Introduction: memory and agency in ancient China: shaping the life histories of objects / Francis Allard, Yan Sun and Katheryn M. Linduff -- Memory, amnesia and the formation of identity symbols in China / Gideon Shelach -- The lives of shovels and bells in early south China: memory, ritual and the power of destination / Francis Allard -- The whole and fragmented lives of jade objects from late Neolithic middle Yangzi River burials (ca. 2000 BC) / Sascha Priewe -- The social life of salt in ancient China from the late Neolithic to the Han Dynasty / Pochan Chen -- A divergent life history of bronze willow-leaf-shaped swords of western Zhou China from 11th to C. 10th centuries BCE / Yan Sun -- Bird-pillar basins and cylindrical vessels: object lineage in ancient China / Xiaolong Wu -- Toiletries and the production of social memory from the warring states through the Han (4th C. BCE-3rd C. CE) / Sheri Lullo -- A biographical approach to the study of the mounted archer motif during the Han Dynasty / Leslie Wallace -- Dynamic between form and material: the bi disc in Western Han noble burial ritual / Eileen Lam -- Crossing the Taiwan strait: contextualizing and re-contextualizing Taiwan aboriginal objects (1895-1980) / Du Hui -- Artifacts that invoke the aura and authority of the ancient / Katheryn M. Linduff.