Page 143 - The Golden Age of Chinese Archaeology: Celebrated Discoveries from the People’s Republic of China

THE ERLITOU The luster of the "Erlitou culture" derives from unique finds characteristic of the type site. First
identified as the result of a deliberate effort to discover material remains of the Xia dynasty
CULTURE AT (the first of the Three Dynasties [san dai] of traditional Chinese historiography), the Erlitou
site in Yanshi county, Henan province, lies in the eastern suburbs of the great city of Luoyang. 1
YANSHI, HENAN Excavations have yielded a large quantity of a gray pottery dated as intermediate between that
of local Neolithic cultures and Early Shang period pottery from such key sites as Zhengzhou.
PROVINCE Moreover, the Erlitou site may hold upward of a dozen pounded-earth foundations convention-
ally regarded as "palaces" by their excavators. The two palaces already uncovered reveal court-
2
yard plans of a kind fundamental to all later Chinese architectural practice. Over the last two
decades, many richly furnished graves have been excavated, yielding, in addition to hardstone
objects, the earliest bronze vessels in China proper. Most Chinese scholars now confidently
equate this archaeological culture with the Xia, relying on its general correspondence in time
(c. 1900-1500 BCE) and place (western Henan province) with the expectations of historio-
graphical tradition.
The confidence of many Chinese scholars has not, however, persuaded all researchers. The

lack of a worldwide consensus on the identity of the Erlitou type site (compared with the gen-
eral acceptance of the Zhengzhou and Anyang sites as Shang) illustrates some of the competing
assumptions and agendas of archaeologists and historians, both inside and outside China to-
day. For many Chinese scholars, especially those who conceive of archaeology as an essentially
historiographic discipline, the recovery of the Erlitou culture marks a major breakthrough
in the reconstruction of the past and the reconciliation of historiography and "scientific evi-
dence." As such, the work at Erlitou is considered important as the excavations at Anyang
(cats. 46-54) and the Plain of Zhou (cats. 78-83). In each case, modern archaeology verifies
a received historical tradition, complementing and correcting that record.
Among scholars who embrace a different orientation, such as the North American view
of archaeology as anthropology, the evidence from Erlitou appears less revelatory: The absence
of any writing (save a few signs on pottery sherds) and the lack of any putative royal burials
(with one disputed exception), combined with the piecemeal publication of the finds, raises
many doubts about what has been recovered at the site itself. So far, the type site is exceptional
in its own right; no other sites of this archaeological culture compare in their material invento-
ries. The absence of any references to a Xia people or to Xia kings in the Shang oracle-bone
inscriptions from c. 1200 BCE (see cats. 55-56) also makes the equation of the Erlitou culture
with the Xia dynasty problematic. Other archaeological cultures could be championed as puta-
tive Xia remains, including, for example, the remarkable cemetery at Taosi in Xiangfeng county

(Shanxi province).
In general, more data generated over time will help promote greater clarity in disputes
regarding the identity of particular archaeological cultures or finds, even if they are not con-
clusively resolved by the latest discovery. Resolving the status of the Erlitou culture can only

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