Early Salt Production in China in Comparative Perspective: An International Symposium
A day-long symposium analyzing & contextualizing the first stage of the the UCLA-Peking University joint project on Landscape Archaeology and Ancient Salt Production in the Sichuan Basin
Saturday, May 15, 2004
9:00 AM - 5:30 PM
Herbert Morris Seminar Room
306 Royce Hall
UCLA
[Photo: Lothar von Falkenhausen next to well 2 at Yaogengcun, Baiyunxiang Township]
Salt is essential to human life. It has been in great demand at least since Neolithic times when humans took up a plant-based diet. Humans crave salt to make their food more tasty and for a host of other uses such as preserving food, tenderizing meat, and tanning leather. Since salt resources that could be exploited with premodern technology are very unevenly distributed, salt was important early on as a commodity.
To trace the origins of salt making in China and explore its cultural, economic, and environmental ramifications, UCLA and Peking University, as well as several institutions in the province of Sichuan, have been engaged in a multi-year project -- headed by UCLA's Professor Lothar von Falkenhausen and Peking University's Professor Li Shuicheng -- focused on the salt producing areas in the Sichuan Basin. Since 1999 excavations have been undertaken in a number of locations and extensive analysis has been conducted. The digs have brought to light, among other things, hundreds upon hundreds of ceramic vessels for extracting salt from brine, dating from the Neolithic to the late Bronze Age, around 200,000 faunal remains, and an incalculable amount of sherds (in one site, around 25,000 sherds per cubic meter), evidence of the many millions of ceramic vessels discarded there in the course of the Late Bronze Age.
The project is funded by grants from the Luce Foundation, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the University of California Pacific Rim Reseach Program, the UCLA Cotsen Institute for Archaeology (via an Ahmanson Field Research Grant), the UCLA Comparative and Interdisciplinary Research on Asia program, and the UCLA Center for Chinese Studies.
Panel 1, 9:15 - 10:45
Ian Brown (University of Alabama)
Jonathon Ericson (University of California, Irvine)
Discussant: Tom Wake (UCLA)
Panel 2, 11:00 - 12:30
Pochan Chen (UCLA)
Rowan K. Flad (Harvard University)
Discussant: Richard von Glahn (UCLA)
Panel 3, 2:00 - 3:30
Zhichun Jing (University of British Columbia)
Gwen P. Bennett (Washington University, St. Louis)
Discussant: Minna Haapanen (UCLA)
Panel 4, 3:45 - 5:15
Li Xiaobo (Sichuan Normal University)
Lothar von Falkenhausen (UCLA)
Discussant: Tang Xiaofeng (Peking University)
gunde@ucla.edu
www.international.ucla.edu
Sponsor(s): Comparative and Interdisciplinary Research on Asia, Center for Chinese Studies
