Chapter 2 compares patterns of population growth and settlement organization of the Ordos and Lingnan – two frontier regions – in a diachronic framework to argue for the transformation of frontier zones into extended networks and bounded territories in the middle Western Han. The Great Wall is reprised as a spatial infrastructure that is central to understanding Han imperialism as both an economic enterprise and a form of settler colonialism.

This chapter outlines a key debate in the study of the Han Empire that is currently represented by proponents of a “fictive” versus “realist” view of empire building in early China. It makes a case for the book’s archaeological approach, namely the potential for recently excavated materials to trace the emergence of a constellation of universal ideas about imperialism, cultural unity, and sovereignty in China. These ideas will be examined along four domains of Han sociopolitical life – Part i Imperial Geography, Part ii Agriculture and Foodways, Part iii Craft Industries, and Part iv Ritual – as documented in core and frontier regions.

Chapter 3 looks at the relationship between the state and its imperial subjects through the politics of food production in the core. Pairing historical sources with the archaeology of spatial infrastructures (i.e., granaries and irrigation systems), this chapter evaluates how the state’s active involvement in intensifying crop production also led to the development of new techniques for transforming fields and imperial subjects into legible units.

Chapter 8 expands on funerary practices of Yue/Viet, Qiang, and “Xiongnu” subjects and asks how and why ritual conversion, which underlines the assimilationist campaign of jiaohua, was carried out. Through a comparison of tombs belonging to indigenous and Central Plains diasporic groups, this chapter argues that cultural boundaries dividing the Han/non-Han or Huaxia/ non-Huaxia world were magnified by differences in the presentation of the deceased’s physical body along ethnic and gender norms.

Chapter 7 examines changes in religious ideas about the soul and the afterlife among the aristocracy, elites, and non-elites. By reintegrating craft goods back into their tomb context, this chapter evaluates how, on the one hand, properly mourning the dead came to define a new moral vanguard, and on the other, also led to the creative manipulation of class boundaries through individual conspicuous displays of mourning.

Chapter 4 explores how state power managed crop production in various peripheral zones as a process of assimilation. Through the examination of archaeobotanical remains and farming practices on the frontier, this chapter shows that the transfer of intensive farming regimes and new foodways was a contingent and variable phenomenon, in part due to differences in local customs and ecologies.

Chapter 1 draws on settlement archaeology, urban infrastructures, and architecture to evaluate the hypothesis that Chang’an was an unprecedented imperial capital at the apex of the junxian system. Also subject to appraisal is the role of interregional networks and urban nodes in the spatial reworking of contentious territories into the constitution of an imperial core.