Affiliation: Harvard University
Rowan Flad received an AB in Anthropology from the University of Chicago in 1994 and his MA and PhD in Archaeology from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2004. His research is currently focused on the emergence and development of complex society during the late Neolithic period and the Bronze Age in China. This research incorporates interests in diachronic change in production processes, the intersection between ritual activity and production, the role of animals in early Chinese society – particularly their use in sacrifice and divination, and the processes involved in social change in general. Recently he has conducted excavations at a salt production site in the eastern Sichuan Basin and has started a new field project in the Chengdu region of Sichuan focusing on prehistoric settlement patterns and social evolution in that region. The Chengdu Plain project is a multi-disciplinary effort by several institutions from the U.S. and China to examine the changes in landscape use and resource exploitation during a period in the development of Chinese society that was critical in the development of centralized, regional polities. In addition to being the author or co-author of a dozen articles, Prof. Flad is one of the editors of a volume on specialized production to be published in the next year in the series Archaeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association and the English Language Editor of a forthcoming book on early Chinese jades.
