The Archaeological Study of an Inner Asian Empire: Using new Perspectives and Methods to Study the Medieval Liao Polity
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The Archaeological Study of an Inner Asian Empire: Using new Perspectives and Methods to Study the Medieval Liao Polity Gwen P. Bennett 1
# Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015
Abstract Archaeological and historical data, combined with GIS analysis gives us new perspectives on 11th c. medieval period envoy missions from the Song Dynasty (960– 1279) to the Liao Empire (907–1125) Middle Capital in Chifeng Inner Mongolia, China. The envoys’ routes can be recreated on maps, and optimal route and viewshed analyses give us insight into the Liao’s concerns about these foreign missions crossing their territory and how they addressed them. Furthermore, population estimates can be made from envoy information that can be used to extrapolate population density estimates from archaeological data for other areas in Chifeng. Keywords Liao Empire . Song Dynasty . China . landscape analysis
Introduction Archaeologists in many parts of the world are attempting to develop perspectives and methods, not merely to recognize, but to rigorously analyze, the differentiated networks that characterize large trans-regional and multi-ethnic polities (Alcock 2001; Brosseder and Miller 2011; CICARP 2011; Fang, et al. 2015: Feinman, et al. 2010; Hanks 2010; Hanks and Linduff 2009; Honeychurch, et al. 2009; Honeychurch 2015; Lin 2009, 2012; Sinopoli 1994; Underhill, et al. 2008). If those who study early empires with limited documentary records are to understand the historical processes at work, they first need to better define and recognize archaeologically the dimensions of political and economic variability of these entities. The Liao Empire (907–1125) of the northeastern steppes of China and Mongolia has both an historical record of political
* Gwen P. Bennett [email protected] 1
Departments of Anthropology and East Asian Studies, McGill University, 855 Sherbrooke Street West, Montreal, QC H3A 2T7, Canada
Int J Histor Archaeol
constitution and an archaeological record of its basic economic practices and demographic patterns (Toghto and Ouyang 1974; CICARP 2011). This paper will focus on the Kitan Liao Archaeological Survey Project’s (KLASH) study of roads and the landscapes around them, and the movement of people through these landscapes during the Liao period. KLASH is a multidisciplinary international collaborative research project comprised of researchers and students from McGill University (Canada), the University of Birmingham (UK), the University of Aberdeen (UK), the Inner Mongolian Cultural Relics and Archaeology Research Institute (China), and Jilin University (China). Our research aim is to put archaeological, historical and geophysical data into a dialectical conversation to create multilayered interpretations of three Liao period walled cities in the Chifeng region of Inner Mongolia and the regions around them (Fig. 1). The sites we propose to work at are: Songshanzhou (42° 09′ 48″ N, 118° 38′ 34″ E), a prefectural level town that once had walls measuring 510×510 m but when investigated by the Chifeng Internat
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