Social Change As Seen through Material Evidence: An Example from 6th-Century BC China

Social Change As Seen through Material Evidence: An Example from 6th-Century BC China

Lothar Von Falkenhausen - Professor of Art History, University of California at Los Angeles

Tuesday, February 26, 2008 - 4:00pm to 5:30pm
Room 200, Old Art Gallery See map
56 High Street
New Haven, CT 6510

Archaeological excavations during the past half-century have brought to light important evidence on social developments in pre-Imperial China. This lecture will focus on finds from a dozen or so cemeteries that allow us to observe the division, during the 6th century BC, of a formerly homogeneous ruling class into two hermetically distinct segments. Whereas the rarefied upper stratum comprised the ruling families of the various states that existed in China during that period, the far less privileged lower aristocracy was the social basis for the intellectual developments that occurred in China during the later first millennium BC.

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Region: 
China, Taiwan, Hong Kong