Person: Flad, Rowan
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Flad, Rowan
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Publication Preface(American Geophysical Union, 2012) Giosan, Liviu; Fuller, Dorian Q.; Nicoll, Kathleen; Flad, Rowan; Clift, Peter D.Publication Bronze, Jade, Gold, and Ivory: Valuable Objects in Ancient Sichuan(Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press, 2012) Flad, RowanIf negotiations about value are essentially political (Graeber 2001:115), our understanding of past political systems is illuminated by an understanding of how and through what processes value is attributed to objects in a particular context. We cannot examine this “object value” through a focus on only one attribute or set of attributes, such as scarcity of raw material or labor investment, but instead must consider the intersection of several factors: raw material, labor investment, the identity of producers, the identity of consumers, the divisibility or “commodifiability” of an object, and its capacity to accumulate history. In fact, the value attributed to objects is dynamic and contingent — the consequence of practices of production, use, and discard through an object’s life history. We must therefore consider both the production of objects and their discard in our attempts to discover the relationships between object value and political power. This paper considers this relationship in ancient Sichuan, China, during the late second and early first millennia B.C. By looking at aspects of production, use, and discard of valuable objects at the sites of Sanxingdui and Jinsha, we observe changes in the ways that bronze, jade, gold, and ivory were employed as valuable objects in the context of political and ritual practices.Publication Studying the relationship between past people and their environments(Wiley-Blackwell, 2011) Clift, Peter D.; Flad, Rowan; Fuller, Dorian Q.; Giosan, LiviuAGU Chapman Conference on Climates, Past Landscapes, and Civilizations; Santa Fe, New Mexico, 21–25 March 2011; The fortunes of human societies are intimately linked to the environments that sustain them. This has been true from the first emergence of human ancestors through to the present day. An AGU Chapman Conference was held to discuss the relationship between past people and their environments. Participants examined the state of the field, debated issues of contention, and formulated ways that such cross-disciplinary research can progress. Scientists' increasing ability to generate high-resolution climate records has proliferated studies that link the rise and fall of cultures to climate change. This meeting brought together scholars from across the divide between Earth sciences and archaeology to derive a deeper understanding of how humans have reacted to and shaped the changing environment.Publication Phytoliths reveal the earliest fine reedy textile in China at the Tianluoshan site(Nature Publishing Group, 2016) Zhang, Jianping; Lu, Houyuan; Sun, Guoping; Flad, Rowan; Wu, Naiqin; Huan, Xiujia; He, Keyang; Wang, YongleiTextiles are among the longest and most widespread technologies in human history, although poor preservation of perishable artifacts in Paleolithic and Neolithic contexts makes them difficult to unearth and has hampered study of their production and use. Here we report evidence of a plain-woven mat from the Tianluoshan site, Zhejiang, Eastern China. Phytolith and AMS dating from the mat and modern reference collections shown that the mat was made of reeds (Phragmites australis (Cav.)) and dated to 6775–6645 cal. yr. BP. This is the earliest directly dated fiber artifact so far known in China, over at least one thousand years earlier than any established dates for woven remains elsewhere. The evidence of the mat and other related remains suggest that textile products might occur earlier than 7000–8000 years ago and are significant for understanding the history of textiles, as well as production and human adaptation in Neolithic China.Publication Testing a novel method to identify salt production pottery via release and detection of chloride ions(Elsevier BV, 2014) Raad, Danielle R.; Li, Shuicheng; Flad, RowanA recently published analytical technique to detect chloride ions in ceramic vessels that were used to produce salt is replicated (Horiuchi et al. 2011). The method involves releasing bound chloride ions permanently retained by the vessel via a chemical exchange reaction with ammonium fluoride, following the removal of all unbound salt with water. The chloride concentration is measured in solution and used to quantify the amount of salt that was bound to the ceramic matrix. Our data suggest that this method is not a viable way to consistently discriminate salt-making pottery, as the detected chloride may not be derived from salt production activities, but from the ceramic material of the pot itself. We employ experimental vessels in which salt-making was simulated, in addition to analyzing excavated sherds from two Chinese and one North American site known to have been involved in salt production. The method proposed by Horiuchi et al. is not able to distinguish salt-making and non-salt-making vessels from one another.Publication Salt(Rowman & Littlefield, 2015) Flad, RowanPublication Is Poverty in Our Genes?(University of Chicago Press, 2013) d’Alpoim Guedes, Jade; Bestor, Theodore; Carrasco, David; Flad, Rowan; Fosse, Ethan; Herzfeld, Michael; Lamberg-Karlovsky, Carl C.; Lewis, Cecil M.; Liebmann, Matthew; Meadow, Richard; Patterson, Nick; Price, Max Daniel; Reiches, Meredith; Richardson, Sarah; Shattuck-Heidorn, Heather; Ur, Jason; Urton, Gary; Warinner, ChristinaWe present a critique of a paper written by two economists, Quamrul Ashraf and Oded Galor, which is forthcoming in the American Economic Review and which was uncritically highlighted in Science magazine. Their paper claims there is a causal effect of genetic diversity on economic success, positing that too much or too little genetic diversity constrains development. In particular, they argue that “the high degree of diversity among African populations and the low degree of diversity among Native American populations have been a detrimental force in the development of these regions.” We demonstrate that their argument is seriously flawed on both factual and methodological grounds. As economists and other social scientists begin exploring newly available genetic data, it is crucial to remember that nonexperts broadcasting bold claims on the basis of weak data and methods can have profoundly detrimental social and political effects.Publication Survey, Excavation, and Geophysics at Songjiaheba—A Small Bronze Age Site in the Chengdu Plain(Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013) Flad, Rowan; Horsley, Timothy J.; Guedes, Jade D’Alpoim; Kunyu, He; Bennett, Gwen; Chen, Pochan; Shuicheng, Li; Zhanghua, JiangThe Chengdu 成都 Plain, in the northwest corner of the Sichuan 四川Basin (Figure 1), was the setting for the emergence of a complex civilization in the second millennium BC. This civilization is most notably associated with the site of Sanxingdui 三星堆, in Guanghan 廣漢, where two sacrificial pits discovered in 1986 revealed a rich and unexpected collection of jade objects, ceramics, elephant tusks, and elaborate bronze and gold objects (Bagley 2001; Flad 2012; Sichuan 1999). The discovery of the Sanxingdui pits was followed by research at other sites in the Chengdu Plain, including several loci in the city of Chengdu that post-date Sanxingdui, such as an elite residential location called Shi’erqiao 十二橋 (Sichuan et al. 1987; Jiang 1998), a zone of ritual deposits, cemeteries, and settlement areas named Jinsha 金沙 (Chengdu Institute 2006; Chengdu & Beijing 2002; Zhu et al. 2003), and Shangyejie 商業街, a Late Bronze Age elite burial site with large log coffins filled with lacquers and other elite objects (Chengdu 2002). Based on the excavations of these sites, we now know that bronze-producing communities that commanded multi-community networks of resource acquisition existed in the 2 Chengdu Plain starting at least as early as the middle of the second millennium BC (Flad and Chen 2013).Publication Archaeology in Central and Southwest China: Travels in Guizhou(Peabody Museum and the Department of Anthropology, Harvard University, 2009) Flad, RowanPublication On “Rethinking” Craft Specialization: Responses by the Authors(American Anthropological Association, 2006) Hruby, Zachary X.; Flad, Rowan; Clark, John E.; Inomata, Takeshi; Miller, Heather M.-L.