Violence, Kinship and the Early Chinese State: The Shang and their world by Roderick Campbell is an ambitious attempt to reconsider the nature of the Bronze Age Shang society (c. 1600–1050 bc) through the integration of varied datasets, a wide-ranging engagement with social theory and a critical review of previous interpretations of the Shang. While attempts to revisit the Chinese Bronze Age from more dynamic theoretical perspectives have been on the rise in recent years, Campbell's work challenges us to rethink notions on the development of Shang society and offers fresh insights into possible directions in the field. These attempts by Campbell and others to reinvigorate the debate on the nature of Shang society through a more robust theoretical treatment of the Shang while employing a broad array of methodological approaches have resulted in much-needed refinements on the nature of societal processes in the early Chinese Bronze Age. In particular, Campbell has made a concerted effort to avoid an elite-centric account of Shang society similar to those which dominated early debates. Instead, Campbell aims for a more holistic interpretation that encompasses the realities across the Shang socio-political spectrum. A central challenge with this type of approach is the nature of the available published data on the Shang, which is primarily oriented towards elite contexts. This is due to decades of excavations of Shang centres, ‘palace-temple’ areas and elite burials as well as the abundant studies on Shang inscriptions and Zhou period (1050–256 bc) writings that largely refer to elite aspects of Shang society. Campbell predominantly relies on Shang period oracle-bone inscriptions and a large database of Anyang burials. Post-Shang writings (e.g. Shiji) are employed hesitantly as the author contends that these texts are liable to provide significantly distorted perspectives on the Shang due to the substantial changes that occurred from the decline of the Shang polity and the period these texts were written. While archaeologists have long discussed the many limitations of burials as data sources for the interpretation of broader societal processes, the use of oracle-bone inscriptions as sources of information has also drawn notes of caution from scholars. This caution is due to the arenas in which oracle bones were principally restricted: royalty and higher elites. Campbell argues that oracle bones nonetheless provide significant data on important topics such as the Shang structure of authority, ancestral hierarchies and networks of capital (see below). Regardless, some care must necessarily be taken when reading interpretations of the material record drawn primarily from these data sources.

Campbell, however, fully acknowledges the shortcomings of the published data and attempts to mitigate these issues by drawing on other lines of evidence where possible, placing his work in extensive conversation with scholars from multiple disciplines and interweaving an extensive discussion on relevant social theory. The result is a lively debate on the development of Shang society with an emphasis on the late Shang period (c. 1250–1050 bc) centred at Anyang. And although Shang society and the Central Plains are the central focus of his analysis, Campbell gives due consideration to the other polities and societies that existed during this important period of Chinese history. In this way, he attempts to provide a more dynamic account of Bronze Age China and more thoroughly contextualize the developments seen in Shang centres.

Early in his work (p. xxiii), Campbell outlines three primary objectives for this book. First, Campbell argues there is a need for an update to the work of K.C. Chang, one of the pre-eminent scholars on Shang society whose research remains highly influential in the field. Campbell argues the decades of discoveries and new research in the field warrant an updated multi-disciplinary analysis of the Shang. Second, he seeks substantially to impact the debates on the development of complex societies in anthropological archaeology. Third, he desires to advance Early China studies broadly by reimaging the nature, role and extent of the Shang polity. Campbell expressly issues ‘a call to Sinologists to re-examine some their historiographic assumptions and theoretical positions (conscious or unconscious)’ (p. xxiii). Indeed, the critical examination of previous understandings of Bronze Age China is one of the major focuses throughout the book.

In chapter 1, Campbell identifies and challenges the assumptions inherent in previous work on the Shang and lays the foundation for his theoretical approach. Campbell claims that the seminal works of K.C. Chang and David Keightley on Shang society, while innovative and important, privilege religious monopolies by Shang rulers in their explanations of socio-political authority and Shang society. Moreover, Campbell contends problematic theoretical premises limit the models of Chang and Keightley. As a result, there is insufficient elaboration regarding ‘the actual mechanisms mediating between power, belief and social practices’ (p. 4). Instead, Campbell argues for an inter-ontic approach which ‘amounts to … recognizing the epistemological and ontological ground of the investigator as an element of translocal perception, and … an understanding of local worlds in terms both of local ontologies and their material and social conditions’ (p. 248). This intersubjectivity forms the foundation of Campbell's attempts to contextualize Shang processes, structures, and networks. Chapter 2 is a broad critical review of ‘states’ and ‘civilizations’ in archaeology and how these notions have been applied to Bronze Age China. Campbell contends that the typological orientation of theories on states and civilizations are ill-suited in the endeavour to delineate the development of Shang society.

Rather, Campbell argues in chapter 4 that a contextualized understanding of Shang authority should be rooted in a study of the ‘social economy’ wherein actors accumulate and expend varied forms of capital (e.g. social, economic, military, etc.) that flow within differential and overlapping networks. Moreover, practices of authority (e.g. war, sacrifice, divination, gift-giving, etc.) were enabled and constrained by these networks of capital. For example, the author elaborates how the resources and knowledge needed for divinatory and sacrificial rituals are possibly found in elite education, lineages and multiple sources of materials that included a diverse range of people and places. Campbell also discusses how these practices could cross-cut other practices of authority, such as war. Thus, to understand the importance and role of such practices of authority, a thorough accounting is needed of the contemporaneous social economy and its networks of capital.

In chapter 5, Campbell discusses the nature of the basic unit of Shang society at Anyang: lineages. In this chapter, he provides an extensive account of the practices that formed lineage communities and the ancestral hierarchy with the Shang king and his lineage at the head. Chapter 6 largely deals with war and sacrifice (coercive networks and violence). Campbell argues that war and sacrifice were important practices that contributed to the stability of the Shang world centred at Anyang. Chapter 7 provides a discussion and quantitative analysis of Anyang burial rituals and their complex relations to the maintenance of the Shang ancestral hierarchy. Campbell notes that the similarities between burials across the socio-political hierarchy reveal shared practices and beliefs. There are, however, substantial differences in mortuary capital between the highest and lowest levels of this hierarchy, a disparity Campbell characterizes as ‘of gods and insects’ (p. 246). Chapter 8 is a review of the major arguments of the book. Campbell also argues again that the practices discussed in preceding chapters (war and sacrificial and burial rituals) were essential ‘technologies of pacification’ that maintained the Shang structure of authority and hierarchies of being (i.e. ‘gods and insects’).

As there are many similar underlying themes in this book, a more expansive engagement with relational archaeology would likely have proven beneficial. Despite this, Campbell's work is highly pertinent for both those wishing for a broad introduction to Shang archaeology and experts in the field. Campbell's critical review of the dominant trends in Western scholarship on the Shang will prove especially helpful for those seeking a dynamic overview of this important early Bronze Age society. For experts who desire to push Shang archaeology forward within more rigorous theoretical and methodological frameworks and challenge the limiting assumptions related to the development of Shang society, Campbell provides a valuable node for an expansive project that has and will necessarily continue to cross-cut multiple disciplinary boundaries.

In addition to the numerous ways our knowledge of Bronze Age China is challenged and expanded, one of Campbell's strongest contributions here is a call to more extensive fieldwork and continued critical analyses of Shang society that will not necessarily be beholden to previous works as starting points. Campbell also makes it clear much work remains to be done on pre-Anyang societies and sites (e.g. Erlitou and Zhengzhou Shangcheng) related to their extent and the nature of their role in Bronze Age China. Critically examining the dynamics, extent and changing nature of the networks Campbell identifies would also be a very fruitful line of inquiry. This book, then, could serve as a valuable guide for students and professionals alike as to the state of the field and critical areas in need of further research.