Archaeology of the Chinese Bronze Age is a synthesis of recent Chinese archaeological work on the 2nd millennium BCE--the period associated with China's first dynasties and East Asia's first "states." Focused on Early China's great metropolitan centers in the Central Plains and their hinterlands, this work attempts to contextualize them within their wider zones of interaction from the Yangtze to the edge of the Mongolian steppe, and from the Yellow Sea to the Tibetan plateau and the Gansu corridor. This book critically presents the current state of Chinese archaeology on the second millennium BCE in a way that brings to English readers the complexity of Early Chinese culture history, the variety and development of its urban formations, and the larger context of Central Plains Civilization. Although employing "Chinese" and "Bronze Age" in the title for the sake of familiarity, this work attempts to complicate both terms by showing East Asia's divergent developmental paths and reexamining its deep past without the anachronistic lens of later historiography or over-simplistic evolutionary assumptions. This, it is hoped, will contribute to a more nuanced basis for understandings of China's Early Bronze Age.