Suburban Space Transformed: Investigating Chu Capital’s Southern Suburbs before and after Conquests

Research on ancient city sites in Chinese archaeology tends to focus on remains within the city walls, while paying limited attention to the city periphery as a distinct and research-worthy spatial unit. The present paper challenges this prevailing approach by investigating the southern suburban area of the Chu capital in South China. It explores the complex relationship between this suburban space and the urban core to which it was connected. Notably, following events of monumental conquests of the region during the third century BCE, settlements in the southern suburbs underwent restructuring and became the western suburbs of the newly established Nan Commandery under the Qin and early Han empires. Overall, this study aims to offer a fresh perspective that enriches our understanding of the nuanced trajectory of early (sub)urbanization in China.