Data download: All 38 Chinese sites with per-site source attribution, coordinates, period classification, and importance weighting.
early-states-sites.csv ·
early-states-sites.xlsx (includes methodology sheet with full source abbreviation key)
Global comparative overlay (toggle in panel, off by default): 16 earliest urban centers worldwide, classified by whether they conform to or complicate Robert Carneiro's (1970) environmental circumscription thesis. Carneiro argued that the first states and cities formed where agricultural populations were compressed into fertile pockets bounded by desert, mountains, or sea, preventing dispersal and forcing densification and social stratification. The thesis fits Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Indus, and the Andes well. It is weaker for China, where several major early urban centers (Erlitou, Zhengzhou, Shimao) formed on open plains or steppe frontiers rather than in circumscribed pockets. The "open terrain" sites (blue diamonds) represent cases where urbanization occurred without clear geographic bounding, suggesting that competitive interstate dynamics and steppe-frontier pressures may matter as much as environmental compression.
Diamond markers distinguish global sites from Chinese period sites (circles). Sources: Carneiro (1970); Algaze (2008); Trigger (2003); Liu & Chen (2012); Shaughnessy (1999).
Sources: Each site is attributed to specific chapters in the works below. See the Excel methodology sheet for the full per-site citation table.
Li Liu & Xingcan Chen, The Archaeology of China: From the Late Paleolithic to the Early Bronze Age (Cambridge, 2012). Primary source for Neolithic through Late Shang sites; chapter-level citations in data file.
Li Liu, The Chinese Neolithic: Trajectories to Early States (Cambridge, 2005). Chs. 6–7: Longshan walled towns, Liangzhu jade complex, regional culture distributions.
Li Feng, Early China: A Social and Cultural History (Cambridge, 2013). Chs. 4–5, 8–9: Western Zhou capitals, fiefdom network, Warring States transformation.
Li Feng, Bureaucracy and the State in Early China: Governing the Western Zhou (Cambridge, 2009). Chs. 2–3: twin capital administration, Eight Armies garrison at Chengzhou.
Zhao Dinxin, The Confucian-Legalist State: A New Theory of Chinese History (Cambridge, 2015). Chs. 3–6: Warring States political economy, Qin Legalist centralization.
The Cambridge History of Ancient China, eds. M. Loewe and E. Shaughnessy (Cambridge, 1999). Chs. 2–4, 6, 12: supplementary references for Neolithic, Shang, Western Zhou, and Warring States.
Coordinates: approximate centroids from published site maps, Google Earth, and Wikipedia geotagged articles. Precision: 1–5 km for major identified sites, 10–20 km for less precisely located sites. WGS84.