本文討論了出現在早期帝制中國的一個遺址：王莽九廟，一個用來展示身為帝王的王莽為其政權過渡期建構的帝王世系，是由十二個廟組成的複雜建築群。我認為這個建築群既是一個有形建築，被王莽利用來試圖鞏固他的統治，同時它又被歷史學家班固歷史性地再現，而班固是為東漢中興政權工作的。本論文的目的不在於討論這個建築群的形貌，或有關它的歷史紀錄的內容，而是為了考察此一建築與後來的歷史書寫行為，其可能的動機及俟後導致的結果。人類學與社會
學的基本理論中關於空間的理論運用，將本研究中的歷史景觀議題連結上一個當代的辯論，亦即空間的操作，與社會和政治的力量是息息相關的。歷史學家和考古學家在處理許多物質文化時，往往面臨到許多無法重建、無法解釋的重要問題，而本論文則是表現了面對此類疑難例子，如何獲取有用的理解方法的一個示範。

This article considers a site from early imperial China, referred to
historically as the Wang Mang Jiumiao, that has been archaelogically identified as a complex of twelve temples dedicated to the imperial lineage of the interregnum emperor, Wang Mang. I consider this site as both the physical construction employed by Wang Mang in an attempt to solidify his reign, and as its historical re-presentation by the historian Ban Gu. I do this, not to verify what was built or what was written, but rather as a consideration of the possible motives and results of the material and the written actions. In this paper,
anthropologically and sociologically based theories on the use of space link this investigation of a historical site to contemporary debates on how spatial manipulation is related to cultural and political forces. Historians and archaeologists are frequently faced with examples of material culture whose identification is uncertain, and this paper
is a demonstration of an approach to help understanding these problematic
examples, especially in cases where there is discrepancy between the textual and the archaeological record.