"Although visually impressive, ancient Chinese walls, such as the Great Wall, were not regularly sovereign border lines. Instead, sovereign spacewas more zonally exerted, with monarchial powers expressed gradually over an area. On the frontiers, these powers were not infrequently in contestation with those of other sovereign entities. In addition, the signifiers of sovereign space were also not simply secular; in many cases, they were ritualized, with religious duties attached. The ritualized power of the monarch was akin to a legal one. Analyses of early Chinese space, includingtheir cartographic representations, thus must take the influence of ritualized structures into account. Finally, because these structures were open to contestation, including the contestations involved in the acquiring of information about places from local inhabitants, there must be the recognition that articulations of frontier space were never fully accurate.Indeed, across ancient cultures, frontier space was often very literally monstrous, a challenge to authority"-- Provided by publisher.