cemetery from the 4-5th century AD. After this introduction, some comparisons between the textiles found in Israel and China will be compared, including wool tapestry and compound tabby fabrics from the Roman period, cotton and silk ikat from early Islamic period, and lampas from the Mongol period. Through these comparisons Dr. Zhao will examine the relationship between the two sides of the Silk Road.
Image: Zhao Feng. At left, textile from Dulan, Qinghai; at right, from Nahal Omer, Israel.
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HeNan province of china.asf
Highlight of Henan Province, Songshan Mountain lies southwest of Zhengzhou and it is one of the most famous mountains in China because of the rugged beauty of its peaks and the Bonsai-like appearance of its beautiful old trees. Shaolin Temple, the most famous Buddhist temple in China and the largest of the Songshan range, is located on Shaoshi Mountain. Shaolin Temple and Shaolin Gongfu (martial arts) have long taken on a legendry color and are famous both in and outside China.
The name of the province Henan comes from its geographic location. Henan means 'the south of the river', indicating that Henan lies south of China's Yellow River. The province covers an area of over 160,000 square kilometers (about 62,000 square miles). It is populated by Han, Hui, Manchu, Mongolian and other ethnic groups totaling 92,560,000 people.
When to go
来源：( - 家乡河南的英文介绍_王豪博_新浪博客
Henan has a humid warm-temperate climate. Dry and windy in winter and spring, the province is hot and rainy in summer and bakes in strong sunlight during the autumn months. Rainfall averages about 600-1000 millimeters increasing from north to south, as does the annual temperature which increases from about 12.8C in the north to 15.5C in the south.
History
Henan province is considered the cradle of Chinese civilization due to its location on the Yellow River. This rich historic heritage has endowed Henan with numerous historic treasures, from primitive dwellings to earliest wheel thrown pottery. The remains of some of the earliest human settlements have been unearthed here, including the over 7000-year-old Peiligang Culture Site, the 6000-year-old Yangshao Culture Remains and the 5000-year-old Dahe Culture Remains. All these cultural remains have profound significance in the history of Chinese civilization.
Luoyang City has been the capital of nine dynasties since the time of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty (770BC-221BC). There are many historical sites to be viewed in Luoyang as well as the opportunity to purchase replicas of the famed Tang three-glaze horses. Luoyang's Longmen Grottoes, famous for its grand treasure trove of Chinese Buddhist statues, are located 12km (7 miles) south of Luoyang. First sculpted and chiseled around 493 AD when the capital of the Northern Wei Dynasty (386-534) was moved from Datong City to Luoyang, the grottoes of Luoyang house an awe-inspiring collection of sculpted Buddha and other religious subjects.
Kaifeng, one of the ancient capitals, also boasts the following buildings worthy of a visit: Iron Pagoda (Tie Ta) of the Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127), Dragon Pavilion (Long Ting) - site of imperial palace of the Song and Jin dynasties - and the 1400-year-old Xiangguo Temple which is one of the most famous Buddhist temples in China. Also on view in Kaifeng are ruins of the Shang Dynasty, an important part of human cultural and historic heritage. The Shang Dynasty Ruins, also known as the 'Yin Ruins', are famous because of the unique style of the large palace and its grand mausoleums, in which emperors of the Shang Dynasty are buried. The bronze vessels of the Shang Dynasty, which were both finely decorated and popularly used by the citizens of the Shang Dynasty, are well-known at home and abroad.
Chinese pyramids
Chinese pyramids are ancient mausoleums and burial mounds built to house the remains of several early emperors of China and their imperial relatives. About 38 of them are located around 25 kilometres (16 mi) - 35 kilometres (22 mi) north-west of Xi'an, on the Qin Chuan Plains in Shaanxi Province. The most famous is the Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor, northeast of Xi'an and 1.7 km west of where the Terracotta Warriors were found. Chinese pyramids were also built during the Han, Tang, Song, and Western Xia dynasties.
They have flat tops, and thus are more similar in shape to the Teotihuacan pyramids north-east of Mexico City, Mexico than to the pyramids in Giza, Egypt. Although known in the West for at least a century, their existence has been made controversial by sensationalist publicity and the problems of Chinese archaeology in early 20th century.
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Chinese ceramics
Chinese ceramic ware shows a continuous development since imperial times and is one of the most significant forms of Chinese art and ceramics. The first types of ceramics were made during the Palaeolithic era. Chinese ceramics range from construction materials such as bricks and tiles, to hand-built pottery vessels fired in bonfires or kilns, to the sophisticated Chinese porcelain wares made for the imperial court. Porcelain is so identified with China that it is still called china in everyday English usage.
Most later Chinese ceramics, even of the finest quality, were made on an industrial scale, thus few names of individual potters were recorded. Many of the most renowned workshops were owned by or reserved for the Emperor, and large quantities of ceramics were exported as diplomatic gifts or for trade from an early date.
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Shunzhi Emperor
The Shunzhi Emperor, formerly romanized as the Shun-chih Emperor, was the third emperor of the Qing dynasty and the first Qing emperor to rule over China, from 1644 to 1661. A committee of Manchu princes chose him to succeed his father, Hong Taiji, in September 1643, when he was five years old. The princes also appointed two co-regents: Dorgon, the 14th son of the Qing dynasty's founder Nurhaci, and Jirgalang, one of Nurhaci's nephews, both of whom were members of the Qing imperial clan.
From 1643 to 1650, political power lay mostly in the hands of Dorgon. Under his leadership, the Qing Empire conquered most of the territory of the fallen Ming dynasty, chased Ming loyalist regimes deep into the southwestern provinces, and established the basis of Qing rule over China despite highly unpopular policies such as the hair cutting command of 1645, which forced Qing subjects to shave their forehead and braid their remaining hair into a queue resembling that of the Manchus. After Dorgon's death on the last day of 1650, the young Shunzhi Emperor started to rule personally. He tried, with mixed success, to fight corruption and to reduce the political influence of the Manchu nobility. In the 1650s, he faced a resurgence of Ming loyalist resistance, but by 1661 his armies had defeated the Qing Empire's last enemies, seafarer Koxinga and the Prince of Gui of the Southern Ming dynasty, both of whom would succumb the following year. The Shunzhi Emperor died at the age of 22 of smallpox, a highly contagious disease that was endemic in China, but against which the Manchus had no immunity. He was succeeded by his third son Xuanye, who had already survived smallpox, and who reigned for sixty years under the era name Kangxi. Because fewer documents have survived from the Shunzhi era than from later eras of the Qing dynasty, the Shunzhi era is a relatively little-known period of Qing history.
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