A local perspective on China's initial unification: Archaeological survey and historical documents from southeastern Shandong

Abstract

Accounts of the initial unification of China are generally drawn from documents that were recorded in the Central Plain heartland. Here, we narrow the regional vantage on this key historical episode by integrating more than 20 years of archaeological settlement pattern survey and documentary contexts focused on southeastern coastal Shandong Province. In 2019 we gained important new perspectives on this long historical process with the discovery of a large Zhou/Han site at Guxian on the Jiao River. This finding amplifies our understanding of the breakdown of previously autonomous Neolithic coastal polities, spurred by the movement of peoples, goods, and information from the west, and, ultimately, the integration of the coast into larger economic and political Bronze Age networks. Guxian and the northern sector of our study region were incorporated into the Qi state, which was delimited from the coastal basins to the south by the construction of a defensive wall across southeastern Shandong to the coast. Later the Qin–Han empire reintegrated the coast, instituting policies that broke down existing barriers and thereby prompted a demographic expansion that lasted for centuries.