Interview with Dewei Shen (EALL), Summer 2017 CEAS Research Grant Award Winner

Dewei Shen (EALL) received a CEAS Field Research Grant to help support two months of research in China for his project, “On-Site Surveys of Bamboo Manuscripts and Burial Objects Unearthed from Middle Yangzi River Region (c.300 BCE-220 CE).”

To begin, could you please provide a brief summary of your research?

My research explores the intersection between materiality and textuality in the transitional intervals among the last three centuries BCE in China, a time when regional Chinese states/lord-doms were merged stepwise into an empire. Despite numerous large-scale wars en route to this emerging empire, I am fascinated by the way how different social groups interacted in a limited local society, and how they were drawn, without much violence, into the imperial “vortex” through writing and manuscript production. My project is thus aimed at understanding the sophisticated process by which such groups, while located in the periphery of “national events,” were synchronized and assimilated to imperial experience by a system of technologies, with writing being an indispensable constituent. Based on new mortuary data from recent Chinese archaeology, I have invested much effort in reconstructing the daily material life of these regional groups in order to analyze their cultural-behavioral patterns as well as self-identity and ethnicity. I also intend to compare the outcomes of my analysis with the narratives offered in manuscripts that happened to be discovered from these groups’ tombs. 

How did you first get interested in your topic of research?

For the past four years, I have participated broadly in surveys and excavations of sites that range from the Neolithic to the early imperial era, primarily in North China and Eastern Mongolia. Through dealing with both “talkative tombs” that yielded inscribed artifacts (e.g., inscribed bronze vessels) and “muted tombs” devoid of any text-loaded objects, I realized that a tomb could contain multiple voices, with each voice revealing either a whole different story, or just a different part of one story, about the life journeys of the dead. In other words, even if a lengthy buried text claims one thing, scrutiny of material evidence from relevant tomb(s) could allude to other lines of untold information—though they do not necessarily come into conflict. This tension of the prototypical oral testimony versus forensics in archaeological research has since captivated me. 

However, text and material are more often than not handled separately due to a (understandable) split between academic interest. To test the possibility of bringing the two sides together, I finally located the Middle Yangzi River region in South China. The water-logged environment of Middle Yangzi created an ideal condition for preserving a multitude of cemeteries from the period that I am studying, and quite a few of them contained bamboo/wooden manuscripts. The ancient cultural landscape of South China also confronted and complicated the perspectives that I had gained from my previous fieldwork in North China. Such complication motivated me to explore this topic further. 

What did you do for your summer project?

The CEAS Field Research Grant made it possible for me to travel to four Chinese cities: Wuhan, Jingzhou, Suizhou and Changsha. I completed four major tasks for my research with its support. 

First, thanks to the help from Hubei Provincial Museum, I successfully applied digital microscopic imaging to one scroll of bamboo-stripped manuscript (c. 244-217 BCE) kept in its storage house. Microscopic details show that the Qin-Han craftsmanship of writing medium made of bamboo tubes seems to have been far more intricate and labor-intensive than it was formerly estimated.

Second, I examined the use-wears of several important collections of artifacts excavated from major Chu, Qin and Han tombs in Hubei and Hu’nan provinces. I attempted to figure out how such objects had been exploited and appreciated in everyday life, and how cultural-religious meanings had been associated with them. 

Third, I contacted and talked to a group of frontline historians, epigraphers and archaeologists affiliated with Hubei Provincial Museum, Jingzhou City Museum, Yejiashan Bronze Conservation and Research Center, and Hu’nan Institute of Archaeology. I cherished the great opportunity to get to know their opinions while have my own thoughts communicated at the mean time.   

Fourth, I travelled to three large ancient walled settlements in the Middle Yangzi region for site surveys. The experience left me wondering how labor forces of the time were organized to build so many deep shaft-pit tombs and towering city walls. I was then allowed to visit a medium-sized construction site run by Dacheng Mingzuo. I learned from the first-line supervisor, Mr. Chen Yunfei, the mode of workforce management that prevails in today’s construction industry. Although I cannot transplant the modern model immediately to ancient societies, the visit provided a starting point for me to entertain how ancients might optimize their labor organization for big construction projects.

What would you say were the most interesting findings of your summer research? Were there any surprises?

I was profoundly amazed by the scientifically down-to-the-business manner in which Jingzhou City Museum presented a famous male corpse. Although I had known about this corpse for so long from photos in excavation reports, I was still visually overwhelmed by how well the tissues of his body had been preserved. Gazing at it in close distance from behind the window glass, I was also enabled to make sense of many details of its life aspects that otherwise I would not consider: This man died in the year of 167 BCE (as written in the tomb manuscript) over two thousand year ago. Autopsy results disclosed that he was in his 50s and had suffered from gastrointestinal perforation and gallbladder inflammation. Given that piles of fine lacquer wine vessels were buried for him, the man might have long indulged in banquets of binge drinking and eating. Meanwhile, a brush-pen, an ink-stone, a stationery knife and six blank tablets were found in his tomb, too. It constituted such an enlightening moment for me: I realized that literacy could be so simply embodied by an ancient whose private life did not always appear lofty and intellectual.

What was the most challenging part of your summer research?  Were you able to overcome these challenges?

The more challenging part was the heat wave. Both Wuhan and Changsha hold the reputation of “furnace cities” for summer: 104°F on average during my sojourn. I fought it by a large intake of a popular local beverage called “green-bean smoothies” (Chinese: lüdou shabing). Very effective. Recommend.

Another challenge was the change of local place names that happened during the past fifty years or so. Since archaeological sites are usually described by nearby villages and/or significant topographic features, such change posed referential difficulties for people like me: an outsider and first-time visitor, who collected a number of excavation reports published as early as 1950s. In addition, some toponyms did seem subject only to the emic knowledge of the locals. I also found that a set of principal landmarks labeled in excavation reports had either been modified or completely disappeared because of accelerated land exploitations. These facts reminded me the potential risk in transcribing sites defined by place names from, say, 1970s, to today’s map. To avoid the pitfalls, I always compared side by side old maps with three sources: today’s paper maps, Baidu Map and Google Earth. I actively double-checked with site archaeologists as well whenever I could. 

Now that you are back on campus, what is the next step for your research? 

I am currently organizing data from my field notebooks and adding captions to photos I took in museums. I plan to write one dissertation chapter based on the findings from this trip. I hope I can arrange another trip to Hubei next year, so as to catch up with new archaeological finds as well as share my own research.   

Do you have any words of advice for graduate students who plan to do research abroad next summer?

I would suggest that try to stay aware of those cultural phenomena that you find significant during your international research trip. By occasionally asking locals about them, you may obtain some unexpected and valuable information. Take as many photos as you are (legally and customarily) allowed. It can help document your trips much more efficiently. To keep diaries of the most important things you have observed and done is also a good idea. It will pay off months later when one begins to forget some crucial details from his/her dense trips, as it happened to me time and again. To sum up, be curious, be diligent. 

Photos from Dewei’s summer research trip are available here.