The 'Crescent-Shaped Cultural-Communication Belt': Tong Enzheng's Model in Retrospect: An examination of methodological, theoretical and material concerns of long-distance interactions in East Asia

When in the 1980s Tong Enzheng suggested his model of a “crescent-shaped cultural-communication belt” stretching from Northeast China and Korea along the Tibetan borderlands all the way to Yunnan, most researchers were still rather cautious about suggestions of long-distance contacts. At the time, Chinese and Western scholars alike were afraid of being accused of diffusionistic tendencies in their work, and they thus mostly decided to concentrate on local developments. Only in recent years has it again become acceptable and even desirable to discuss far-reaching exchange networks. Interestingly, the emerging scholarship on such topics has some noticeable lacunae. Discussions on China’s long-distance contacts, for instance, focus mostly on steppe connections and Western influences on the cultures of the Central Plains. By contrast, material from Southwest China has received far less attention; neither have Tong Enzheng’s considerable theoretical contributions to the understanding of culture contact and cultural exchange received the consideration they deserve. This volume closes some of these lacunae by refocusing on two main points Tong Enzheng has raised: the possible connections along this crescent-shaped corridor and their geographic preconditions; and theoretical and methodological issues of discussions on cultures, identity groups, culture contacts, and their reflection in the archaeological record. The volume stems from the session “Reconsidering the Crescent-Shaped Exchange Belt ― Methodological, Theoretical and Material Concerns of Long-Distance Interactions in East Asia Thirty Years after Tong Enzheng” held at the Fifth World Conference of the Society for East Asian Archaeology (SEAA) in Fukuoka (Japan) in 2012. The papers collected in the present volume touch on four main topics: 1. Tong Enzheng’s life and research, and his place within the development of modern Chinese archaeology; 2. recent developments in the archaeology of Southwest China; 3. material traces and geographic, cultural, and historical preconditions of possible movements and inter-group contacts along Tong’s crescent-shaped cultural-communication belt; and 4. theoretical and methodological issues in the study of culture contacts and cultural exchange, and of their reflections in the material record.