MERCH (Manufacturing EaRly CHina) is a collaborative project involving colleagues in Germany, Israel and China aimed at exploring 3000 years of Early Chinese economic transformation from the perspective of manufacturing. During this period, the Central Plains of China underwent a series of dramatic changes as a society of villages and emergent urban centers with populations in the thousands was transformed into a continent spanning empire of 60 million with some of the largest cities of the ancient world. There is widespread consensus that the transition from the Bronze to Iron Age was a pivotal moment in this transformation. There is less consensus, however, about the mechanisms, antecedents or pace of these changes. At the same time, scholars seem to be able to agree that manufacturing is central to these issues, whether seen as a passive reflection of changes taking place in other components of political economy or driving those changes.
Understanding manufacturing as a broad entangling of things, society, technology, and political economy, we aim to explore the ways in which changes in manufacturing impacted and were impacted by changes in exchange systems, consumption patterns, political institutions, food production and urbanism.
This talk will situate my on-going work on Chinese Bronze Age bone crafting within this framework and show how it complicates the mainstream narratives of Chinese archaeology and economic history.
