Page 26 - The Golden Age of Chinese Archaeology: Celebrated Discoveries from the People’s Republic of China
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A  History     of Modern         Chinese       Archaeology













       X I A O N E N G Y A N G  |  Traditional Chinese  antiquarianism, particularly the jin shi xue (the study of ancient  Chinese
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                            bronzes and  stone  stelae), has endured  for one thousand  years.  In contrast,  modern field
                            archaeology  has come to be practiced  in China only recently,  starting  in the  early  twentieth
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                            century.  It is a young sibling if compared  with  Roman, Greek, and  Egyptian archaeology.  Mod-
                            ern  Chinese  archaeology  is distinguished  from  previous efforts  to  investigate physical remains
                            by its scientific methodology  of field surveys and  excavations.
                                 A series  of momentous discoveries during the  first decade of the  twentieth  century —
                            in particular, the  Shang oracle-bone  inscriptions  at Anyang in Henan province and the Han-
                            Tang manuscripts, paintings, textiles, and  wooden  slips from  Dunhuang and Jiuquan in  Gansu
                            province, stimulated modern  Chinese  archaeology. 3  Evolving from  traditional  sinology, after  the
                            political revolution of  1911 it absorbed  the  Western disciplines of palaeontology  and  geology.
                            Initiated  and first practiced  in China by Japanese, Russian, and  Western  scholars and  explorers,
                            most  of them  self-taught, Chinese archaeology would eventually come to be  a province of
                            Chinese  intellectuals.
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                                 Despite the  interruptions  imposed  by political  and  social turmoil,  the  discipline devel-
                            oped rapidly over the  course  of less than  a century, and  much of China's early history has been
                            rewritten as a result. The achievements of Chinese  archaeologists  have drawn attention  and
                            admiration  from  around  the  world. Chinese archaeology has in fact  entered a golden  age, 6  the
                            result  of a developmental process  comprising four  stages:  initiation  (18905-19105); formation
                            (19205-19405), institutionalization (1949-1976), and maturation  (1977 to the  present).




                            18905-1910$:   INITIATION
                            Long known as the  "Central Kingdom," China was battered  during the  nineteenth  century and
                            the first decade  of the  twentieth century by totalitarianism, poverty, and foreign invasion. In
                            1911, Chinese  intellectuals and patriots  engineered  the  overthrow of the  Qing dynasty, and  the
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                            Republic of China was established.  One  of their  foremost goals was the  pursuit  and  importa-
                            tion  of science  and  democracy from  the  West, epitomized by the  May Fourth Movement of
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                            1919.  If the  door of China  was first cracked  by foreign forces, it was the  Chinese  people who
                            enthusiastically swung it wide open.
                                 Chinese intellectuals eagerly embraced foreign  scholarship, including that of Western
                            archaeologists.  Liang Qichao  (1873-1929), a key reformer and  a leading scholar, was among  the
                            first to apply Western archaeologists'  periodization of the  prehistoric  era to China. His  1901
                            essay summarizing Chinese history refers to three  successive prehistoric periods — delineated
                            by the  use of stone, bronze, and  iron tools — a chronology established  by the  Danish archaeol-
                            ogist  Christian Jiirgensen Thomsen (1788-1865). Although the  periods  vary in length  in  differ-
                            ent  regions, Liang suggested  that the  sequence  applies to prehistoric  China, and he further
      Cat.  126, detail     posited  the  existence of a Stone Age before the  legendary figure Shen Nong and  a bronze  age




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