Chiefdoms and states in the Yuncheng Basin and the Chifeng region: A comparative analysis of settlement systems in North China

Regional settlement datasets for the Yuncheng Basin and the Chifeng region are re-analyzed for comparison so as to reconstruct differing patterns of community development at local and supra-local scales. A methodological implication of this reanalysis is that comparing settlement areas and surface artifact densities between projects requires special attention to how the data were recorded so as to put them on the same measurement scale. The analytical approaches originally taken to reconstructing community organization in the two regions, while differing in several respects, are shown to produce highly compatible results, permitting a comparison of the two trajectories with a sound empirical foundation. Neolithic settlement began much earlier in Chifeng, but rates of demographic and community growth were extremely slow. In Yuncheng, early village growth was much more dramatic. Multiple chiefly districts of modest size emerged in both regions, but those of Yuncheng, despite their shorter developmental trajectory, had substantially larger populations. Their central settlements, in particular, grew to be much larger than those in Chifeng and the special activities carried out at these centers differed between the two regions. A poorly understood, but not contemporaneous, demographic disruption punctuated both sequences. It was followed by the emergence of political integration on a much larger scale in the Yuncheng Basin, focused on a single settlement an order of magnitude larger than its predecessors. In Chifeng, regional population soared far beyond previous levels, but political integration remained persistently small in scale.

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► Regional settlement datasets for the Yuncheng Basin and the Chifeng region are re-analyzed.
► Differing patterns of community development at local and supra-local scales are compared.
► Neolithic settlement began earlier in Chifeng, but village growth was more dramatic in Yuncheng.
► Chiefly districts were larger in Yuncheng, and central place functions differed from Chifeng.
► Chifeng central functions became more like Yuncheng, but integration remained small in scale.