Art, Myth, and Ritual

Chang challenges the view that political power in early China depended mainly on force or formal structure. He shows how art, myth, and ritual helped to build authority. Using evidence from archaeology, mythology, poetry, and iconography, he explores how practices such as shamanism and symbolic systems influenced political life.

Full title: Art, Myth, and Ritual: The Path to Political Authority in Ancient China. Published by Harvard University Press in 1983.

K.C. Chang (1931–2001) was a Chinese-American archaeologist and anthropologist who taught at Yale and Harvard. He did more than any other scholar of his generation to bring the archaeology of ancient China into conversation with the West.