Re: Civilizations and Historical World Systems

On the contrary, it is immensely useful if we think of civilizations, 
indeed, civilization (singular,) as a material continuum. This is a core 
problem in archaeology. The compartmentalization of historical subsets 
and cultural variations distracts from an understanding of underlying 
principles. To view the Shang as a different successive 'historical 
system' for example, than the Zhou, is at odds with the evidence of a 
rotating ruling house systemic root (Chang, 1980). By extension, this 
underlying systemic root can be followed beyond the geographic confines 
of China proper to Taiwan and throughout the purposive colonization 
(Irwin) of the entire Pacific (Kirch, 1984). It can be traced by dna 
studies of one cosmopolitan lineage (Cann, Hegelberg) that eminated from 
the southeast asian neolithic; a lineage that was, in the words of Cann, 
"in constant physical contact". It is only our modern perspective that 
compartmentalizes this expansion into Lapita, Austronesian or Polynesian 
subsets. It is much better, from a World Systems perspective, to strip 
away the variations of pottery motif and see the essential hallmarks of 
this civilization that forensic archaeology is revealing; monumental 
platform architecture (Needham, 1954), a highly stratified society with 
a common ruling elite (Chang, 1980), astronomical ritualism (Pankenier, 
1994) and a common string device to record proximity to the ruling 
lineage (Handy 1919).

Threehegemons@aol.com wrote:
> "Would it not be more useful if we didn't reify civilizations?  One way to think about China is to think of it as a name linked to a geographic location in which there existed successive historical systems, which had a few features in common, and each of which sustained (for a good deal of the time) myths concerning civilization continuity.  In that case, instead of China the civilization, we are perhaps talking empirically of five, six, or seven different historical systems...  China is no doubt the strongest case for a civilizationalist thesis.  It becomes harder to demonstrate inherent cultural continuities everywhere else.  To be sure, if we narrow our analysis to the scale and scope of a single historical system, then a 'geoculture' is part of its 'systemness'."--Immanuel Wallerstein, "Hold the Tiller Firm: On Method and the Unit of Analysis" in "The Essential Wallerstein", p149-159.
> Steven Sherman