Date of Award

2019

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Social Sciences

First Advisor

Baram, Uzi

Area of Concentration

Anthropology

Abstract

The village of Jiangzhai, located in the reaches of the Yellow River Valley is one of the most completely excavated examples of an early agricultural community during the Early Yangshao period (5000-4000 BCE). The village and the extensive data set collected during its excavation have been used in order to better our current understanding of the social milieu present in early agricultural communities and the development of hierarchical society, often focused on issues concerning the development of equality, and inequality. These models have largely been based on the presence in the archaeological record of a five part social segmentation in the residential area of the Banpo phase village. While the site has been subject to multiple instances of cluster analysis these tests assume that a five part site division is best for quantitative analysis at the site. The analysis presented in this thesis suggests that a smaller number of clusters is more suitable to maximize the statistical significance of cluster analysis performed using the site data, such as three to four, rather than a five part delineation. This in turn suggests that the five part tribal or clan based organization previously ascribed to the observed residential delineations may not be evidence of a segmental society composed of homologous units. Intrasite variation observed in the early Banpo phase of the Yangshao period may not be evidence of the establishment of Chinese familial traditions, although further review of archaeological reports from the 1970’s and 1980’s along with osteological examination and publication will do much to answer this question.

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