Jessica Rawson

The story of China is written in the objects buried in its tombs over many millennia, but for most of us they are as hard to read as Chinese characters. Jessica Rawson is the master-interpreter. In a dozen tombs she tells the story of China across thousands of years, pointing out again and again the profound ways in which the Chinese are not like us. If you want to understand China today, start by visiting these twelve tombs in the enlightening company of Jessica Rawson. A dozen tombs - an underground journey to the heart of China.

Time and time again, Jessica Rawson has demonstrated her extraordinary ability to explain the unfamiliar in terms that everyone can understand. Life and Afterlife in Ancient China is a perfect book for someone new to China. Unusually, it is also ideal for the more knowledgeable because it offers such an up-to-date portrayal of the complex relations between the ancient Chinese and their neighbors

Valerie Hansen, author of The Year 1000: When Explorers Connected the World—and Globalization Began

No book better attests to the most basic point of history - and not just China's - that we are profoundly shaped by our cultural heritages. Rawson's lucid and intimate account of the extraordinary contents of twelve ancient tombs stretching four millennia into the past brings readers inside Chinese culture and mentality in ways that instruct, surprise, and delight. A masterwork

Timothy Brook, author of Vermeer's Hat and Great State

Jessica Rawson understands the long history of China through a lifetime's engagement with its ancient sites and artefacts. Her book evokes both the internal dynamics and external influences of China's deep past with great clarity, allowing us to appreciate their continuing force and importance to the present

Chris Gosden, Professor of European Archaeology, University of Oxford

A distinguished art historian ... Rawson succeeds in distilling and animating a great deal of dry scholarship ... impressive and engaging.

insightful ... Jessica Rawson has the ability to bring an unfamiliar subject to life ... rich ... an invaluable book for anyone wishing to learn more about the future of China by exploring its diversity and glorious ancient past.

This engaging book by Jessica Rawson provides a highly readable yet thoroughly referenced overview of the heterogeneous societies that existed in areas of East Asia (now part of China) during the millennia before the imperial conquest by the Qin state in 221 BC ... a thoroughly enjoyable read and appropriate for readers who seek a broad overview of Ancient China, a multifaceted introduction to archaeological examples of burial practices in this era and those who wish to engage with the scholarship of an unparalleled figure in the study of the Chinese Bronze Age.

The three millennia up to the establishment of the first imperial Qin dynasty in 221 BC cemented many of the distinctive elements of Chinese civilisation still in place today: an extraordinarily challenging geography and environment, formidable infrastructure, a society based on the strict hierarchy of the family, a shared written script of characters, a cuisine founded on rice and millet, a material culture of ceramics, bronze, silk and jade, and a unique concept of the universe, in which ancestors continue to exist alongside the living. Records of these early achievements, and their diverse and unexpected expressions, often lie not in written history, but in how people marked the end of their lives: their dwellings for the afterlife. Tombs, and the treasures within them, are almost the only artefacts to survive from Ancient China; their scale and sophistication rivals their equivalents in Ancient Egypt. 
 
Jessica Rawson, one of the most eminent Western scholars of China, explores twelve grand tombs - each from a specific historical moment and place - showing how they reveal wider political, dynastic and cultural developments, culminating in the lavish ambition of the First Emperor's monument, guarded by his army of terracotta warriors. Beautifully illustrated and drawing on the latest archaeological discoveries, Life and Afterlife in Ancient China illuminates a constellation of beliefs about life and death very different from our own and provides a remarkable new perspective on one of the oldest civilisations in the world.

Jessica Rawson

Praise for Life and Afterlife in Ancient China

The story of China is written in the objects buried in its tombs over many millennia, but for most of us they are as hard to read as Chinese characters. Jessica Rawson is the master-interpreter. In a dozen tombs she ...

Time and time again, Jessica Rawson has demonstrated her extraordinary ability to explain the unfamiliar in terms that everyone can understand. Life and Afterlife in Ancient China is a perfect book for someon ...

No book better attests to the most basic point of history - and not just China's - that we are profoundly shaped by our cultural heritages. Rawson's lucid and intimate account of the extraordinary contents of twelve ...

The story of China is written in the objects buried in its tombs over many millennia, but for most of us they are as hard to read as Chinese characters. Jessica Rawson is the master-interpreter. In a dozen tombs she ...

Time and time again, Jessica Rawson has demonstrated her extraordinary ability to explain the unfamiliar in terms that everyone can understand. Life and Afterlife in Ancient China is a perfect book for someon ...

No book better attests to the most basic point of history - and not just China's - that we are profoundly shaped by our cultural heritages. Rawson's lucid and intimate account of the extraordinary contents of twelve ...

The story of China is written in the objects buried in its tombs over many millennia, but for most of us they are as hard to read as Chinese characters. Jessica Rawson is the master-interpreter. In a dozen tombs she ...

Time and time again, Jessica Rawson has demonstrated her extraordinary ability to explain the unfamiliar in terms that everyone can understand. Life and Afterlife in Ancient China is a perfect book for someon ...

No book better attests to the most basic point of history - and not just China's - that we are profoundly shaped by our cultural heritages. Rawson's lucid and intimate account of the extraordinary contents of twelve ...

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