UCLA

This dissertation traces the foundations of East Asian music in the archaeological record, presenting a macroscopic survey of excavated musical instruments from Jiahu through the Taosi cultures in China (ca. 7000–1800 BC) and from the second half of the Late Jōmon through the Kofun period in Japan (ca. 1500 BC–600 AD). Primary sources of knowledge are the instruments themselves, as well as some depictions of musicians in the Japanese case. The musical material culture of such early periods tends to reflect the music of the elite, often preserved under special circumstances (such as tombs or intentional burials) or made from materials (such as bone, then bronze) likely prized in part for their durability. I organize chapters based on the materials from which instruments were made, a choice that evokes the organological framework of the ba yin (“eight sonorous substances”) from Late Warring States and early imperial texts (Chapter 1). Curiously bone, not one of the sonorous substances, is central to the musical mortuary assemblages of the Chinese Neolithic across cultures of both the Yellow and Yangzi river valleys but was no longer used to make instruments thereafter (Chapter 2). This is likely because by the Longshan period (ca. 2300–1800 BC), ensembles consisting of stone chimes as well as alligator-skin and pottery drums had already become closely associated with authority at the major proto-urban center of Taosi (Chapter 3). Similarly, bronze dōtaku bells enabled social cohesion across groups during the middle Yayoi of Western Japan (ca. 200 BC, Chapter 4), although dōtaku production ended after the Yayoi. Zithers became definitive of elite culture by the beginning of the Kofun period (ca. 300 AD, Chapter 5). Juxtaposing the musical material culture of China and Japan at parallel stages of social development allows for the preliminary observation of three flexible phases in the relationship between music and the formation of East Asian society: I. Physio-musical phase, II. Visio-musical/spectacle phase, and III. Performer-audience phase (Chapter 6, Conclusions). This framework suggests that anthropological questions fundamental to the archaeology of human prehistory can be integrated productively with the study of ancient music.