"Ch'ii-chia-ling " and the Early Cultures of the Hanshui

I NTRODUCT I ON T.. HEPUIPQS.eOf this review is toproyideanthropologists interested intheclllture history of Asia with a preliminary definition of prehistoric-early historic developments in the Hanshui Valley, China. The review's most significant theoretical aspect is that it pre-sents but one example of the kind of localized experimentation, adaptation, and elaboration that has produced the cultural mosaic of historic Asia. The archaeological importance of the Hanshui Valley and the middle Yangtze Plain (central Hupei and northern Hunan provinces) has only recently been recognized. The first indica-tions of significant agricultural settlement were discovered in 1954 in the Chingshan district (see Fig. I). Attention was directed to these sites because of the certain identification of paddy-rice farming, and even in 1954 the intensely local nature of the Neolithic-Early Historic culture was evident. By 1960, excavation and survey had extended eastward into the Huangp'ei and Ch'i-ch'un districts (east of Hankow) where bronze age continuation of related neolithic materials was found. In 1961, extensive archaeological work was reported from the districts ofYun and Kun, near the Hupei-Honan-Shensi border along the upper and middle course of the Hanshui. Several rich sites, apparently stratified, and adequately reported, can now be described. The importance of the Hanshui Valley Neolithic-Early Historic culture is established on two counts: (I) it represents the first appearance of an intensive rice-growing economy, and (2) it is an original, localized cultural development in relationship to both the lower Yangtze and Chungyiian "spheres of influence. " [Chungyiian is considered to include the middle Huangho drainage and plains.] Although the exclusively "neolithic " quality of the Hanshui Valley culture is questionable in chronological terms, it may possibly be evaluated in terms of ethnohistorical development