This book explores the roles of agricultural development and advancing social complexity in the processes of state formation in China. Over a period of about 10,000 years, it follows evolutionary trajectories of society from the last Paleolithic hunting-gathering groups, through Neolithic farming villages, and on to the Bronze Age Shang dynasty in the latter half of the second millennium BC. Li Liu and Xingcan Chen demonstrate that sociopolitical evolution was multicentric and shaped by inter-polity factionalism and competition, as well as by the many material technologies introduced from other parts of the world. The book illustrates how ancient Chinese societies were transformed during this period from simple to complex, tribal to urban, and preliterate to literate.

Li Liu is Sir Robert Ho Tung Professor in Chinese Archaeology in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Stanford University, California. She is the author of two books, The Chinese Neolithic: Trajectories to Early States and (with Xingcan Chen) State Formation in Early China, as well as more than seventy journal articles in both English and Chinese.

Xingcan Chen is Senior Fellow and Deputy Director of the Institute of Archaeology at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences as well as Professor in the Department of Archaeology, Graduate School, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. He is the author of numerous articles and books, including The History of Chinese Prehistoric Archaeology (1895-1949), Essays on Archaeology and (with Li Liu) State Formation in Early China.