By locating the relationship between place and performance in the investigation of early imperial civilizations, this book provides insights into at least three questions: To what extent should “place” and “performance” be considered as two entangled variables in research on ancient societies? In what sense could examination of place and performance contribute to a phenomenology of human culture that transcends the boundaries between theory and experience? And why is it important to combine paired explanatory angles—locally based and globally oriented, descriptive and summative, empirical and conjectural, and so forth—in the study of the ancient world? The adoption of a comparative perspective also gives this volume reflexive depth, as the contributors consciously reexamine their regions of specialization (like the Hellenistic/Roman world or China/East Asia) by contemplating the scholarship on other parts of the globe. Considering these topics, the book will serve the needs of readers interested in spatiality and performance as concepts, those seeking more knowledge about ancient imperia, and those who want to know more about methods for China–Mediterranean comparison.

The fourteen articles are organized into four sections: “Crafting Space and Place,” “Performances of Power,” “Urban Places,” and “Fringe Places and Endpoints.” The first two sections confirm the significant role of power in connecting place and performance. Part I articulates how elite writing helped to form the idea of spatiality by introducing a sense of order to the description of everything in an empire. Amy Russell’s chapter points to the prescriptive, anachronous nature of many ancient texts on urban planning and questions the use of such texts in understanding ancient Roman and Chinese cities as the immediate reflection of a specific cosmology. Surveying the real archaeological remains of the cities of Chang’an and Cosa, the author argues that the textual creation of place and space was essentially a knowledge-making process that differed greatly from the actual practice of urban construction. The chapter by Luke Habberstad provides a historical-territorial understanding of imperial space, paying attention to concerns about “governing different areas of a now vast empire” (68) in transmitted texts on geography. Comparing the Geographika of Strabo and the “Dili zhi” by Ban Gu, Habberstad notes that both authors turned to historical narratives to justify their incorporation of local information into an imperial story. The two texts therefore attest to the interplay between ancient geography, historiography, and discourses propagating imperial unity.

Part II conceptualizes performance as an integral component of the imperial apparatus that regulated social norms and principles, and as a force of adhesion that constituted interpersonal ties. “Place” appears in this section as “context” or “background,” functioning as a container for performative activities. The authors of the three chapters in this section of the book highlight, in particular, how power was communicated to specific groups through performance. The chapter by Taco Terpstra engages with the performance of power in state bureaucracy in both China and Rome. Describing the military symbols in the clothing of Han and Roman bureaucrats, the author speculates about the relationship between the exterior display of imperial emblems and the interior organization of political authority. Darian Marie Totten’s chapter on how agricultural labor was practiced and narrated in Rome and Han China defines agricultural performance as both a channel for transmitting knowledge and a glue for social ties. By participating in such a performance, individuals or groups were assigned particular social roles. Zhou Yiqun’s chapter compares Emperor Wu of Han and the Roman emperor Nero in terms of their performances involving foreigners to elaborate on how inter-state hierarchies were imagined and constructed through ritualized behaviors. Complementing the discussions of performance documented in history, Chandra Giroux’s chapter presents another level of performance, the performance of historians themselves, by examining Sima Qian and Plutarch as experts in creating “examples of conduct” (198).

Part III exhibits place and performance as overlapping foci in scholarly discussions of urban areas, elaborating on how the intertwining between the two made ancient imperia multi-layered structures that involved physical infrastructure and politico-cultural metaphors. Compared with some chapters in Parts I and II, the chapters in this section disclose more about how spaces that took on performative roles strengthened the visibility and tangibility of empire to ordinary people. In Chapter 7, Ryan R. Abrecht compares the cities of Rome and Chang’an in terms of their neighborhoods and the neighborhood experiences they generated. His focus on human senses invites readers to reconsider not only urban space but also people’s feelings about space. Martin Mohr’s chapter investigates monumental roads as the linkage between “ritual, political, and social ‘poles’ and ‘foci’” (291). Such roads were not only part of the territorial space of ancient states but also components of the ritual performances that consolidated social cohesion. Jordan Christopher’s chapter explores the water distribution systems in Rome and Chang’an as the embodiment of different imperial agendas, shedding light on the making of a “water ideology” in the early days of imperial Rome and Western Han China. The chapter by Wentian Fu, which centers on Roman and Chinese gardens, also transcends pure discussion of the physical arrangements of space by reinterpreting these gardens as vivid performances of the Roman and Han-Chinese concepts of imperialism and elitism.

Part IV further expands the concepts of place and performance, redefining them as things without clear boundaries that functioned across time and social hierarchies. The editors divide the four chapters into two groups, with those by Alex McAuley and Charles Sanft investigating the physical “end” of place—the border areas of empire—and those by Tian Tian and Armin Selbitschka reexamining a type of performance that marked the endpoint of time: death ritual. The chapter by McAuley leads readers to the debated relationship between center and periphery. Juxtaposing two borderland areas, Dunhuang and Ai Khanoum, the author clarifies the process through which distant regions were incorporated into the imperial framework. Also bringing two frontier sites into dialogue with each other, Sanft’s chapter focuses more on the imaginary aspects of space, which had less to do with sensory experience than the potential of human activities. As he points out, texts excavated from Vindolanda and Jianshui Jinguan might render the concept of “place” ineffective because they provide limited information about the physical features of a given region that could be felt and seen. Tian Tian’s chapter presents the different ways of using burial coins in Rome and Han China. Such coins were key elements of funerary performance that reconfirmed social ties in China, but their functions in the Roman context were more ambiguous. Based on both transmitted sources and entombed materials, the chapter by Selbitschka demonstrates the author’s explicit efforts to build conceptual and evidential connections between place and performance. As the chapter illustrates, tombs showed how performance occurred in a given place because ritual activities surrounding tomb space helped to reintegrate individuals into families or reincorporate families into society.

This volume has succeeded in many respects. Its significance is, first, grounded in its sensitivity to using modern theories in ancient contexts: Are received analytical models applicable to different parts of the ancient world? How should scholars adjust them according to actual circumstances in a state or region? Contemplation of the interplay between place and performance is not new, as there are already insightful works like Gay McAuley’s Space in Performance: Making Meaning in the Theatre (2000) and Performance and the Politics of Space: Theatre and Topology, edited by Erika Fischer-Lichte and Benjamin Wihstutz (2012). The contribution of the volume under review resides in its effort to bridge the gap between this theoretical literature and the more empirical realm of ancient world history. On the theoretical level, maybe the most difficult part of explaining the relationship between place and performance is revealing the link between a non-human object (place) and human subjectivity (a key component of performance). Contributors to the volume, when responding to this issue, appear to have reached a consensus: human action mediates between the two. In the editors’ words, it was the multi-coded nature of custom—routinized activities of human beings—that played a fundamental role. Based on this consensus, almost all primary sources used in the chapters present regular, normalized actions of individuals or groups that consolidated cultural coherence and welcomed diversity. Such actions ranged from political decision-making to funerary traditions, from agricultural activities to water management, from literati textual production to use of administrative documents on imperial frontiers. These fragmentary materials do not produce theory by themselves but help disclose the shared experiences of their makers and users, which implies the possibility of some degree of synthesis.

The volume’s use of a comparative perspective is another key source of its insights. What is especially impressive is the contributors’ incorporation of various dimensions and angles of comparison: the investigation of Chinese and Mediterranean terms with similar denotation, juxtaposition of primary sources of the same nature, the parallelism of social processes with similar levels of complexity, the dialogue between archaeological sites that have produced analogous remains, the contrast between politico-territorial landscapes of different states in the same stage of empire-formation, and so forth. The combination of these perspectives and approaches considerably enriches existing comparative frameworks in the study of ancient history. At least three layers of comparison can be seen in the chapters, including point-to-point comparison that manifests the features of two individual objects (e.g., the comparison between two texts), line-to-line comparison that demonstrates the mechanisms of two processes that developed over time (e.g., between the Chinese and Roman funeral processes), and plane-to-plane comparison of two large systems (e.g., between Chinese and Roman bureaucracies). These multiple layers point to the possibility of a “panorama of comparative imperia” consisting of concepts, themes, narratives, materials, logical structures, and epistemologies. Meanwhile, the layered nature of this complex mode of analysis clarifies that the comparability of ancient imperial civilizations is relative rather than absolute. For example, the Han and Roman empires present parallels in the nature of their rulership, but they are not comparable in terms of the categories and geographical distribution of their archaeological remains.

This leads to the broader question of what constitutes comparative history. This volume, because of the requirement of its central topic, focuses on three ancient civilizations; in some chapters, when the Greek and Roman civilizations are considered as belonging to the same historical lineage, two civilizations are compared. This should not, however, prevent us from thinking about more possibilities for comparative history. If more than two civilizations are compared, what variables and relationships should be taken into account and why do they matter? If we need a relatively comprehensive understanding of ancient imperia, how many empires (or imperial systems) should be compared? How should we compare empires at different levels of development, e.g., mighty, paradigmatic empires—like Augustan Rome—and smaller states that also declared themselves to be imperial regimes, like Japan under the reign of Nintoku Tennō (fourth century CE)? What principles of comparison should we establish and what canons can we follow? These questions are obviously beyond the scope of the volume under review and cannot be fully answered in a single book. But they should not be neglected if we seek to use comparative methodology as a lens through which to approach the ancient world.