Title: Body, Visibility, and Social Difference in Prehistoric Taiwan
Subtitle: The Materialization of Perceptibility
Subject Classification:  Arts, Society and Culture, History  
BIC Classification: AB, JF, HB
BISAC Classification: SOC003000, SOC002010, SOC050000
Binding: Hardback, eBook
Planned publication date: Aug 2027
ISBN (Hardback): 978-1-83711-951-6
ISBN (eBook): 978-1-83711-952-3

e-books available for libraries from   Proquest  and   EBSCO   with non-institutional availability from  GooglePlay

For larger orders, or orders where you require an invoice, contact us  admin@ethicspress.com

Description

Body, Visibility, and Social Difference in Prehistoric Taiwan examines how social difference was generated and stabilized through bodily practice, material attachment, and mortuary configuration in societies without written records.
Rather than treating difference as a symbolic system or a pre-existing social category, the book argues that differentiation emerged through concrete operations that made it perceptible. Focusing on jade ear ornaments dated c. 3000–2000 BCE, it traces how bodily modification—especially ear perforation and ornamentation—transformed the body into a site where material could be attached, arranged, and made visible.
Through detailed analysis of manufacturing traces, spatial positioning, and burial configurations, the study reconstructs a sequence of operations—perforation, nodality, amplification, variability, stabilization, and institutionalization—through which difference was generated, adjusted, and selectively fixed. In this process, visibility was not a secondary effect of social structure, but the condition through which difference became perceptible, repeatable, and socially operative.
Evidence from sites such as Laoshan, Qubing, and Wanshan shows that these processes did not produce uniform outcomes. Instead, different configurations of bodily practice and mortuary arrangement shaped how visibility was amplified, limited, or fixed. In some contexts, difference was not expanded but selectively constrained, indicating that social differentiation could be maintained without continuous intensification or centralized hierarchy.
By grounding theoretical questions in material configurations, the book develops an archaeological approach in which visibility is understood not as representation, but as a process through which difference is produced, stabilized, and sometimes withdrawn. It will be of interest to scholars of archaeology, anthropology, material culture, and early social formations.

Biography

Author(s):  Su-chiu Kuo is a Research Fellow at the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, Taiwan. Her research focuses on prehistoric Taiwan, material culture, and the archaeology of personhood, with particular emphasis on jade ornaments and mortuary practices.

Reviews

This title is currently being reviewed. Please check back for further updates in due course.