INTRODUCTION TO ARCHAEOLOGY Nancy White - Touro Institute

dynasty, conquest of many regions led to the first imperial state (221 B.C.), with the capital at
Xianyang. The Great Wall was completed on the northern border, the legal system codified and
writing system standardized, and paper was invented. The first emperor’s tomb was built over
many decades; it covered a 500-acre complex and contained some 8,000 life-sized terra-cotta
figures of warriors and horses with wooden chariots, arrayed for battle with thousands of swords
and other artifacts. Clearly there was enormous
sociopolitical stratification.
Where else did states emerge in the world? Nearly
everywhere, eventually, as secondary states built upon
or were influenced by earlier forms. We will not have
time in this class to discuss the Mediterranean, Rome,
or Greece, not to mention Southeast Asia and other
locales, though these places have rich archaeological
records as well.
Why are west and south African sites included in the
textbook but not other places? Probably because subsaharan
Africa is still ignored, just like all of eastern
South America and much of Southeast Asia, in
standard courses and textbooks. These regions are all
hot and forested, and/or in the Southern Hemisphere,
and still relatively alien to Western culture. But there
is much to learn, and we can now abandon the
ethnocentric interpretations of the past that saw
development of cultural complexity as the product of
diffusion from external, more superior cultures. The
city of Jenne-jeno, inland on the Niger River in
southwestern Mali, had been settled for a millennium
when it became prominent around A.D. 800 as a trade and ironworking center, declining after the
arrival of Arab traders and the introduction of Islam.
The civilization represented at Great Zimbabwe in
south central Africa is now recognized as a product of
the indigenous Shona (Karanga) people. Beginning
about A.D. 1250, enormous stone structures and
enclosures were built into the natural rock outcrops
and on the open plain. The conical tower is solid and
of unknown function. This center and others grew in
power, with cattle herding and commercial
connections with Indian Ocean settlements, including
trade with Arab and Indian merchants. Its importance
declined after the sixteenth century, when the
Portuguese established a fort on the coast and disrupted trade. The name of the site became the
name of the country after colonial dominance was thrown off and Rhodesia became Zimbabwe.
The famous stylized depiction of a bird, from stone statues at this and other sites, is now on the