After several decades in which the various editions of K. C. Chang's Archaeology of Ancient China were the standard guides to China's prehistory, we now have two textbooks and this excellent reference work.Footnote ¹ With thirty chapters by thirty-nine leading scholars based in China (25), the U.S. (9), and elsewhere (5), the Companion to Chinese Archaeology provides up-to-date overviews of the Neolithic and Bronze Age archaeology of various regions of China. Editor Anne Underhill should be congratulated on the formidable feat of commissioning chapters from thirty-nine scholars and finding twenty-nine others to do translation and other tasks.

Despite its title, this is actually a companion to Neolithic and early Bronze Age archaeology (c. 8000–1200 b.c.e.), especially the second half of that period. It does not cover the Paleolithic or historical periods. The volume focuses on “the development and nature of complex societies,” which explains both the temporal focus and the decision to devote half of the volume to the central and lower Yellow River valley, where the earliest cities and states developed. The volume is divided into eight parts of varying lengths: 1) introduction (31 pp.); 2) the Liao River Valley (65 pp.); 3) Gansu and Sichuan (62 pp.); 4) the central Yellow River valley (215 pp.); 5) the lower Yellow River Valley (104 pp.); 6) the central Yangzi lowlands (37 pp.); 7) the Yangzi delta (59 pp.); and 8) the southeast and Taiwan (34 pp.). The two chapters of the latter section are the only ones extending south of the Yangzi Valley, which leaves out Guangxi and most of Hunan and Jiangxi.

Eighteen chapters describe specific archaeological cultures or sites, eight are overviews of specific areas over a given time span and two are detailed studies of tools (which are excellent, but overly specialized for a work of this nature). The eighteen chapters on specific cultures and sites focus on the sites that have been best preserved and excavated, which permits a more detailed analysis of the evidence than would be possible in a single-narrative textbook. However, it also leaves plenty of temporal and spatial gaps, with Henan and Shandong being the only regions that are well covered for the entire period.

Given the monumental problems of heritage preservation in China, it is appropriate that Underhill's introductory chapter is followed by Robert Murowchick's superb review of the destruction and preservation of cultural heritage since the early twentieth century (though he somehow fails to mention the “four olds” campaign of the Cultural Revolution).

The six early Neolithic chapters cover the Liao River region (chapter 3), the Jiahu site in Henan (chapter 10), Shandong (chapter 19), and the low-lying areas of northern Hunan (chapter 24) and Zhejiang (chapter 26) provinces. These provide good overviews of these key areas in the study of early sedentary agricultural societies, a field that is rapidly changing as new methods and technologies become established in Chinese archaeology. The chapters on the Pengtoushan (chapter 24) and middle Neolithic Qujialing and Shijiahe cultures (chapter 25) are particularly welcome given the paucity of English scholarship on the central Yangzi Neolithic. Chapter 9 is too short to do justice to the well-studied 7000–4000 b.c.e. period in the central Yellow River Valley, and is also rather out of date. Unlike the chapters on later periods, which stand well on their own, the chapters on early Neolithic sites should be read in conjunction with the more comprehensive accounts of the period in the textbooks cited above.

Several chapters provide thoughtful, up-to-date overviews of specific regional cultures. These include those on the Hongshan (chapter 4), Lower Xiajiadian (chapter 5), Qijia (chapter 6), Miaodigou (chapter 11), Henan Longshan (chapter 12), Dawenkou (chapter 20), Shandong Longshan (chapter 21), Qujialing and Shijihe (chapter 25), and Liangzhu (chapter 28) cultures. These constitute some of the most valuable chapters of the book, summarizing archaeological cultures that are frequently mentioned in the archaeological literature, but rarely summarized independently in English.

The same cannot be said of urbanization and state formation in the central Yellow River Valley, which are among the most widely discussed topics in the literature. Nonetheless, the chapters on Taosi (chapter 13), Erlitou (chapter 15) and the early Shang culture (chapter 16) provide solid overviews of those subjects. In chapter 17 some of Anyang's most important archaeologists give us a fresh look at the site, while the following chapter uses a survey of Shanxi archaeology to reconsider the overemphasis of Anyang in archaeological thought in this period.

Flad's chapter on Sichuan (chapter 7) and Jiao's on the southeast (chapter 29) both summarize books written by their authors.Footnote ² Like a few other chapters, these judiciously review the long-term archaeology of large, relatively neglected regions that lack spectacular sites. This is also true of Li Kuang-ti's review of Taiwan archaeology (chapter 30), which skillfully employs environmental archaeology.

This work is valuable both for its content and because it makes the writings of many of China's best archaeologists available in English.Footnote ³ Those accustomed to reading Chinese archaeological scholarship will notice that the mainland Chinese scholars in this work do not rely as heavily on diffusionism and unilinear social evolutionism to explain sociocultural change as do many of their peers. They also make fewer anachronistic references to much later textual sources. Nonetheless, social evolutionism remains the underlying explanatory theory in a more subtle way, and prehistoric humans are often depicted as unthinking cogs in the wheel of progress instead of intelligent people negotiating their lives according to the options available to them.

The work is generally well furnished with maps and images, though some chapters would have benefitted from more illustrations of artifacts. The use of Chinese characters is convenient, as are the separate bibliographies for each chapter. It should be noted that the bibliographies of many Chinese scholars do not include relevant English works (for example, Underhill's own Craft Production and Social Change in Northern China is not cited in the Dawenkou and Shandong Longshan chapters).

I would like to say that this work should be on the bookshelf of every archaeologist of China, but unfortunately it is too expensive for that. Fortunately it can be accessed digitally and individual chapters can be downloaded, making it widely available. Although most chapters are too narrowly focused for an introductory class, they are excellent resources for teaching at higher levels. This book will be particularly useful for those with some knowledge of Chinese archaeology who want to learn about unfamiliar places and periods, and for anyone interested in archaeological thought in China. Many of its chapters are the best works in English on their subjects, and even those whose content is found elsewhere are generally of a high enough quality that they cannot be ignored. This is a great contribution to the study of Chinese archaeology.