Faculty Research Fellow
Liye Xie (Ph.D. Archaeology, University of Arizona, 2014) is Associate Professor and Associate Chair of the Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto Mississauga (UTM). She was a full-time archaeologist in China 2005-2007, completed her Ph.D. at the University of Arizona 2007-2014, and joined the UTM faculty upon graduation. As an anthropological archaeologist with a background in China’s historically oriented approach to archaeology, she studies preindustrial technologies of bone, stone, and earthen construction to address questions about the co-construction of technology and society in Neolithic and Bronze Age China. She received the University of Toronto Mississauga Annual Research Prize in the Social Sciences 2019-2020.
Fellowship Research Project—Resettlement, Urban Construction, and Social Transformation in the Central Plain at the Dawn of China’s Dynastic History
This project builds on Placemaking Theory and Structuration Theory to investigate the epochal social changes between the late Neolithic regional states and the early Bronze Age supraregional state during 2500-1250 BCE in the Central Plain of China. It synthesizes decades of archaeological findings at 10 relevant early urban sites to trace the knowledge-building process regarding the relationship between resettlement, construction, and social reform, and highlights the social and performative nature of construction campaigns that is fundamental to shaping social relations and materializing authority among an agglomerated population in a newly urbanized environment. Furthermore, it will compare with early urban development that followed resettlement events in regions outside of China for a more comprehensive understanding of the convergent and divergent trajectories to political complexification in the world’s early urbanized societies.