Talk:Western Zhou
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Chronology proposed by Zhang (2019)
[edit]I have again reverted the addition of a novel chronology based of this preprint. There is no evidence that this has appeared in a peer-reviewed publication or that other scholars have accepted it, and therefore, as Wikipedia is not a publisher of original thought, we should not include it. There is indeed no accepted chronology for this period, but widely used chronologies are those of Edward Shaughnessy in The Cambridge History of Ancient China and the Xia–Shang–Zhou Chronology Project. Kanguole 15:26, 1 December 2019 (UTC)
- What about the peer-reviewed chronology that came out in Early China in 2023? (Pengcheng Zhang, "The Chronology of Western Zhou," Early China vol. 46 (2023), 131-242. Tbearzhang (talk) 22:44, 9 September 2024 (UTC)
- All chronologies of Western Zhou have their problems. Shaughnessy's is centre stage in CHAC because he was volume editor, and that particular book was pretty open to bold hypotheses (Boltz's "口 used to be pronounced míng" is an even less consensus example).Shaughnessy's chronology of course rests in the Nivison–Shaughnessy Double Yuan Hypothesis, which is why rulers typically have two accession dates, but outside those two people, I'm not sure how much acceptance it has by scholars active in chronological reconstruction.XSZ's chronology is self-admittedly flawed and uncorrected in the face of new evidence. The only reason it has such currency is the size, nature, and repute of the collaboration that produced it. Judging by the lack of alterations that took place in the two decades between the draft report and final report, despite archaeological evidence falsifying their theories, it seems like people had given up on it as too broken, and only published the final report as a legal obligation.Zhang's article in Early China is a banger, and I'd been thinking about bringing it up here ever since reading it last month. It's certainly rigorous, but tends to make firm conclusions based on single pieces of evidence. I'd characterise some of its principles as potentially suboptimal for the application. If the problem is that a preprint is being cited, we could just cite the article instead.At root, the chronology of Western Zhou has no consensus in the scholarly community. I think the most policy compliant option we have is to give all three of the current published reconstructions. Are there others? Folly Mox (talk) 05:22, 10 September 2024 (UTC)
- The journal version is a reliable source, but then there's the question of due weight. Zhang's work doesn't have the exposure of the Shaughnessy and XSZCP chronologies, and I'm not aware of any assessments of it.
- It may be that the problem is unsolvable given the limited date notations on the bronze inscriptions, possible changes in how the calendar operated and possible post facto tidying-up of the succession. Everyone seems to need to rely on selective use of texts written centuries after the fact and subject to uncertain transmission after that.
- Anyway, here's a comparison of the chronologies:
- Shaughnessy (Cambridge History of Ancient China)Xia-Shang-Zhou Chronology ProjectPengcheng Zhang│1060│1040│1020│1000│980│960│940│920│900│880│860│840│820│800│780│760
- Kanguole 22:58, 10 September 2024 (UTC)
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