The Influence of Song and Qing Antiquarianism on Modern Chinese Archaeology

Archeology, conceived as the discipline that studies the past based on traces left by human or natural activity using stratigraphic excavation as its primary method of investigation, has only recently developed in China. The first archeological excavations were carried out in the first quarter of the twentieth century by Western archeologists, while the first state-sponsored campaign, carried out in the site of Yinxu 殷墟, Anyang 安陽, between 1928 and 1937, was directed by archeologists who had studied in the West. The term kaoguxue 考古學 itself, though of earlier origin, as we shall see, was re-imported into China as a neologism from Japan to translate ἀρχαιολογία and define the new discipline. Many scholars consider therefore Chinese archeology as a recent development, introduced to China in the early twentieth century thanks to the crucial theoretical and methodological contribution of the Western world. Other scholars, however, have underlined the influence on Chinese archeology of the collecting cultures and antiquarian studies of the dynastic period, especially those of period of the Northern Song 北宋 (960-1127) and Qing 清 (1644-1911) dynasties. Though the investigation methods of Song and Qing literati were certainly different from modern ones it is also true that their cultural tradition remains in many ways a characteristic trait of Chinese archeology.