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COLOURING OUTSIDE THE LINES: METHODS FOR A GLOBAL HISTORY OF EASTERN EURASIA 600–1350

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 November 2019

Naomi Standen
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Abstract

We are still working out how to do global history, especially for pre-modern periods. How do we achieve the necessary shift in scale without falling back on standard definitions of categories like states, ethnicity, religion, urbanisation, when these are increasingly challenged at the specialist level? This article sets out an approach that could help pre-modern historians ‘going global’ to challenge claims that ‘there is no alternative’ to modern frameworks such as neoliberal economics, and especially the nation-state. Useful alternative techniques include thinking in layers rather than blocks, not seeking narrative arcs, and not using words like ‘China’. These methods are illustrated with analysis of three Liao dynasty (907–1125) cities and three comparators from neighbouring states to the north, south and east of the Liao. The intention is to disrupt the re-emergence in the new venue of global history of essentially national narratives, using the opportunities presented by pre-modern worlds before nation-states to free us from teleological concepts. This article argues that there is indeed an alternative to the putative precursors of modern nation-states, and offers a framework for doing without them.

Type
Research Article
Information
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 29 , December 2019 , pp. 27 - 63
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 2019 

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Footnotes

Thanks to the two audiences who heard earlier versions of this paper and asked helpful questions, at the Royal Historical Society and at a workshop on ‘Cities in the Eurasian Steppe 10–14th Century’, Bonn University, December 2018, organised by Jan Bemmann and Susanne Reichert; to Bob Moore and Chris Wickham; to Conrad Leyser for pinpoint suggestions at a crucial stage; and to my colleagues on the KLASH (Kitan Liao Archaeological Survey and History) project, who patiently tolerate the strange things a historian does with archaeological evidence: Gwen Bennett and Josh Wright, and our Ph.D. students Lance Pursey and Callan Ross-Shepard.

Research takes time, and I am grateful to all those who have given me some. The work and thinking for this paper benefited from an AHRC fellowship (2010–11) and a research network (2012–14). Field observations and discussions with archaeologists about city forms, functions and landscapes were enabled by an Insight Grant from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (2013–16, PI Gwen Bennett). The writing was done during parts of a visiting research fellowship at Jesus College, Oxford (2017–18) and a fellowship at the International Institute for Asian Studies, Leiden (2018–19). I offer deep thanks to both institutions for providing ideal circumstances in which to work effectively and recover the pleasures of academic research and community. Finally, the invitation from the RHS provided a valuable stimulus to pull together this aspect of my wider project.

References

1 ‘A Global History of Eastern Eurasia, 600–1350’, in A History of the World, ed. Jürgen Osterhammel and Akira Iriye, vol. 2: Multiple Medieval Worlds 600–1350 (Munich and Cambridge, MA), in preparation. Since this is an essay on methodology, ‘China’ will unavoidably come up occasionally, always in scare quotes.

2 A better term – and its accompanying concept – would be preferable, but pending their emergence, either of these suffices.

3 For historians troubled by the origins of their discipline as the handmaiden of nationalism, it is essential to write actively against the dangerous resurgence of nationalistic sentiment, action and policies around the world. The nineteenth-century concept of the nation-state has proved persistently powerful, but any positive aspects visible in the liberation movements that countered colonialism in the long twentieth century have long been overshadowed by the oppressions of powerful state actors wielding the same idea in – once again – increasingly pernicious ways.

4 I am indebted to the succinct and cogent distinctions made by Crossley, Pamela, What is Global History? (Cambridge, 2008)Google Scholar.

5 This approach is rooted in World Systems Analysis, starting with Wallerstein, Immanuel, The Modern World-System (2 vols., New York, 1974)Google Scholar. The term ‘global’ may also be rejected on exactly the same grounds (R. I. Moore, personal communication); the point, of course, is not the label but the definition.

6 Most notably, Pomeranz, Kenneth, The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy (Princeton, 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Ken Pomeranz also drew attention to the question of scale in his 2013 presidential address to the American Historical Association: ‘Histories for a Less National Age’, American Historical Review, 119 (2014), 1–22, https://academic.oup.com/ahr/article/119/1/1/20264 (accessed 11 January 2019).

8 For further comment in this vein see Holmes, Catherine and Standen, Naomi, ‘Introduction: Towards a Global Middle Ages’, in The Global Middle Ages, Past & Present, Supplement 13, ed. Holmes, Catherine and Standen, Naomi (Oxford, 2018), 1–44Google Scholar.

9 Braudel's environment–longue durée–événement division was not a direct influence on this framework, although it is entirely likely that my brain made subconscious connections. Braudel's schema concerned speeds of change over time, and mine seeks to reconfigure the lineaments of human praxis and the (largely material) worlds they inhabit. Braudel, Fernand, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, trans. Reynolds, Sian (2 vols., Berkeley, 1995)Google Scholar.

10 ‘The Chinese’ – or ‘the Han Chinese’ – is particularly problematical, and has latterly become subject to conceptual analysis: Critical Han Studies: The History, Representation, and Identity of China's Majority, ed. Thomas S. Mullaney, James Patrick Leibold, Stephane Gros and Eric Armand Vanden Bussche (Berkeley, 2012).

11 The relationship between the pre-modern Uyghurs and the modern Uyghurs of Xinjiang is a subject of considerable debate, inflected by the opposing political goals of the PRC government and Uyghur desires for greater autonomy.

12 Some claims have been made to ‘Kitan’ ethnicity in the PRC, but with little visible impact. Gwen Bennett, personal communication.

13 So far these questions have been insufficiently discussed in a historiography that has focused heavily on Sinitic literati elites. On one large literature see Hilde De Weerdt, ‘Recent Trends in American Research in Song Dynasty History: Local Religion and Political Culture’, in Taiwan Song shi yanjiu wang 臺灣宋史研究網, 1 February 2006: www.ihp.sinica.edu.tw/~twsung/breview/subpage/02/files/Recent_Trends_in_American_Research_in_Song_Dynasty_History.pdf.

14 The names include terms derived from different historical periods, deployed for their descriptive convenience. Use of regional names is already happening among Koreanists, Japanologists and local historians of the Song, among others, but the theoretical advantages have not been emphasised.

15 My inspiration here has been Bray, Francesca, Technology and Gender: Fabrics of Power in Late Imperial China (Berkeley, 1997), esp. 12–21Google Scholar.

16 Greene, Kevin, ‘Historiography and Theoretical Approaches’, in The Oxford Handbook of Engineering and Technology in the Classical World, ed. Oleson, John (Oxford, 2009), 73–84Google Scholar. In fact, I learned most about this from various conversations with Kevin over lunch: testament to the value of not eating at one's desk.

17 Scholars have sometimes written about parts of the region as if Buddhism did not exist, which has had a powerful distorting effect; see Sen, Tansen, ‘The “Decline” of Buddhism in China’, in Demystifying China: New Understandings of Chinese History, ed. Standen, Naomi (Lanham, 2013), 51–8Google Scholar.

18 Textiles more generally, together with their production methods, could potentially form a substrate, since clothing is an essential of human life. With thanks to Josh Wright, personal communication.

19 For example, flows of silk are a focus of works including Xinru, Liu, Silk and Religion: An Exploration of Material Life and the Thought of People, AD 600–1200 (Delhi, 1996)Google Scholar; Frances Wood, The Silk Road: Two Thousand Years in the Heart of Asia (2002). By contrast, Hansen, Valerie, The Silk Road: A New History (Oxford, 2012)Google Scholar, emphasises nodes of production, exchange and consumption.

20 Approaches of this kind are in the air at the moment. See, for instance, David Ambaras and Kate McDonald, ‘Bodies and Structures’, https://scalar.chass.ncsu.edu/bodies-and-structures/index (accessed 10 January 2019), among a diverse and rapidly growing collection of projects. With thanks to Gwen Bennett for the link. The mapping of thematic spatial information in the form of a separate layer for each variable (for example, rivers, contours, settlements, roof tiles, glazed potsherds, unglazed potsherds, least-cost routes, viewsheds) is the prime function of GIS (Geographical Information Systems), which enables sophisticated analysis of interactions between any selection of layers.

21 I have borrowed the term from Pomeranz, ‘Histories for a Less National Age’, 2.

22 See, for example, the Amsterdam University Press series on ‘Global Chinese Histories, 250–1650’, www.aup.nl/en/series/global-chinese-histories-250-1650 (accessed 11 January 2019).

23 The continuation of the attitude that non-Han people are in need of civilisation may be seen starkly at time of writing in the treatment of Uyghurs by the Chinese state. See, for instance, Joanne Smith Finley, www.chinafile.com/reporting-opinion/viewpoint/now-we-dont-talk-anymore (accessed 29 December 2018).

24 For the regions north of the line of the Great Wall – or as the texts more often put it, ‘north of the mountains’ – city forms and especially functions are only beginning to be examined in depth. A first comparative effort was the Bonn workshop on ‘Cities in the Eurasian Steppe 10–14th Century’, noted above.

25 The standard works in English are Twitchett, Denis and Tietze, Klaus-Peter, ‘The Liao’, in The Cambridge History of China, vol. 6: Alien Regimes and Border States, 907–1368, ed. Franke, Herbert and Twitchett, Denis (New York, 1994), 43–153CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Wittfogel, Karl and Chia-sheng, Feng, History of Chinese Society: Liao (907–1125) (Philadelphia, 1949)Google Scholar.

26 Lin, Hu, ‘Perceptions of Liao Urban Landscapes: Political Practices and Nomadic Empires’, Archaeological Dialogues, 18 (2011), 227CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 Greene, ‘Historiography and Theoretical Approaches’, 75, on the ‘technology shelf’.

28 See, for instance, Steinhardt, Nancy, Chinese Imperial City Planning (Honolulu, 1990), 29–36Google Scholar; Wheatley, Paul, Pivot of the Four Quarters (Edinburgh, 1971), 411Google Scholar and references.

29 Survival of organic material is of course rare, but there are multiple earlier examples in the Tarim basin, notably at Niya (introduced in Susan Whitfield, The Silk Road: Trade, Travel, War and Faith (2004), 170–3), and occasional other finds such as a door sill at Chintolgoi Balgas: Chintorugoi jōseki no kenkyū 2010 toshi chōsa hōkoku: Nara daigaku tokubetsu kenkyū ‘Mongoru Ryōdai jōkakutoshi no kōzo to kankyō hendō’ チントルゴイ城跡の研究2010年調査報告: 奈良大学特別研究「モンゴル遼代城郭都市の構造と環境変動」 [Research report of Liao Dynasty's castle town site Chintolgoi, Mongolia], comp. Senda Yoshihiro 千田嘉博 and Altangerel Enkhtur (Nara, 2011), 12–13, 31.

30 This term is increasingly used for the logographic written language used by literate elites from the Tarim to the Japanese archipelago and what is now Vietnam. This coexisted with numerous other scripts, written vernaculars and spoken languages.

31 A useful critical analysis of the Song administrative system in theory and practice is Mostern, Ruth, ‘Dividing the Realm in Order to Govern’: The Spatial Organization of the Song State (960–1276 CE) (Cambridge, MA, 2011), 35–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32 This is a general problem: ‘diversity of cities is neglected because only a few cases fit the prevailing models’: Making Ancient Cities: Space and Place in Early Urban Societies, ed. Andrew Creekmore and Kevin Fisher (Cambridge, 2014), 15.

33 Steinhardt, Nancy, ‘China’, in The Oxford Handbook of Cities in World History, ed. Clark, Peter (Oxford, 2013), 111Google Scholar.

34 Examples courtesy of my Ph.D. student, Lance Pursey.

35 Steinhardt, Chinese Imperial City Planning, 30–5.

36 Vividly described in Kiang, Heng Chye, Cities of Aristocrats and Bureaucrats: The Development of Medieval Chinese Cityscapes (Honolulu, 1999), 8–16Google Scholar.

37 Buddhism was sometimes seen or used as a challenge to orthodox ‘Confucian’ ideology. These relationships have attracted a huge literature, but are not my concern here.

38 Steinhardt, Chinese Imperial City Planning, passim.

39 Material analysis of what is clearly considerable diversity in city plans in the Yellow River valley, the Yangzi valley and the southern ports, among other places, is frequently hindered by the difficulty of retrieving historical ground plans from beneath modern urban centres.

40 The other was the Eastern Capital, Luoyang 洛陽, some 325 km downstream where the Luo and the Yellow Rivers meet.

41 Simultaneous multiple capitals were commonplace in polities across eastern Eurasia, including Goguryeo, Sui 隋 (581–618), Balhae, Uyghur Qocho, Later Liang 後梁 (907–923), Later Tang 後唐 (923–936), Goryeo, Jin 金 (1126–1234) and Yuan 元 (1260–1368). In the Japanese archipelago sequential transfer of a single capital to new locations was more usual.

42 For an account of different uses in different periods see Han Maoli 韩茂莉, Caoyuan yu tianyuan: Liao Jin shiqi Xi Liao he liuyu nongmuye yu huanjing 草原与田园 — 辽金时期西辽河流域农牧业与环境 [Pastureland and farmland: agriculture and pastoralism and the environment in the basin of the West Liao River in Liao and Jin times] (Beijing, 2006), 56–9. For location see Nei Menggu dongnanbu hangkong sheying kaogu baogao 内蒙古东南部航空摄影考古报告 [Report of aerial photographic archaeology in south-eastern Inner Mongolia], ed. Zhongguo lishi bowuguan yaogan yu hangkong sheying kaogu zhongxin 中国历史博物馆遥感与航空摄影考古中心 [National History Museum Archaeological Centre for Remote Sensing and Aerial Photography] and Nei Menggu Zizhiqu wenwu kaogu yanjiusuo 内蒙古自治区文物考古研究所 [Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region Cultural Relics and Archaeology Research Institute] (Beijing, 2002) [hereafter Aerial Photographic Archaeology], 96. For quotation reference see n. 45.

43 Different lengths have been recorded for the walls. See Steinhardt, Chinese Imperial City Planning, 126–7 and n. 12, and Conrad Leyser, Naomi Standen and Stephanie Wynne-Jones, ‘Settlement, Landscape and Narrative: What Really Happened in History’, in The Global Middle Ages, ed. Holmes and Standen, 251 n. 77.

44 Liao Zhongjing fajue weiyuanhui 辽中京发掘委员会 [Liao Zhongjing Excavation Committee], ‘Liao Zhongjing chengzhi fajue de zhongyao shouhuo’ 辽中京城址发掘的重要收获 [Important outcomes from the excavations of the site of the Liao Central Capital], Wenwu 文物 [Cultural Relics] (1961: 9) [hereafter ‘Important outcomes’], 35; Li Yiyou 李逸友, ‘Liaodai chengshi he minyong jianzhu’ 辽代城市和民用建筑 [Liao cities and commoner buildings], Zhongguo kaogu jicheng (dongbei juan) 中国考古集成 (东北卷) [Collected archaeology of China (North-east)], ed. Sun Jinyi 孙进己, Feng Yongqian 馮永谦 and Su Tianjue 苏天钧 (Beijing, 1997), repr. Dongbei Liaodai gucheng yanjiu huibian 东北辽代古城研究汇编 [Compilation of research on Liao cities in the North-east], ed. Wang Yulang 王禹浪, Xue Zhiqiang 薛志強, Wang Hongbei 王宏北 and Wang Wenyi 王文軼 (Harbin, 2007), 87.

45 Liao shi 遼史 [History of the Liao Dynasty], comp. Toghto 脫脫 et al. (Beijing, 1974), 39: 481–2, trans. Wittfogel and Feng, History of Chinese Society, 371. The transliteration of Chinese has been changed to pinyin and the capitalisation regularised. In preparing this paper I have not had access to the new edition of the text: Zhonghua shuju, 2016.

46 Aerial Photographic Archaeology, 96–113; ‘Important outcomes’; Liao Zhongjing fajue weiyuanhui, ‘Neimenggu fajue Liao Zhongjing “Zijincheng” faxian xuduo zhongyao yiji yiwu’ 内蒙古发掘辽中京“紫金[sic]城”发现许多重要遗迹遗物 [Excavations of the ‘Forbidden City’ of the Liao Central Capital in Inner Mongolia discover much of archaeological importance], Wenwu (1960: 2), 77.

47 Liao shi, j. 32, with selected translations in Wittfogel and Feng, History of Chinese Society, 131–4.

48 The relative political status of Buddhism for the Tang and Liao emperors has yet to be systematically explored, but some issues have been set out for the subsequent period by Jesse Sloane, ‘Contending States and Religious Orders in North China and in East Asian Context, 906–1260’ (Ph.D. thesis, Princeton University, 2010), esp. chs. 3–4.

49 Gu Zhoujie 贾洲杰, ‘Liao Jin Yuan shidai Nei Menggu diqu de chengshi he chengshi jingji’ 辽金元时代内蒙古地区的城市和城市经济 [Cities and their economies in the Inner Mongolia region in the Liao, Jin and Yuan], Nei Menggu daxue xuebao 内蒙古大学学报 [Journal of Inner Mongolia University] (1991: 4), repr. Dongbei Liaodai gucheng, ed. Wang et al., 370.

50 Ibid., 369.

51 Liao shi, j. 1: 12, 37: 437–42, partly trans. Wittfogel and Feng, History of Chinese Society, 367–70. The official in charge, Kang Moji 康默記, has a biography at Liao shi, 74: 1230.

52 Han Yanhui 韓延徽 is given general credit for these developments without association with any named place: Liao shi, 74: 1231 and others, see Standen, Unbounded Loyalty: Frontier Crossings in Liao China (Honolulu, 2007), 110 and references. Aerial Photographic Archaeology, 82, makes him responsible for the 926 expansion, but there is no evidence for this. Han Maoli offers extensive analysis of the population transfer in Caoyuan yu tianyuan, 8–55.

53 The story may be pieced together: The Cambridge History of China, vol. 3: Sui and T'ang China, 589–906, ed. Denis Twitchett and John Fairbank (Cambridge, 1979), 174–7, 186–95, 258, 277, 356–8, 392, 395, 399–400, 420, 475, 479; Zhang, Ling, The River, the Plain, and the State: An Environmental Drama in Northern Song China, 1048–1128 (Cambridge, 2016), 31–3, 37, 46–7, 73–90, 93–6, 110–11, 127–41, 167–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

54 Standen, Unbounded Loyalty, appendix: Frontier crossings arranged by date, #1–22.

55 To avoid reinforcing ethnic assumptions for an anglophone audience, I will retain the transliteration for this feature rather than using a translation.

56 Aerial Photographic Archaeology, 84.

57 Hu Lin, ‘Urban Landscape and Politics: The Making of Liao Cities in Southeast Inner Mongolia’, 2 vols. (Ph.D. thesis, University of Chicago, 2009), 157.

58 Aerial Photographic Archaeology, 88.

59 Zhongguo Shehuikexueyuan kaogu yanjiusuo Nei Menggu di er gongzuodui 中国社会科学院考古研究所内蒙古第二工作队 [The Inner Mongolia Second Work Team of the Institute or Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences] and Nei Menggu Wenwu kaogu yanjiusuo 内蒙古文物考古研究所 [Inner Mongolia Archaeology and Cultural Relics Research Institute], ‘Nei Mengguo Balinzuoqi Liao Shangjing gongcheng chengqiang 2014 nian fajue jianbao’ 内蒙古巴林左旗辽上京宫城城墙2014年发掘简报 [Brief report on the 2014 excavations of the walls of the Palace City at Liao Shangjing in Balinzuoqi, Inner Mongolia], Kaogu 考古 [Archaeology] (2015: 12), 78.

60 Neimenggu zizhiqu wenwuju 内蒙古自治区文物局 [Inner Mongolia Cultural Relics Bureau], Neimenggu wenwu gailan 内蒙古文物概览 [Overview of Inner Mongolian Cultural Relics] (Hohhot: Neimenggu zizhiqu wenwuju, 2007) [hereafter Neimenggu wenwu gailan], 53.

61 Aerial Photographic Archaeology, 94.

62 Lin, ‘Urban Landscape and Politics’, 224 and reference, noting that details are yet to be published.

63 Gu, ‘Liao Jin Yuan shidai Nei Menggu de chengshi’, 367–8.

64 See nn. 51–2.

65 Standen, Unbounded Loyalty, is one example, but this is a growing field of enquiry.

66 The structure of authority over the surrounding districts is set out conveniently in Wittfogel and Feng, History of Chinese Society, 62–5.

67 Lin, ‘Urban Landscape and Politics’.

68 See also Hordern, Peregrine and Purcell, Nicholas, The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History (Oxford, 2000), 89–122Google Scholar.

69 Not ‘the Uyghurs’, see above, p. 31. The Khaghanate was a multi-ethnic political formation like any other imperial polity.

70 Waugh, Daniel C., ‘Nomads and Settlement: New Perspectives in the Archaeology of Mongolia’, The Silk Road, 8 (2010), 103Google Scholar, and references cited there.

71 Ibid., 100–11 passim.

72 Rogers, J. Daniel, Ulambayar, Erdenebat and Gallon, Mathew, ‘Urban Centres and the Emergence of Empires in Eastern Inner Asia’, Antiquity, 79 (2005), 804CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

73 Lucie Šmahelová, ‘Kül-Tegin Monument: Turkic Khaganate and Research of the First Czechoslovak–Mongolian Expedition in Khöshöö Tsaidam 1958’ (Ph.D. thesis, Charles University, Prague, 2014), 25.

74 See LiDAR in Roth, Helmut, Èrdènèbat, Ulambaâr, Pohl, Ernst and Nagel, Eva, Qara Qorum-City (Mongolia) I, Preliminary Report of the Excavations 2000/2001 (Bonn, 2002)Google Scholar, plate XXII; and plan in Rogers et al., ‘Urban Centres’, 804.

75 Dähne, Burkart and Ulambayar, Erdenebat, ‘Archaeological Excavations in Karabalgasun by K. Maskov during Kotwicz's Expedition of 1912: A New Contribution to the Research History of the Capital of the Eastern Uighur Khaganate’, in In the Heart of Mongolia: 100th Anniversary of W. Kotwicz's Expedition to Mongolia in 1912, Studies and Selected Source Materials, ed. Tulisow, Jerzy, Inoue, Osamu, Bareja-Starzynska, Agata and Dziurzynska, Ewa (Cracow, 2012) (column bases)Google Scholar; Waugh, ‘Nomads and Settlement’, 103 (bricks); Bemmann, Jan, Lehndorff, Eva, Klinger, Riccardo, Linzen, Sven, Munkhbayar, Lkhagvardorj, Oczipka, Martin, Piezonka, Henny and Reichert, Susanne, ‘Biomarkers in Archaeology: Land Use around the Uyghur Capital Karabalgasun, Orkhon Valley, Mongolia’, Praehistorische Zeitschrift, 89 (2014), 348–9Google Scholar (ceramics).

76 Minorsky, Vladimir, ‘Tamīm ibn Bahr's Journey to the Uyghurs’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 12 (1948), esp. 283CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bemmann et al., ‘Biomarkers’.

77 Earlier archaeology confirmed cereal agriculture in places such as Tuva in north-western Mongolia, together with the corollary millstones, pestles and irrigation canals: Mackerras, Colin, ‘The Uighurs’, in The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia, ed. Sinor, Denis (Cambridge, 1990), 337Google Scholar, citing Russian archaeological work. The inhabitants of ninth-century Qocho practised the oasis agriculture suited to their environment (Golden, Peter B., An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples: Ethnogenesis and State-Formation in Medieval and Early Modern Eurasia and the Middle East (Wiesbaden, 1992), 171Google Scholar and references in note), but those at Ordu Baliq did not, being in a different environment again.

78 Bemmann et al., ‘Biomarkers’. Bemmann notes (340) that two significant instances of cereal pollen from the Orkhon lowlands south of Karakorum give some support to textual claims of good harvests along the Orkhon, referring to Lehmkuhl, Frank, Hilgers, Alexandra, Fries, Susanne, Hülle, Daniela, Schlütz, Frank, Shumilovskikh, Lyudmila, Felauer, Thomas and Protze, Jens, ‘Holocene Geomorphological Processes and Soil Development as Indicator for Environmental Change around Karakorum, Upper Orkhon Valley (Central Mongolia)’, Catena, 87 (2011), 31–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and to Wittfogel and Feng, History of Chinese Society, 556. The translation states that the relevant section speaks of 982–1013, but the original passage sits between incidents dated to 1006 and the reign era 1032–55: Liao shi, 91: 1362.

79 The scanty evidence gives no indication of an administration focused on taxing farmers. Administrative experience and models came mainly from Sogdians, accustomed to organising trade networks rather than pursuing the Sinitic view that cereal agriculture was the moral and fiscal basis of the state. The Khaghanate's main revenue streams appear to have been tariffs on the oasis trade in the Tarim, and annual Tang payments in the shape of the purchase of tens of thousands of overpriced horses, some suitable for military use but also many nags. Mackerras, ‘The Uighurs’, 338 and references; Golden, Introduction, 159–61, who notes that the early empire already controlled Ferghana.

80 We cannot tell if there was a break in usage or not. Denzh, Khermen: Kradin, Nikolay N., Ivliev, Aleksandr L., Ochir, Ayudai, Erdenebold, Lkhagvasuren, Vasiutin, Sergei, Satantseva, Svetlana and Kovychev, Evgenii V., ‘Khermen Denzh Town in Mongolia’, The Silk Road, 13 (2015), 97Google Scholar.

81 Korean: Hwando.

82 Neimenggu wenwu gailan, 60.

83 Lin, ‘Urban Landscape and Politics’, 156 and references (dense housing); Wittfogel and Feng, History of Chinese Society, 63.

84 Neimenggu wenwu gailan, 60.

85 Liao shi, 37: 442.

86 Steinhardt, Nancy, ‘Shishi: A Stone Structure Associated with Abaoji in Zuzhou’, Asia Major, 3rd series, 19 (2006), 241–66Google Scholar, with plan at 242. Scholarship thus far does not seem to have made much of this shared alignment.

87 Josh Wright has developed a strong opinion that this is the tomb chamber for an unbuilt royal tomb, due to the way its interior is smoothed and polished like other tomb chambers (personal communication). On the basis of the available neighbouring tomb traditions, this hypothesis implies that a huge mound of earth or possibly stone (see below) would have been planned to be constructed over the chamber.

88 Steinhardt, ‘Shishi’, 246–8.

89 Gu, ‘Liao Jin Yuan shidai Nei Menggu de chengshi’, 371; Lin, ‘Urban Landscape and Politics’, 224–5 and Liao shi, 37: 442.

90 Aerial Photographic Archaeology, 122.

91 Personal observation, 1991–2014; Neimenggu wenwu gailan, 60.

92 For urban sites in this period see Zhongguo lishi ditu ji 6 – Song, Liao, Jin 中国历史地图集6—宋辽金时期, ed. Tan Qixiang 谭其骧 et al. (Shanghai: Ditu chubanshe, 1982), pp. 8–9 (Liao Dongjing, the Eastern Capital).

93 Aerial Photographic Archaeology, 114.

94 Dianfu, Li 李殿福, ‘Gaogouli Wandu shancheng’ 高句丽丸都山城 [Wandu mountain city in Goguryeo], Wenwu (1982: 6), 84Google Scholar; Cuncheng, Wei 魏存成, ‘Gaogouli chuzhongqi de ducheng’ 高句丽初中期的都城 [Capital cities of early and middle Goguryeo], Beifang wenwu 北方文物 [Northern Cultural Relics] (1985: 2), 33Google Scholar. There is some debate about which of the mountain or downstream sites was referred to by this name: Weiran, Sun 孙炜冉, ‘Gaogouli “Weina yancheng” kaobian’ 高句丽‘尉那岩城’考辨 [The identification of the ‘Weina cliff city’ in Goguryeo], Beifang wenwu (2017: 1), 77–81Google Scholar.

95 Dawei, Chen 陈大为, ‘Liaoning Gaogouli shancheng zai tan’ 辽宁高句丽山城再探 [Further discussion of the Goguryeo mountain cities in Liaoning], Beifang wenwu (1995: 3), table 60–3Google Scholar.

96 Ibid.

97 Liu Xiaoxi 刘晓溪, Jiang Ming 姜铭 and Pauline Sebillaud, ‘Yanbian zhou Liao Jin shiqi chengzhi ji qi fenbu qingkuang gaishu’ 延边州辽金时期城址及其分布情况概述 [An overview of Yanbian region Liao and Jin cities and their distribution], Kaogu yu wenwu 考古与文物 [Archaeology and Cultural Relics] (2015: 2), esp. appended map.

98 Chen, ‘Liaoning Gaogouli shancheng’, 60–3; Mianhou, Wang 王綿厚, Gaogouli gucheng yanjiu 高句麗古城研究 [Research on ancient Goguryeo cities] (Beijing: Wenwu chubanshe, 2002), ch. 5, 67ffGoogle Scholar. (mountain); 138ff. (plain).

99 Wang, Gaogouli gucheng, pp. 54, 49ff.

100 Li, ‘Gaogouli Wandu shancheng’, 83. Mamian appear to be a later feature: Wang, Gaogouli gucheng, 165.

101 Chen, ‘Liaoning Gaogouli shancheng’, 60–3.

102 Li, ‘Gaogouli Wandu shancheng’, 84.

103 Heilongjiang sheng Wenwu kaogu yanjiusuo 黑龙江省文物考古研究所 [Heilongjiang Provincial Cultural Relics and Archaeology Research Institute], Bohai Shangjing cheng: 1998–2007 niandu kaogu fajue diaocha baogao 渤海上京城: 1998–2007 年度考古发掘调查报告 [Balhae Shangjing: Report on Archaeological Excavation and Survey, 1999–2007], (3 vols., Beijing, 2009), 634.

104 Wang, Gaogouli gucheng, 168, 170.

105 The geographical treatise in the twelfth-century Samguk sagi, j. 37 essentially lists only place names, with almost no discursive text. Kim Pu-shik 金富軾, Samguk sagi 三國史記 [History of the Three Kingdoms] (Seŏul, 1977).

106 Wang, Gaogouli gucheng, 38ff.; Wei, ‘Gaogouli chuzhongqi de ducheng’, 35. On Tang: Chen, ‘Liaoning Gaogouli shancheng’, 60; K'uan-chung, Huang and Wright, David, ‘Mountain Fortress Defence: The Experience of the Southern Song and Korea in Resisting the Mongol Invasions’, Warfare in Chinese History, ed. Van de Ven, Hans (Leiden, 2000), 222–51Google Scholar.

107 The best known of the slab tombs is Accompanying Burial #1 of the ‘General's Tomb’.

108 This term comes from Ph.D. work by Lance Pursey.

109 Since the textual sources for eastern Eurasia are overwhelmingly in Sinitic, which was produced very largely by literate elites educated in the associated ideological, conceptual and literary tradition, and since those sources have been interpreted predominantly from perspectives similar or sympathetic to the concerns of those literate elites, the term ‘hegemonic’ appears to be justified.