Abstract: Writing and the City in Early China

Lecturer: Haicheng Wang

This lecture will use the Huanbei and Yinxu (Xiaotun) sites—two large cities that were built and abandoned in succession, from the fourteenth century to the eleventh century BC, on opposite sides of the Huan River at modern Anyang—as case studies for exploring the urbanization process in early China and the uses of writing that accompanied it.