This volume aims to satisfy a pressing need for an updated account of Chinese archaeology. It covers an extended time period from the earliest peopling of China to the unification of the Chinese Empire some two thousand years ago. The geographical coverage includes the traditional focus on the Yellow River basin but also covers China's many other regions. Among the topics covered are the emergence of agricultural communities; the establishment of a sedentary way of life; the development of sociopolitical complexity; advances in lithic technology, ceramics, and metallurgy; and the appearance of writing, large-scale public works, cities, and states. Particular emphasis is placed on the great cultural variations that existed among the different regions and the development of interregional contacts among those societies.

The reasons and processes that led hunter-gatherers to transition into a sedentary and agricultural way of life are a fundamental unresolved question of human history. Here we present results of excavations of two single-occupation early Neolithic sites (dated to 7.9 and 7.4 ka) and two high-resolution archaeological surveys in northeast China, which capture the earliest stages of sedentism and millet cultivation in the second oldest center of domestication in the Old World. The transition to sedentism coincided with a significant transition to wetter conditions in north China, at 8.1-7.9 ka. We suggest that these wetter conditions were an empirical precondition that facilitated the complex transitional process to sedentism and eventually millet domestication in north China. Interestingly, sedentism and plant domestication followed different trajectories. The sedentary way of life and cultural norms evolved rapidly, within a few hundred years, we find complex sedentary villages inhabiting the landscape. However, the process of plant domestication, progressed slowly over several millennia. Our earliest evidence for the beginning of the domestication process appear in the context of an already complex sedentary village (late Xinglongwa culture), a half millennia after the onset of cultivation, and even in this phase domesticated plants and animals were rare, suggesting that the transition to domesticated (sensu stricto) plants in affluent areas might have not played a substantial role in the transition to sedentary societies.

Issues surrounding the difficult task of correlating archaeological and climatic trajectories are directly impacting the study of human-environmental interaction in Ancient China. We have chosen to focus on the 4.2 ka BP event due to the widespread belief in recent Chinese archaeological publications that it brought about the collapse of Neolithic cultures in multiple regions of China. Following a literature review concerning the many issues surrounding the reconstruction of the 4.2 ka BP event in East Asia, we present three short case studies from the Lower Yangzi, the Shaanxi loess plateau, and the Central Plains detailing a number of problems with Chinese archaeological attempts at using climate change as a causal mechanism for sociopolitical change. We then focus on a common but highly problematic methodology—the growing use of archaeological data compiled in theAtlas of Chinese Cultural Relicsto correlate with climate proxies in order to generate linear, causal models explaining sociopolitical collapse. We follow with an example from Northeast China, where work from the past three decades has provided ample data with which to begin answering these questions in a more productive manner, and end with a set of suggestions for archaeologists and climate scientists going forward.

Northeastern China is one of the centers of early development of agriculture and sedentary life, as well as of the subsequent development of social complexity and distinct cultural attributes. While the outlines of this trajectory are clear, its important details are still elusive. Like all other regions of northern China, there is little data on the all-important transition from nomad hunter-gatherers to sedentary agriculturalists. The Fuxin Regional Survey was designed as the first step in accumulating new data and addressing the geographic and ecological contexts of these socioeconomic processes. Among the most remarkable results of this survey is the identification of early ceramics, which possibly predate the transition to agriculture. The systematic collection and analysis of stone tools was done in a way never before done in this region. Analysis of our findings, using GIS and other methods, sheds new light on the local trajectory of human adaptation in this area.