Feng Li
Associate
Professor of Early Chinese History and Archaeology
Columbia University
East Asian Languages and Cultures
407 Kent Hall; Mail
Code: 3907
212-854-2510
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I am
both an archaeologist and a historian focusing on Bronze Age China. As an
archaeologist, my early field work dates back to 1983-1990 when I was a
research fellow in the Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social
Sciences (Beijing), excavating the capital sites Feng
and Hao of the Western Zhou dynasty (1045–771 B.C.)
in Shaanxi province. In recent years, in conjunction with Columbia’s
archaeological project in Shandong, my research focus has been shifted from
such central sites to the periphery of the Zhou world. I am interested in
cross-region communications, particularly in the way that different complex-society
cultures responded to each other.
As a
historian, I consider myself a historian of society. I have spent much of my
last fifteen years on analyzing inscriptions on bronze vessels from the Western
Zhou period and on exploring their implications for early Chinese states and
society. In particular, my research in bronze inscriptions has developed in two
directions. The first examines evidence for the political structure of the
Western Zhou state and the origin of bureaucratic government in China, while
the second considers calligraphical and technical
features of the inscribed bronzes as a way to understand the social system in
which they were created.
Believing that our true knowledge of the past can be better achieved on the basis of impartial understanding of all surviving evidence, archaeological, inscriptional, and textual, I look for ways to integrate the material form of evidence and the written records in the study of early states and societies. I have been directing the Guicheng archaeological survey and excavation in Shandong, China, since 2006 (see below). I am also co-chairing the Columbia Early China Seminar, an inter-university forum for the study of China from the Neolithic to A.D. 220. All interested Columbia instructors and graduate students are welcome to attend the meetings. The current and past programs can be found at: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/seminars/EarlyChina/ecs.html
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Books
2011
Writing and Literacy in Early
China examines a topic of international importance: the emergence and spread of
literacy in ancient human society. Writing arose separately in Mesopotamia,
Egypt, Mesoamerica, and China. Modern Chinese orthography preserves logographic
principles shared by its most ancient forms three thousand years ago, making it
unique among all present-day writing systems. In the past three decades, the
discovery of previously unknown texts dating to the third century BCE and
earlier as well as older versions of known texts has revolutionized the study
of early Chinese writing.
This new volume brings together studies by
eleven sinologists from multiple disciplines to clarify the origin and social
dimensions of literacy in Early China. Taking writing as a phenomenon of
literacy, the studies examine a series of issues: possible stages in the
invention of the Chinese writing, ways by which literacy was acquired, evidence
of the multiple social spheres they represent, extent of literacy across
regions, classes, genders, and professional social groups, etc. This is the
very first book on early literacy in China.
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2010
《西周的政體：中國古代的官僚制度和國家》
北京：生活·读书·新知三联书店，2010
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2008
The book explores and interprets the
origins and operational characteristics of one of the World’s earliest
bureaucracies on the basis of the contemporaneous inscriptions of royal edicts
cast onto bronze vessels, many of which have been discovered quite recently in
archaeological explorations. The inscriptions clarify the political and social
systems of the Western Zhou state and the ways in which it exercised authority.
The book also discusses the theory of bureaucracy and criticizes the various
models of early-archaic states on the basis of close reading of the
inscriptions. It redefines the Western Zhou as a kin-ordered and
settlement-based state.
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2007
上海：上海古籍出版社，2007.
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2006
Landscape and Power in Early China: The
Crisis and Fall of the Western Zhou (1045-771 B.C.). Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, March 2006; paperback, 2009.
This
book addresses the complex relationship between geography and political power
in the special context of the crisis and fall of the Western Zhou. Drawing on
the latest archaeological discoveries, the book shows how inscribed bronze
vessels can be used to reveal changes in political space, and how the three
disciplines, archaeology, history, and geography can work together to achieve a
coherent understanding of the Bronze Age past. Embracing an interdisciplinary
approach and enhanced by the full coverage of sources, the book thoroughly
reinterprets late Western Zhou history and questions deeply into the causes of
its gradual decline and eventual fall.
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Archaeological Fieldwork
The Guicheng Project was established in 2006 as a
field-collaboration between Columbia University, the Institute of Archaeology
of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and the Shandong Provincial
Institute of Archaeology. Guicheng was a prominent
late Bronze-Age city (10th to 5th centuries BC.), measuring 7.5 km2 and located
in the eastern part of the Shandong Peninsula of China. During the four
field-seasons conducted in 2007-2009, we have systematically surveyed and
mapped the entire city-complex and have cored and test-excavated its central
citadel. The fieldwork has yielded important information for understanding the
social political transition in this multicultural environment, particularly the
indigenous culture’s responses to the advanced bronze culture in central China.
An official monographic report on the fieldwork is currently under preparation.
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Other Publications
Reviews
Food,
Sacrifice, and Sagehood in Early China, by Roel Sterckx (New York: Cambridge
University Press. 2011), American
Historical Review, 117 (2012): 1557-1558.
Excavating
Asian History: Interdisciplinary Studies in Archaeology and History, edited by
Norman Yoffee and Bradley L. Crowell (Tucson:
University of Arizona Press, 2006), Journal
of World History, September 2009, pp. 442-51.
Archaeology
of Asia,
edited by Miriam T. Stark (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006), Journal of Asian Studies 66.1 (2007), pp. 210-13.
Interviews
“The End of
‘Western Zhou Feudalism’” (in Chinese), newspaper interview. Shanghai Bookreview
of the China Eastern Post, Shanghai,
Sept. 2, 2012.
“The Teaching
and Practice of Archaeology in China and in America” (in Chinese). In Zhang Haihui, Comparative Experiences in Chinese and American Higher Education:
Interviews with Prominent Chinese American Scholars, pp. 90-103.
Beijing: Renmin daxue,
2010.
Articles or Chapters
“The
Study of Western Zhou History: A Response and a Methodological Explication,” Early China 33-34 (2010-2011): 287-306.
“New
Discoveries and New Perspectives in Western Zhou Archaeology — Postscript to
Professor Cho-yun Hsu’s Xizhou shi” (in Chinese), pp. 359-388, Beijing:
Sanlian Bookstore.
“Literacy and the Social Contexts of Writing in the Western Zhou” (in
English). In Li Feng and David Prager Branner ed., Writing and Literacy in Early China: Studies
from the Columbia Early China Seminar, pp. 271-302. Seattle: University of
Washington Press, 2011.
“A
Study of the Bronze Vessels and Sacrificial Remains of the Early Qin State from
Lixian, Gansu” (in Chinese), Wenwu 2011.5, 55-67.
“A Preliminary Report on the Survey of the
Western-Eastern Zhou Dynasty Guicheng City in Longkou, Shandong” (The Sino-American Joint Guicheng Archaeological Team, co-author), Kaogu 2011.3,
30-39.
“The Study of Early China and Its Archaeological
Foundations: Perspectives in a New Age of Global Integration” (translated into
Chinese by Hu Baohua), In
Zhang Haihui ed., Chinese
Studies in North America — Research and Resources, pp. 51-69. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2010.
“Cities Plans and the Nature of the Ancient
State” (in Chinese).
In Chen Pingyuan, Wang Dewei
et al ed., Xi’an: City Image and Cultural
Memory, pp. 1-20. Beijing: Beijing University Press, 2009.
“Transmitting Antiquity: The Origin and Paradigmization
of the ‘Five Ranks’” (in English). In Dieter Kuhn and Helga Stahl ed., Perceptions
of Antiquity of Chinese Civilization, pp. 103-134. Heidelberg, Germany:
Edition Forum, 2008.
“A Cultural Ecology of the Northwestern Frontier of the Western Zhou State” (in
Chinese). In Choyun Hsu and Zhang Zhongpei ed., Archaeology
in the New Century: Multi-Agent Interaction between Culture, Region, and
Ecology, pp. 171-204. Beijing: Forbidden City Press, 2006.
“Rethinking European ‘Feudalism’ and Its
Implications to the Periodization of Chinese History”
(in Chinese), Zhongguo xueshu (China
Scholarship) 24 (2006), 8-29.
“The City of Zheng, the Eastward
Migration of the State of Zheng, and Related
Historical Issues” (in Chinese). Wenwu (Cultural Relics) 2006.9, 70-78.
“Succession and Promotion: Elite Mobility during the Western Zhou.” Monumenta Serica
(Germany) 52 (2004), 1-35.
“Textual Criticism and Western Zhou Bronze Inscriptions: The Example of the Mu Gui” (in English). In Essay
in Honour of An Zhimin. Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong
Press, 2004. Pp. 280-97.
“Feudalism and Western Zhou China: A Criticism” (in English).
Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 63.1 (June 2003), 115-44.
“Literacy Crossing Cultural Borders: Evidence from the Bronze Inscriptions of
the Western Zhou Period (1045-771 B.C.)” (in English).
Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquity (Sweden) 74 (June 2002),
210-42.
“‘Offices’ in Bronze Inscriptions and Western Zhou Government
Administration” (in English). Early China 26-27 (2001-2002), 1-72.
“Solving the Historical-Geographical Problems of the
Inscription of the Duoyou Ding” (in Japanese).
In Chûgoku kodai no moji to bunka (Writing and Culture in Ancient China).
Tokyo: Kyûko shoin, 1999.
Pp. 179-206.
“Ancient Reproductions and Calligraphic Variations: Studies
of Western Zhou Bronzes with 'Identical' Inscriptions” (in English). Early
China 22 (1997), 1-41.
“A Chronological Study of Late Shang Bronze Inscriptions with
Year Notations” (in Japanese). Research paper
published by the Kobayashi Setsutaro Foundation, Fuji
Xerox Company. Tokyo, Japan. Pp. 1-39.
“On the Contents and the Origins of the Predynastic
Zhou Culture” (in Chinese). Kaogu xuebao 1991.3, 265-84.
“Japanese Studies of Chinese Archaeology” (in Chinese).
In Zhongguo kaoguxue nianjian (The
Yearbook of Chinese Archaeology), 1990. Beijing: Wenwu
Press, 1991. Pp. 140-50.
“On the Inscription of the Silver Ingot of the 2nd Year of the Jianhe Era, Later Han” (in Chinese; co-authored with Matsumaru Michio). Shanghai qianbi tongxun
20 (1990.8).
“The Characteristics of Tomb No.1 at Qiangjia”
(in Chinese). Wenbo 1989.3, 35,
46-48.
“Periodization and Dates of the
Ritual Bronze Vessels from Western Zhou Tombs in the Valley of the Yellow
River” (in Chinese). Kaogu xuebao 1988.4, 383-419.
“Periodization of Bronzes from the
Cemetery of the State of Guo and Related Historical
Questions” (in Chinese). Kaogu 1988.11,
1035-43.
“Periodization and Regionalization
of Shang-Dynasty Bronzes from Shaanxi Province” (in Chinese). Kaogu yu wenwu 1986.3, 53-63.
Translations
“New Trends in European and American Archaeology: Rethinking Theory and
Methodology” (in Chinese; co-authored with Yuan Jing; translation of Japanese
article by Goto Akira). Prehistory (Xi’an) 1-2
(1986), 172-200.