When is a Qin Tomb not a Qin Tomb? Cultural (De)construction in the Middle Han River Valley

Abstract

When scholars of early China use terms like “Qin” to interpret archaeological remains, they often conflate three registers of meaning: temporal, political, and cultural. This leads to problematic understandings of history and renders the agency of non-elite people invisible to historical narratives. By conducting exploratory statistical analyses including correspondence and principal component analyses on a cluster of burials from the Wangpo cemetery site in Xiangyang, Hubei, this article demonstrates that the mortuary practices of local communities in the middle Han River valley consisted of much more cultural mixture than current designations suggest. The study proposes an alternative approach to interpreting cemeteries like Wangpo that highlights cultural mixture, leading to a version of history that better incorporates the experiences of non-elites in the formation of early Chinese empire in the middle Han River region.