Page 30 - The Golden Age of Chinese Archaeology: Celebrated Discoveries from the People’s Republic of China

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The Swede Johan Gunnar Andersson (was impelled by the uncertain political climate of the
early 1900$ to shift his attention from geology to palaeontology in 1917. With Ding Wenjiang's
unfailing encouragement, as well as his own fund-raising skills, Andersson secured support
from both China and Sweden for publicity, financial assistance, and staff for palaeontological
and archaeological undertakings. 27
In 1921, Andersson was responsible for three major discoveries: the Neolithic cave at
Shaguotun, Jinxi area, Liaoning province; the Neolithic settlement at Yangshao village, Mianchi
county, Henan province (Yangshao culture [c. 5000-3000 BCE]); and the Palaeolithic cave at
Zhoukoudian, Beijing, which led to the discovery of Peking Man, or Sinanthropus pekinensis
(700,000-200,000 BP). 28
The Yangshao excavation best represents modern Chinese archaeology in its inaugural
phase. It took several years to complete the Yangshao excavation. Although Andersson had col-

lected vertebrate fossils from Yangshao village as early as 1918, it was not until his assistant as-
sembled several hundred stone artifacts from the site that Andersson himself returned to
Yangshao. In April 1921 he found some painted pottery but did not realize its importance until
he returned to Beijing and read a report on the American geologist Raphael Pumpelly's 1903-
1904 exploration to Anau, in present-day Turkmenistan, which referred to protohistoric painted
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pottery. With the permission of the government and the support of Ding Wenjiang, Andersson
organized a team and launched an excavation from October to December of the same year. 30
Andersson believed that the painted Yangshao pottery had been brought to the Yellow
River valley in prehistoric migrations from Eastern Europe. Therefore he searched for the roots
of the Yangshao culture in the Gansu and Qinghai provinces, in northwestern China. During
explorations in 1923 -1924 he discovered the remains of six regional prehistoric and Bronze Age
cultures, including the Majiayao (Machang) (3300-2050 BCE) and the Qijia (2000-1700 BCE).
He identified and distinguished the characteristics of these cultures and then established a
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chronology of prehistoric cultures in the upper Yellow River area. Andersson's nomenclature
was adopted and remains in use today, though his chronology is not entirely accurate. Although
he and his teammates had been trained in geology and palaeontology by Walter Granger
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(American, 1872 -1941) of the American Museum of Natural History, New York, their excava-
tion skills and experience were in developmental stages. Few comparative data and no carbon-

14 tests were then available. For all that, his achievement — the discovery of a Stone Age in
the "cradle area" of Chinese civilization — was remarkable. Andersson's work revealed that a
previously unknown civilization, which used polished stone tools, painted pottery, and an ad-
vanced system of agriculture, had inhabited the Central Plains, the eventual seat of the dynastic
cultures.
Andersson's early hypothesis that Chinese civilization had been transmitted from the West
may have been influenced by the cultural diffusion theory prevalent among Western intellectu-

29 I M O D E R N C H I N E S E A R C H A E O L O G Y