Translocal identity construction among Neolithic and Bronze Age communities in northwestern China

Abstract

Over the last century archaeologists have investigated late Neolithic and Bronze Age interaction networks spanning Eurasia, which in the east connected steppe pastoralists with farming communities in what is now northwestern China. While much attention has focused on the adoption and impact of technologies and domesticates from western Asia in eastern Asia, few models have been put forth to explain how these networks formed and functioned and why groups would want to participate in them in the first place. What research has been done on this topic has generally focused on analysis of ceramics and metal objects to suggest long-distance movement between broad geographic regions. Here I suggest that to understand long-distance interactions, we first need to understand the movements of people and goods at the site-specific level, which I theorize using the concept of translocality. I also question the idea that items being moved were primarily seen as commodities whose main purpose was for exchange. By rethinking the origins, function, and stability of networks on the microscale, I suggest that we can better understand participation in longer-distance interactions that eventually played a key role in the formation of state-level societies in eastern Asia.