In the history of modern Chinese archaeology in a short hundred years, outstanding achievements are like stars.
They take root in the fields, comb the wind and rain, with a small hand shovel, from the seemingly ordinary land dug out of the treasures, gradually uncover the code of the ancient Chinese civilization.
Over the past hundred years, as the important cultural sites of various periods have been continuously discovered and excavated, the historical axis of China has been continuously stretched.
In October 2021, Chinese modern archaeology ushered in its centenary.
In the autumn of 1921, the Yangshao Village site in Mianchi County, Sanmenxia City, Henan Province, was excavated for the first time, marking the birth of modern Chinese archaeology and confirming the existence of a very developed ancient culture in China.
Since then, Chinese archaeology has entered a stage of science and norms based on field excavation.
Yin Ruins in Anyang, Zhangqiu Chengziya, Guanghan Sanxingdui, Liangzhu in Hangzhou, Yanshi Erlitou, Chifeng Hongshan, Gongyi Shuanghuaishu… Over the past hundred years, as the important cultural sites of various periods have been continuously discovered and excavated, the historical axis of China has been continuously stretched, and the details of civilization have been constantly enriched.
In the history of modern Chinese archaeology in a short hundred years, outstanding achievements are like stars.
Open up the Chinese own scientific archaeological excavation road li ji, China’s first formal training in modern archaeology and life to archaeology, put forward the origin of Chinese civilization “not like a candle, but like the stars” civilization view Su Bingqi, the main director of new China archaeological work and organizer summer light… generation after generation of archeologists, rooted in the fields, wind and rain, listen to the whispers under the soil.
They use a small hand shovel, from the seemingly ordinary land dug out the treasure, gradually uncover the password of the ancient Chinese civilization.
Start in Yangshao
Yangshao village is located in a loess platform in Mianchi County, western Henan Province, surrounded by water on three sides, you can see the towering vast Shaoshan, so the name “Yangshao”.
It is known as the “holy land of Chinese modern archaeology”.
Since 1918, Swedish geologist Andersen and his assistant came to this small village several times, collected a large number of stone tools and pottery pieces, and made a keen judgment: Yangshao Village is an important cultural site in ancient times in China, and it is extremely necessary to carry out a scientific archaeological excavation.
With the support of the Chinese government, In October 1921, Andersen led Yuan Fuli and other Chinese scholars to Yangshao Village, and officially began the excavation.
It took 36 days to excavate 17 excavation sites, and unearthed a large number of exquisite pottery, stone tools and a small number of bone tools, mussels and other precious relics.
A new prehistoric culture type, the “Yangshao Culture”, was thus discovered and named.
It is generally believed that this is the beginning of modern Chinese archaeology.
The excavation of the Yangshao Village site opened the understanding of the Yangshao culture, which was not only the first prehistoric culture recognized through archaeological discoveries, but also filled whether there were new stones in China at that time.The cognitive gap of the era of the instrument, the Chinese people are happy and excited.
However, in his 1923 book The Ancient Culture of China, Andersen pointed out, “However, compared with the artifacts of Henan and (Central Asia) Anno, there are many and tangibles in their graphic similarities, which really makes us feel that they come from the same source.” Later, a large number of exquisite painted pottery was found in Gansu and Qinghai, because there were no sites earlier than the late Neolithic era found in North China at that time, and before that, there were painted pottery in Europe and Central Asia, Andersen further inferred that the ancient Chinese culture was produced under the influence of European and West Asian culture, and then put forward the “Chinese culture in the West” – Chinese culture is the product of the integration of Western “new culture” and China’s original culture.
It is conceivable that in that era of fierce collision between Chinese and Western cultures, Andersen’s exposition of Chinese culture not only stimulated the enthusiasm of Chinese intellectuals for the exploration of emerging disciplines, but also aroused their faint pain of national destiny. Mr. Li Ji, the father of Chinese archaeology, once said: “Chinese scholars should feel extremely ashamed that most of these materials that have such an important relationship with ancient Chinese history are found by foreigners…… These circumstances, at least we hope, will not continue for long. ”
The Chinese archaeologists, represented by Li Ji, quickly took action. At the beginning of 1926, Li Ji, a doctor of anthropology who had returned from studying in the United States, braved the cold wind and led a team to Xiyin Village, Xia County, Shanxi. He hopes to find more evidence to shed light on the origin of faience and its relationship with Chinese culture. Liang Qichao wrote to his son, Liang Siyong, about the operation, and in response to Andersen’s assertion that Yangshao culture came from the West, he said that the Chinese scholars “wanted to overturn the case.”
The excavation of Xiyin Village once again expanded the scope of the discovered Yangshao culture, and it was also the first field archaeological excavation conducted by Chinese, which was a milestone in the history of modern archaeology in China. On the basis of mastering the excavation materials of Xiyin Village, Li Ji strengthened his cautious suspicion of “Chinese culture in the West”: “Comparing all our materials now, we have not obtained very reliable evidence that makes us conclude that the colored pottery found in China did indeed originate in the West. ”
Another path
“[They] also included in their speeches the words, ‘Both of them are halfway archaeologists (Jizhi studied anthropology), and the real person who specializes in archaeology is still in the United States—Mr. Liang’s son.'” I am happy for you and worried for you, how can you be worthy of the reputation of ‘China’s first archaeological scholar’ in the future, you must work very hard. ”
On the evening of January 10, 1927, Liang Qichao wrote a long letter to Liang Siyong in the United States with excitement. On the same day, Li Ji and others returned from the archaeological excavations in Xiyin Village, and a tea party was held at Tsinghua Academy of Chinese Studies, and Liang Qichao attended the meeting and listened to Li Ji’s report.
.In the summer of that year, Liang Siyong followed his father’s advice and interrupted his studies. During his return to China, he served as a teaching assistant at Tsinghua Academy of Chinese Studies, and an inspector at the Antiquities Exhibition Institute and the Palace Museum, most of which were unpaid. Using what he learned in the United States, he made a detailed classification of more than 10,000 pottery shards found in Xiyin Village, Shanxi Province. None of these pottery shards can be completely restored, but through comparative research with Neolithic sites at home and abroad, he affirmed that Xiyin Village and Yangshao Village are contemporaneous remains.
In August 1928, Liang Siyong went to the United States to continue his studies. Based on his experience in the year after returning to China, he completed his master’s thesis “Neolithic Pottery at the Prehistoric Site of Xiyin Village, Shanxi”, which is “the earliest monographic research work” completed by Chinese archaeologists. He used typological research methods in his research, which is exemplary for later archaeological research.
Liang Siyong also creatively proposed a scientific stratigraphic division method: dividing strata according to the difference of soil quality and soil color and inclusions, which laid the foundation for a scientific and accurate understanding of ancient cultural relics. In 1931, the second excavation of the Chengziya site in Shandong Province was presided over by Liang Siyong, who was only 27 years old at the time. In 1939, based on the excavation results of Chengziya, he wrote “Longshan Culture: One of the Prehistoric Periods of Chinese Civilization”.
The discovery of Longshan culture also allowed Chinese archaeologists who could not overturn the “Western theory of Chinese culture” to find another way to explain the origin of Chinese civilization. Scholars led by Li Ji, Fu Sinian, Liang Siyong, and Xu Zhongshu believe that the roots of Chinese civilization lie in the area around the Bohai Bay, and put forward the “dualistic theory of East and West” in which Longshan culture developed from east to west and Yangshao culture developed from west to east. Until the mid-50s of the last century, this doctrine was dominant in academic circles.
Chen Xingcan, director of the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, believes that if the archaeology of China in the past century is to be divided into stages, the discovery of the Yangshao site in 1921 and the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 will be the first stage, the second stage will be from the founding of the People’s Republic of China to the reform and opening up, and the third stage since the reform and opening up.
“In the first stage of the development of Chinese archaeology, there were two main purposes: one was to use new scientific methods to study Chinese history, which was a concrete manifestation of ‘sorting out the national history’, and the other was to use Chinese materials to respond to ‘Chinese culture in the West’, mainly in response to Andersen’s views. Sun Qingwei, a professor at the School of Archaeology and Museums of Peking University, said.
From “Intern” to “Founder”
In the spring of 1935, the Yin Ruins, which had brought infinite surprises to the world from the beginning of its discovery, ushered in the 11th excavation. Xia Nai, 25, participated in the excavation as an intern. The year before, he graduated from the Department of History of Tsinghua University and won a publicly-funded study abroad place with an absolute advantage.
On the eve of graduation, he chose a research direction for himself to continue his studies – modern China.Economic History. However, at that time, the major chosen in Peking for the examination for studying in the United States was “archaeology”, so as soon as the results were announced, he was faced with the choice of research direction. In his diary that day, he wrote: “I was originally planning to do modern Chinese history, but this time I suddenly took the entrance examination to archaeology, so as to change my whole life plan, for such a major change, I did not expect, I was a little hesitant. ”
In March 1935, when Xia Nai, who was participating in an internship at the Yinxu excavation site, learned that there was a subject of “economic history” in the examination for studying in the United States this year, he “regretted that he had applied for archaeology last year”, thinking that he was originally immersed in studying, and that he was not good at archaeological fieldwork. More than two months later, when he was about to end his internship in Yinxu, he still expressed similar thoughts in his diary, “I feel that I am not worthy of archaeology, and I am a little tired of fieldwork, and I feel that it is monotonous and uninteresting.”
Although the discovery of Yinxu was so earth-shattering, “a piece of oracle bones shocked the world”, Yinxu completely confirmed the legendary Shang Dynasty, and China’s written history advanced 1,000 years. However, it can be seen from Xia Nai’s diary that one of the future founders of modern Chinese archaeology did not have much interest in archaeology at that time.
The discovery of Yin Ruins is quite legendary. In 1899, Wang Yirong, a goldsmith and stone scientist, discovered some very ancient characters and symbols engraved on the keels sold in traditional Chinese medicine stores in Beijing, and realized that they might be precious cultural relics, so he began to buy them with a large amount of money. Later, after Luo Zhenyu, Wang Guowei and others researched and investigated, it was found that Xiaotun Village, Anyang, Henan Province, where the oracle bones were unearthed, was exactly the Yin Ruins mentioned in the literature.
The excavation of the Yinxu site has opened a treasure trove of Chinese archaeological field archaeology. From October 1928 to June 1937, the archaeological group of the Institute of History and Philology of the Academia Sinica organized 15 excavations in Yinxu, excavating 11 large tombs, 1 square pit, more than 1,200 small tombs and sacrificial pits, as well as a large number of building foundations, and unearthed nearly 20,000 pieces of engraved oracle bones and a large number of pottery, bronze and jade.
“The excavation of Yinxu has shown the glorious Shang Dynasty civilization to the world. The reason why China has become one of the four ancient civilizations has a lot to do with the excavation of Yinxu. Chen Xingcan said.
Xia Nai, who participated in the excavation of Yinxu, interviewed Liang Siyong several times, and corresponded with Li Ji, repeatedly discussing the whereabouts of his study abroad. Under their guidance and help, Xia Nai’s study in the United States changed to studying in the United Kingdom. When choosing the direction, he believes that “the future archaeology of China must take the scale of Egyptian archaeology as the first model, so there must be one person in the Chinese archaeological community who is familiar with Egyptian archaeology, and can learn from it with its excavation techniques and research methods.” ”
Before transferring to the Department of Egyptian Archaeology at the University of London, Xia Nai’s gradual interest in archaeology after several months of painstaking study and thinking, as well as the foundation laid in the excavation of Yin Ruins.I became interested, and I changed from the initial hesitation to a clear determination. But perhaps even he did not expect that he would lead the cause of Chinese archaeology for more than 30 years in the future.
On the second floor of the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a stone statue of Xia Nai looks serene, looking into the distance. This is a name that is admired by all members of the Institute of Archaeology, not only because he was the director of the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, but also because he was the main instructor and organizer of archaeological work in New China and one of the founders of modern archaeology in China.
In 1950, Xia Nai presided over the first large-scale archaeological excavation after the founding of the People’s Republic of China – the excavation of the carriage and horse pit in the Warring States Period in Huixian County, Henan. He did it himself, in the ice and snow, squatting in the carriage pit for several days, roasting and picking with charcoal. Finally, the remains of 19 large wooden cars were completely rediscovered, shocking the world.
In 1955, Xia Nai first paid attention to carbon-14 dating technology and introduced it to the Chinese archaeological community, which immediately aroused strong repercussions in the archaeological community. Under Xia Nai’s leadership, young physicists Qiu Shihua and Cai Lianzhen from the Institute of Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences were transferred to the Institute of Archaeology, and China’s first carbon-14 laboratory was officially established.
Mr. Xia Nai has also made outstanding contributions to the protection of cultural relics, and at his suggestion, it has become a rule in the archaeological community not to actively excavate the emperor’s tombs. Wang Wei, chairman of the Chinese Archaeological Society, said.
Another turn
In the early 50s of the 20th century, the construction of New China was developing day by day, and in order to cope with the serious lack of archaeological strength in the capital construction, the then Ministry of Culture (Administration of Social and Cultural Undertakings), the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Institute of Archaeology) and Peking University jointly organized four training courses for archaeological staff from 1952 to 1955, with a total of 369 trainees. These four phases of students have gradually become the backbone of the People’s Republic of China after the founding of the People’s Republic of China, and are known as the “Whampoa Phase IV” in the archaeological field.
Su Bingqi and Xia Nai, both instructors of the training class, participated in the planning and leadership of the training class. Su Bingqi is also one of the main founders of archaeology education, presiding over the archaeology major of Peking University for 30 years, and has made outstanding contributions to running the archaeology major, cultivating archaeological talents, and enriching archaeological teams across the country. And Su Bingqi is more often praised for his “starry sky” theory about the origin of Chinese civilization.
On July 24, 1986, the Niuheliang site in Lingyuan, Liaoning Province was discovered. The Niuheliang site is a sacrificial place 5000 years ago, belonging to the Hongshan culture – the Hongshan culture is named after the Hongshanhou site in the eastern suburbs of Chifeng, 6500 to 5000 years ago, distributed in the West Liaohe River Basin in Northeast China. This discovery advanced the history of Chinese civilization by more than 1,000 years.
At the same time, the excavations of the Liangzhu Tomb in Hangzhou and the Xiangfen Tao Temple Cemetery in Shanxi Province all show that from 4000 to 5500 years ago, there were different streams.domains have formed complex societies. These major discoveries have also put the “Central Plains-centric theory” of the origin of Chinese civilization that the archaeological community has been adhering to in jeopardy.
When and where did Chinese civilization originate? This is the core question of Chinese archaeology. Su Bingqi pointed out that the concept of “China’s great unification” that civilization only originated in the Central Plains is a “strange circle” and needs to be jumped out. Chinese civilization is not a candle, but a sky full of stars. He divided the land of China into six major regions, believing that each piece has its own civilization origin and development system, and the Central Plains is only one of them. In the Xia and Shang periods, with the exchange and integration of civilizations in various places, as well as the absorption of foreign civilizations, the Central Plains became the center.
Su Bingqi’s theory has similarities with the theory of “China’s (cultural) interaction sphere” put forward by the Chinese-American scholar Zhang Guangzhi, and it quickly sparked heated discussions in academic circles. Inspired by Su Bingqi, scholar Yan Wenming put forward the theory of “double-petaled flowers” in 1987, arguing that “Chinese prehistoric culture is a hierarchical centripetal structure”, “the Central Plains cultural area is the heart of flowers”, “in the process of the occurrence and formation of civilization, the Central Plains play a leading and prominent role”, and other regions are “petals”.
Another great contribution of Su Bingqi to scholarship is that in the 90s of the 20th century, he proposed a new archaeological task to reconstruct the prehistory of China. In the 12th issue of Archaeology magazine in 1991, Su Bingqi wrote: “In the past 40 years, we have been busy with increasingly heavy fieldwork, focusing on the study of archaeology and culture, and have achieved remarkable results, but relatively speaking, the task of reconstructing prehistory has no time to take into account, and even in the minds of some archaeologists, the concept of reconstructing prehistory is weak. By carrying out research on the origins of Chinese civilization, Su Bingqi further put forward the goal of reconstructing the framework of ancient Chinese history, constructing the framework of Chinese national history, and doing social archaeology: “As a result of many years, the study of the Paleolithic to the Neolithic has been artificially separated, and the upper and lower levels cannot be connected, so that each of them can only have a fragmentary rather than a complete understanding of Chinese prehistory.” ”
“After the founding of the People’s Republic of China, in the 90s of the last century, the main task of Chinese archaeology before that was to do cultural genealogy research, that is, to use archaeological materials to construct the spatio-temporal framework of ancient Chinese culture, especially prehistoric culture, Mr. Xia Nai was a well-deserved leader at this stage. Since then, he has begun to focus on historical and social studies, emphasizing the perspective of things and people, and the representative figure is Mr. Su Bingqi. Sun Qingwei said.
Chang Zhiguo Shi Danxin
Throughout the 100-year history of modern archaeology in China, archaeology is not only a discipline, but also represents the realistic spirit of Chang Zhiguo’s heart for Chinese archaeologists.
In the course of the interview, one of the questions we often ask is, how to define the original mission of archaeologists in the new era? Wang Wei’s answer may be representative: Chinese archaeologists have always been.domains have formed complex societies. These major discoveries have also put the “Central Plains-centric theory” of the origin of Chinese civilization that the archaeological community has been adhering to in jeopardy.
When and where did Chinese civilization originate? This is the core question of Chinese archaeology. Su Bingqi pointed out that the concept of “China’s great unification” that civilization only originated in the Central Plains is a “strange circle” and needs to be jumped out. Chinese civilization is not a candle, but a sky full of stars. He divided the land of China into six major regions, believing that each piece has its own civilization origin and development system, and the Central Plains is only one of them. In the Xia and Shang periods, with the exchange and integration of civilizations in various places, as well as the absorption of foreign civilizations, the Central Plains became the center.
Su Bingqi’s theory has similarities with the theory of “China’s (cultural) interaction sphere” put forward by the Chinese-American scholar Zhang Guangzhi, and it quickly sparked heated discussions in academic circles. Inspired by Su Bingqi, scholar Yan Wenming put forward the theory of “double-petaled flowers” in 1987, arguing that “Chinese prehistoric culture is a hierarchical centripetal structure”, “the Central Plains cultural area is the heart of flowers”, “in the process of the occurrence and formation of civilization, the Central Plains play a leading and prominent role”, and other regions are “petals”.
Another great contribution of Su Bingqi to scholarship is that in the 90s of the 20th century, he proposed a new archaeological task to reconstruct the prehistory of China. In the 12th issue of Archaeology magazine in 1991, Su Bingqi wrote: “In the past 40 years, we have been busy with increasingly heavy fieldwork, focusing on the study of archaeology and culture, and have achieved remarkable results, but relatively speaking, the task of reconstructing prehistory has no time to take into account, and even in the minds of some archaeologists, the concept of reconstructing prehistory is weak. By carrying out research on the origins of Chinese civilization, Su Bingqi further put forward the goal of reconstructing the framework of ancient Chinese history, constructing the framework of Chinese national history, and doing social archaeology: “As a result of many years, the study of the Paleolithic to the Neolithic has been artificially separated, and the upper and lower levels cannot be connected, so that each of them can only have a fragmentary rather than a complete understanding of Chinese prehistory.” ”
“After the founding of the People’s Republic of China, in the 90s of the last century, the main task of Chinese archaeology before that was to do cultural genealogy research, that is, to use archaeological materials to construct the spatio-temporal framework of ancient Chinese culture, especially prehistoric culture, Mr. Xia Nai was a well-deserved leader at this stage. Since then, he has begun to focus on historical and social studies, emphasizing the perspective of things and people, and the representative figure is Mr. Su Bingqi. Sun Qingwei said.
Chang Zhiguo Shi Danxin
Throughout the 100-year history of modern archaeology in China, archaeology is not only a discipline, but also represents the realistic spirit of Chang Zhiguo’s heart for Chinese archaeologists.
In the course of the interview, one of the questions we often ask is, how to define the original mission of archaeologists in the new era? Wang Wei’s answer may be representative: Chinese archaeologists have always been