Rowan Flad
Rowan Flad (b. 10.27.1972) is a Professor of Anthropology at Harvard University. His research is currently focused on the emergence and development of complex society during the late Neolithic period and the Bronze Age in China. This research incorporates interests in diachronic change in production processes, the intersection between ritual activity and production, the role of animals in early Chinese society - particularly their use in sacrifice and divination, and the processes involved in social change in general. Recently he has conducted excavations at a salt production site in the eastern Sichuan Basin and archaeological survey in the Chengdu Plain focusing on prehistoric settlement patterns and social evolution in that region. New research is being planned focusing on technological change along the proto-Silk Road in Northwest China (Gansu) during the late Neolithic and early Bronze Age. His publications include articles in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Current Anthropology, The Holocene, Antiquity, Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, Journal of Field Archaeology, Asian Perspectives, Journal of East Asian Archaeology, Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, Kaogu, and Nanfang minzu kaogu. He co-edited a book on specialization in the series Archaeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association, and Climate, Landscapes and Civilizations, published by the American Geophysical Union in 2012. He is the author of Salt Production and Social Hierarchy in Ancient China: An archaeological investigation of specialization in China’s Three Gorges, published by Cambridge University Press in 2011, and Ancient Central China: Centers and Peripheries Along the Yangzi River, also published by Cambridge University Press in 2013.
