Scale, depth, multi-disciplinarity, and global integration: Chinese archaeology at 100 years

2021 marked the 100th anniversary of modern scientific archaeological excavation in China. After a remarkable century-long journey, archaeology in China is arguably in its ‘golden age’ (Flad 2021). It attracts not only significant governmental funding but also increasing public interest, leading to an unparalleled boom of data accumulation and the appearance of many sub-disciplines, including public archaeology and cultural heritage studies. However, just like in its neighboring Asian countries, the development of archaeology in China has been closely entangled with changing intellectual traditions, political frameworks, theoretical underpinnings, and methodological innovations, giving rise to what some scholars would call a Chinese school of archaeology (L. Zhang 2013).

Sparked by this anniversary, this special issue of World Archaeology opens doors to reflections on discoveries, approaches, methods, and results stemming from state-of-the-art projects and field-based work from across China and neighboring countries. Drawing in diverse contributions on urban and funerary archaeology, heritage-based and historiographical research, the volume provides an insight into the current position of archaeological research in China, the advances being made, and the agenda for the future.

It is beyond the scope of this short editorial to delve into the complicated issues related to history and development of Chinese archaeology, but a short reflection on some recent trends and problems in archaeological research in China will undoubtedly help readers better appreciate how and why domestic and international scholars working in China are involved in pursuing similar and different research topics and questions. Some of the contributions to this special edition have already touched upon crucial topics such as the history of settlement archaeology. Here we expand our thoughts on these issues.

Diversity and scale

Inclusive within this purview are some welcome investigations into settlements, urban centres, societal structures, burial practices, ceramic production, and the intricate web of long-distance maritime trade routes. The Chinese archaeological research papers themselves serve as a subject of scrutiny. Chinese archaeology, as Xuan Wei and co-authors demonstrate, has developed rapidly since the 1980s in terms of interdisciplinarity, question-orientated research, and increased emphasis on internationalism in researching and publishing results (Wei et al. 2023). It is no surprise that a country of the size of China with such rich archaeological time depth can offer a capacity and test-ground for archaeology conducted at scale. The contributions here signal that modern state-of-the-art for archaeology in China, whether researching cityscapes, deep-time urban deposits, or settlement archaeology, is excelling especially at producing large, robust multi-disciplinary/multi-scalar datasets that can be used to test and model major archaeological questions, from human adaptability and resilience, industrial development, and long-distance trade, to understanding shifting beliefs and social practices. Anke Hein’s article (2023) traces the contributions of Chinese archaeology to settlement studies, notably to the widely accepted nested approach to studying sites, regions, and systems through emphasis by Chang in the 1950s at Harvard on integrating social as well as environmental factors (1958). She shows how field-driven challenges at scale have resulted in new methodologies, such as the combined uses of remote sensing, cartography, and geophysics, and how international projects serve as conduits for scholarly exchange and the sharing of influential ideas. Indeed, settlement archaeology continues to provide the theoretical framework that regulates how large-scale excavations are organized and data are collected, as well as an epistemological tool for understanding ancient lifeways and systems.

R. Zhang et al. (2023) offer an interrogation of the phenomenal scale of the pan–Indian Ocean industry in Longquan celadon ceramic production, using a quantified analytical approach to demonstrate the emergence of a global industry between the 12th and 14th/15th centuries CE, with evidence that celadon was not just favored as an elite commodity in palaces, major cities, and aristocratic and upper-class households, but found its way to rural coastal and inland communities. It is not just scale that is significant in their findings; they also point to a high level of integration in these medieval centuries between the Chinese domestic economy and overseas markets and consumers.

Fostering interdisciplinarity

It is in these large-scale data-rich projects that we also see the strong commitment in Chinese archaeology to developing interdisciplinarity in research methods. From the very first scientific excavation at the Yangshao village to subsequent field excavations and surveys, interdisciplinary inquiries into China’s diverse landforms and environments have been deeply entrenched in Chinese archaeology for several decades. The Banpo excavation in the 1950s saw one of the earliest applications of pollen technology in archaeological studies (Storozum et al. 2023). Despite the disruption during the Cultural Revolution, the trend of interdisciplinary studies was revived in the 1990s (e.g. NMC and SAM-PKU 2009). A rapid integration of natural and social sciences-based methodologies, such as geology, physical chemistry, and environmental sciences, since the start of the 21^st century, is having striking impacts in Chinese archaeology generating challenge-orientated research. Wei et al. (2023) demonstrate a trajectory of increasing interdisciplinary engagement by Chinese archaeologists in world core journals (WCJs – see Wei et al. 2023, table 1) – the growing trend of publications in Chinese core journals retains a strong focus on culture history. Such projects signal a shift toward research capitalizing on information gathered from the past to tackle modern challenges. Chinese archaeology seems especially adept in pushing forward systematic large-scale data gathering and assessment as a basis for this kind of human-landscape-environment interaction modelling. A fruitful research avenue that has been explored by several scholars is the archaeology of the Anthropocene (e.g. Rosen et al. 2015; Zhuang and Kidder 2014), exemplified here in Allen, Storozum, and Sheng’s use of extensive, deep urban deposits to amass and critically evaluate the archaeological and environmental data for human impacts (2024).

Despite these trends, invisible, long-lasting boundaries still exist between ‘prehistoric’ and ‘historical’ archaeologies in China. Those, for example, studying Palaeolithic and Neolithic societies tend to adopt environmental and scientific archaeological perspectives, whereas those concerned with historical problems are material culture/text focused, relying primarily on historical documents. In this issue, we can see how the focus on key regions, for example Kaifeng and Shanghai, is enabling research teams to break through arbitrary boundaries, developing holistic views on long-term environmental and societal developments. The macro-scale perspective on the urban environmental history of the lower Yangtze Shanghai region by Allen et al. (2024) demonstrates how the estuarine landscape has been curated and managed through constant maintenance to support Shanghai’s historic growth, information instrumental in grappling with the impacts of continued, exponential modern expansion of Shanghai and other global cities. Qin et al. (2024) also integrate historical geography and surviving textual evidence with GIS/3-D modeling to reconstruct the ancient landscape at Kaifeng, employing macro-botanical and isotopic analyses to reconstruct agricultural/subsistence regimes.

Large datasets and data processing are tending to generate a systems and modelling approach in projects that is driven to some extent by a growth in use of new scientific archaeological methods. While this is providing fruitful paths for comparative international perspectives on human development, there are risks that theoretical, social, and historical approaches become sidelined. Ren et al. (2024) explore the cemetery at Yanghai in Xinjiang in this special issue, focusing on establishing a social understanding of the complexity of the collective or multiple burial rites that dominate this Bronze Age and Iron Age cemetery. The collective burials at Yanghai are tombs functioning as single burial units that were repeatedly used for interments over long periods of time, with single and group interments added to a burial platform in a tomb or added to vertically-arranged separate spaces within the shaft tomb. The authors use GIS and statistical analyses to identify spatial and temporal trends in burial rites, revealing evidence for preplanning in the spatial extent of tombs. They take a markedly different approach to traditional social evolutionary scholarship which has focused on the kin-based/familial relations that might be articulated through these rites. Despite the attention funerary archaeology in China has received, research remains mostly focused on material cultures. Ren’s intriguing contribution breaks away from this tradition and reveals the temporal and spatial complexity and extent of ‘necroscapes’ in China and highlights the potential benefits of integrated approaches in exploring these funerary landscapes. Here, the intimate connections between the living and dead are repeatedly revisited in the ongoing use of burial spaces, suggesting that the dead played a prominent agent’s role in structuring the activities of the living. Zoning relating to special burials is also evident, providing insights into how the living negotiated and used these large-scale funerary zones over long time periods.

From core to periphery

Several contributions in this special issue are also indicative of the way in which the discourse on China’s Central-Plains has shifted over time. Hein cogently shows the way in which a preoccupation with social complexity as a theme led to an overemphasis on the earliest dynasties (Hein 2023) and how in more recent years, model testing has extended beyond this to consider the marginal/peripheral areas in research aimed at reconstructing ranked or tiered settlement systems. The shift away from investigating early states has been promoted through state-funded research projects such as the so-called ‘Exploration of the Origins of Chinese Civilization’, which have facilitated systematic archaeological campaigns in ‘peripheral’ regions and hence fostered a research focus on these previously ‘marginalized’ (in terms of research input) areas.

Such a fundamental change in discourse is highlighted by Wei et al. (2023), who identify the dominance of research on early dynasties (Qin to Sui dynasties and Tang to Qing dynasties accounting for nearly 50% of journal papers). It can be also seen in recent publications in major presses and academic journals. Flad and Chen (2013) offer a revised look at the centre-periphery dichotomy in their systematic investigation of the prehistoric and historical Upper Yangtze River, an area that has traditionally been underrepresented in archaeological research in China, advocating new analytical tools to address this long-lasting problem of ‘center’ and ‘periphery’. Echoing this, Jaang et al.’s (2018) introduction of the complex polity at the Shimao site situated in the ‘remote’ loess highland and its interactions with its own hinterlands illustrates vividly how new archaeological finds can bring these long-overlooked civilizations in the ‘research peripheries’ to light and revolutionize our understanding of the complex social and political dynamics within and between different regions of prehistoric China.

This significant shift in focus has come with new understandings of the ‘cultural continuum’ and ‘break’ in prehistoric and historical China. Li (2018), for instance, benefiting from the rapid accumulation of data in both ‘core’ and ‘peripheral’ regions, has shown how intensified prehistoric interactions between many regions, shaped the influential ‘ritual authority’, which was instrumental to early state formation and development in Bronze Age China. Li’s book represents just a small step towards evolving and revising the classic theory on the so-called Chinese Interaction Sphere (e.g. Chang 1986). More studies using the new research data from multiple regions will undoubtedly follow.

Chinese archaeology in global discourse

This special issue also resoundingly illustrates how modern archaeological research in China extends from China’s heartlands to the shores of the Indian Ocean. Theoretically and methodologically, Chinese archaeology is shown to be both influenced by and influential to global archaeological traditions (Hein 2023) and to be in step, embracing and sharing in the modernizing forces of archaeological science, interdisciplinarity, and challenge-led research (e.g. Qin et al. 2024; Wei et al. 2023; R. Zhang et al. 2023). Some of this is attributed to the growing trend of internationalization, which is encouraged by national policies such as initiatives like the ‘Belt and Road Initiative’ and the ‘Going out’ plan for the Humanities and Social Sciences (Wei et al. 2023). However, as the contributions here suggest, it is also driven by at younger generation of scholars’ desire for international collaboration and research published in international journals (Wei et al. 2023).

In keeping with the burgeoning globalization of archaeological inquiry, Chinese archaeology today finds itself firmly entrenched in a broader, international dialogue. It is no longer content with introspective contemplation but has actively embraced collaborative endeavors with world archaeology. This shift is evident in international research projects that span Southeast Asia to the Mediterranean Sea (e.g. Gutierrez et al. 2021; Tai et al. 2020). In this special issue, R. Zhang et al. (2023) explore maritime networks formed by Chinese ceramic trade in the Indian Ocean, while Feldbacher (2024) discusses Korean and Chinese heritage. Feldbacher highlights the ways in which archaeological heritage has been and still is culturally contested, and can be harnessed to shape and influence political agendas, but also shows how international collaboration and collaborative teams in the field, in this case at Koguryŏ and Ji’an, can make a significant headway in using heritage to physically and symbolically create connections rather than differences.

Archaeological science and interdisciplinary trends are driving opportunities for Chinese archaeologists to work collaboratively and join an international endeavor to collectively understand our human past and learn from it in ways that can benefit our present society and its challenges. As archaeology develops as a discipline, the contributions in this issue underline how Chinese fieldwork and research can increase China’s leading role in interdisciplinary innovation around some of archaeology’s big questions.

Acknowledgments

We thank both reviewers for their insightful comments and suggested edits.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Yijie Zhuang

Yijie Zhuang is Associate Professor in Chinese Archaeology at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London. His research interests lie in ecology of early agriculture, long-term land use and landscape changes, irrigation and water management and diverse trajectories to social complexity in East, South and Southeast Asia.

Ran Zhang

Ran Zhang is Assistant Professor at the Department of Archaeology, Durham University. His research is concerned with how ancient Chinese trade affected the maritime economy in the Indian Ocean and Europe from the eighth to the nineteenth centuries. He also has expertise in the identification and dating of Chinese ceramics.

Sarah Semple

Sarah Semple is a Professor in Archaeology at Durham University where she teaches and researches on the landscapes, funerary archaeology and material culture of early medieval Britain and Northern Europe. She is the author of Perceptions of the Prehistoric in Anglo-Saxon England (2019) and a co-author of Negotiating the North: Meeting Places in the Middle Ages in the North Sea Zone (2020).