Archaeology

Feng Li

Feng Li

Professor of Early Chinese History and Archaeology

Office: 422 Kent
Office Hours: R 10:00-12:00
Phone: (212) 854-2510
Email: fl123@columbia.edu

Educational Background

MA: Institute of Archaeology (’86)
PhD: University of Chicago (’00)

Research Interests

Early Chinese Archaeology, Bronze-Age Cultures, Early Imperialisms, History of Literacy

Professor Li received his MA from the Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. He also did Ph.D. work in the University of Tokyo (1991). He is both a historian of Early China specializing in bronze inscriptions of the Shang-Zhou period, and an active field archaeologist. His past work has addressed the complex relationship between geography and political processes in the collapse of a prominent Bronze-Age state, and the performance of the earliest bureaucracy in China and the nature of the early Chinese state. His recent publications include Writing and Literacy in Early China (co-edited with David Branner; UW Press, forthcoming) and Early China: A Social and Cultural History (Cambridge, 2013).

Professor Li’s work engages both epigraphic-textual and material evidence and offers question-led interpretations of Bronze-Age society and culture in comparative frameworks. He directed Columbia’s first archaeological field project in China in 2006-2011, and is currently preparing for publication the project’s bilingual monographic report: Guicheng: A Study of the Formation of States on the Jiaodong Peninsula in Late Bronze-Age China, 1000-500 BCE. He founded and has co-chaired the Columbia Early China Seminar since 2002. See his personal website for a fuller list of publications.

Selected Publications

Early China: A Social and Cultural History (Cambridge, 2013)

Bureaucracy and the State in Early China: Governing the Western Zhou (Cambridge, 2008)

Landscape and Power in Early China: The Crisis and Fall of the Western Zhou 1045-771 BC (Cambridge, 2006)

Agnes Hsu-Tang

Agnes Hsu-Tang

ACTING DIRECTOR, TANG CENTER FOR EARLY CHINA, ADJUNCT ASSOCIATE RESEARCH SCHOLAR

Educational Background

BA: Bryn Mawr College
MA: University of Pennsylvania
PhD: University of Pennsylvania (’04)

Trained as an art historian and archaeologist, Agnes Hsu-Tang is an international cultural heritage policy advisor. From 2006 to 2013, Agnes served on UNESCO World Heritage Centre’s scientific committees and participated on three missions to Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Western China; she spoke at international conferences and authored a white paper on the multi-national nominations of the Qhapag Ñan and the Continental Silk Road (Chang’an to Tianshan Corridor), both of which received UNESCO designations in 2014.  From 2013 to 2014, Agnes advised the United States Cultural Property Advisory Committee on the renewal of the bilateral agreement with China to reduce the illicit trafficking of cultural objects. Prior to graduate school, Agnes was the special assistant to James R. Lilley in Washington D.C., who had served previously as the US ambassador to China (1989-91) and Korea (1986-89).

Her recent scholarly contributions include two exhibitions, “Chinese in America: Exclusion/Inclusion” at the New-York Historical Society (2014-15), and “China’s Lost Civilization: The Mystery of Sanxingdui” at the Bowers Museum (2014-15).  She also contributed to the dramaturgy of a new opera, Paradise Interrupted, which premiered at the 2015 Spoleto USA and 2016 Lincoln Center Festival.  Trained as a Classical musician, Dr. Hsu-Tang made her debut at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in 1989.

Since 2008, Dr. Hsu-Tang has worked with television networks to develop public programs on Chinese archaeology, history, and art. Agnes is the bi-lingual host and narrator of two award-winning documentary series, Mysteries of China on History Channel Asia (2011-2013) and Chineseness on Discovery Channel Asia (2014-2015); the latter premiered during the 2014 Art Basel Hong Kong at the Asia Society Hong Kong Center. Her previous TV credits include “The Giant Buddha at Leshan” (2009) and “Xi’an: China’s Forgotten City” (2010) on Discovery USA, “China’s Terracotta Warriors” on PBS (2011), and Mankind: The Story of All of Us series on History Channel (2012).  Agnes will appear in a forthcoming international series on the Silk Road.

Dr. Hsu-Tang serves on the Board of Overseers at the University of Pennsylvania’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and on the Director’s Council at the Institute of the Study of the Ancient World at NYU.  She also serves on the advisory boards at the Peabody Institute of Archaeology at Phillips Academy Andover and the Institute of International Education.  Agnes chairs the Global Council on Arts and Culture at the Asia Society and its inaugural New York Asian Art Triennial in 2020.

Agnes is a Trustee of the New-York Historical Society, where she chairs the Exhibitions Committee and serves on the Executive Committee.  She received the Society’s Medal of Merit for Public Engagement in 2018.  Agnes is also a Managing Director on the board of the Metropolitan Opera.

Selected Publications

“A Tomb with A View: Axonometry and Concept of Domain in Early Chinese Cartography” (forthcoming)

“Structured Perceptions of Real and Imagined Landscapes in Early Imperial China” in Geography, Ethnography, and Perceptions of the World from Antiquity to the Renaissance (Oxford, 2009)

“An Emic Perspective of the Ancient Mapmaker’s Art” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (Cambridge, 2007)

The Exceptional Universal Value of the Road Systems in Ancient Empires: A Comparative Study of the Chinese Oasis Route of the Early Silk Road and the Qhapag Ñan (UNESCO, 2006)

Jue Guo

Jue Guo

Assistant Professor; Co-Chair, Columbia Early China Seminar

Office: 317 Milbank Hall
Office Hours: W 4:00-6:00 or by appointment
Phone: (212) 854-9538
Email: jguo@barnard.edu

Educational Background

BA: Beijing University (’01)
MA: University of Wisconsin-Madison (’03)
PhD: University of Wisconsin-Madison (’08)

Classes Taught

ASCE UN1359 Introduction to East Asian Civilizations: China
AH UN1400 Colloquium on Major Texts: East Asia
HSEA GR9844 Archaeology of Everyday Lifeworld in Early China

Research Interests

Cultural Archaeology, Religion, Society, and Material Culture in Early and Medieval China, Funerary Rituals and Burial Practices, Microhistory and Object Biographies

I specialize in Early China, especially from the Warring States period to Han times (5th century B.C.E.-3rd century C.E.). My research interests are primarily in ritual practices, material culture, and social, religious, and cultural history of early societies. Using both received history and archaeological sources, I am interested in looking at the intersection and interaction between writing and object, and studying topics including divination, sacrifice, spirits, the dead and death rituals, tombs and burials, and everyday life in early to medieval China from anthropological and historical perspectives, as well as the way they are theorized in comparative studies.

I am currently finishing my first book manuscript, titled A Life on Display: Reconstructing the Worlds of a Chu Official in Early China, an attempt at providing a microhistorical and biographical account of an individual from Early China. I examine how this fourth-century B.C.E. high-ranking minister of the Warring States Kingdom of Chu, Shao Tuo, navigated and negotiated the social, political, personal, and religious realms of his lifeworlds, using the materials excavated from his intact tomb, known as the Baoshan Tomb 2 (dated to 316 B.C.E.) in combination with other archaeological sources and received literature.

Concurrently I am also working a few article-length studies of figurative representations from Neolithic to Medieval China; funerary talismanic objects from 5th century B.C.E. to 5th century C.E. China, and the concepts of and practices regarding the dead in ancient China.

Selected Publications

A Life of Display: Reconstructing the Worlds of a Chu Official in Early China (forthcoming)

“‘Knowledge of Death’ and ‘Serving the Dead’ in Qin and Han Excavated Texts: A Preliminary Analysis Based on ‘Frame works’ and a Methodological Discussion” (2013, in Chinese)

“Concepts of Death and the Afterlife Reflected in Newly Discovered Tomb Objects and Texts from Han China” (2011)