Writing and Materiality in Ancient China: The Textual Culture of the Mawangdui Tombs (Tang Center Series in Early China) - Image 1

£39.90

Columbia University Press Writing and Materiality in Ancient China: The Textual Culture of the Mawangdui Tombs (Tang Center Series in Early China)

Name: Writing and Materiality in Ancient China: The Textual Culture of the Mawangdui Tombs (Tang Center Series in Early China)
Brand: Columbia University Press
Price: 39.9 GBP
Availability: InStock

China

Price History & Forecast

Last 21 days • 21 data points (No recent data available)

Historical

Generating forecast...

Price Distribution

Price distribution over 21 days • 1 price levels

Days at Price

Price Analysis

Most common price: £40 (21 days, 100.0%)

Price range: £40 - £40

Price levels: 1 different prices over 21 days

Description

Excavations at the famous Mawangdui tomb site in south-central China (early to mid-second century BCE) have unearthed many kinds of writing, including documents made of silk, wood, and bamboo as well as a wide range of inscribed artifacts. This book is an interdisciplinary study of these varied forms of writing, exploring the different roles that texts played in the lives and afterlives of Chinese elites during the Han dynasty. Examining documents and artifacts from the Mawangdui tombs in comparative perspective, Luke Waring demonstrates that early Chinese writing should be understood as part of the material and visual cultures of its time. Written texts were used to do more than simply preserve and transmit important information: they were also work tasks, storage items, performance aids, apotropaic talismans, aesthetically pleasing patterns, display pieces, possessions, and burial objects. Writing was even integrated into older, perhaps more powerful modes of cultural expression such as ritual performance and material display. Waring argues that manuscripts and inscribed objects were always things, artifacts that had powerful effects on the world that created them. Comprehensively researched and lavishly illustrated, Writing and Materiality in Ancient China offers a new understanding of the textual cultures of the early Western Han.

Product Specifications

Brand: Columbia University Press
Format: hardcover
ASIN: 0231219563
Category: Books > Subjects > History > Ancient History & Civilisation > China
Domain: Amazon UK
Release Date: 23 December 2025
Listed Since: 18 April 2025

Barcode

No barcode data available

Columbia University Press Writing and Materiality in Ancient China: The Textual Culture of the Mawangdui Tombs (Tang Center Series in Early China)

Price History & Forecast

Price Distribution

Price Analysis

Description

Product Specifications

Barcode

Similar Products You Might Like

Material Culture, Power, and Identity in Ancient China

Bone, Bronze, and Bamboo: Unearthing Early China with Sarah Allan (SUNY series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture)

Death in Ancient China: The Tale of One Man's Journey: 8 (China Studies, 8)

Early Chinese Medical Literature

Writing the Dead: Death and Writing Strategies in the Western Tradition (Figurae: Reading Medieval Culture)

The Oracle Bone Inscriptions from Huayuanzhuang East: Translated with an Introduction and Commentary: 3 (Library of Sinology [LOS], 3)

Early Chinese Medical Literature (Sir Henry Wellcome Asian Series, V. 2)

Fanshan Royal Cemetery: Pyramid of the East (Liangzhu Civilization)

Many Worlds Under One Heaven: Material Culture, Identity, and Power in the Northern Frontiers of the Western Zhou, 1045–771 BCE (Tang Center Series in Early China)

The Ancient Highlands of Southwest China (Oxford Studies in the Archaeology of Ancient States): From the Bronze Age to the Han Empire

A Short History of Paper in Imperial China: 31 (Studies in Manuscript Cultures, 31)

Material Aspects of Letter Writing in the Graeco-Roman World: c. 500 BC - c. AD 300 (Materiale Textkulturen): 12

Between Artifacts and Texts: Historical Archaeology in Global Perspective (Contributions To Global Historical Archaeology)

The Art of Terrestrial Diagrams in Early China

Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching: A Translation of the Startling New Documents Found at Guodian (Translations from the Asian Classics)

The Materiality of Writing: A Trace Making Perspective (Routledge Studies in Multimodality)

Classical Chinese Literature – An Anthology of Translations – From Antiquity to the Tang Dynasty Volume 1: 01

Routledge Material Culture and Asian Religions: Text, Image, Object

Translating Chinese Tradition and Teaching Tangut Culture: Manuscripts and Printed Books from Khara-Khoto: 6 (Studies in Manuscript Cultures, 6)

Routledge - Art and Archaeology of Bodily Adornment Book

Routledge Handbook of Early Chinese History

Excavated Texts and a New Portrait of the Early Confucians

The Meanings of Things: Material Culture and Symbolic Expression (One World Archaeology)

The Burial Record of Prehistoric Liangshan in Southwest China: Graves as Composite Objects