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Decentralizing the Origin of Civilization: Early Archaeological Efforts in China

In the early 1920s, J. G. Andersson discovered the Yangshao culture of prehistoric China and, in the name of science, reiterated the age-old postulation that “Chinese culture had a ‘Western’ origin.” In Andersson’s time, archaeology was frequently explained using the framework of diffusionism to understand human prehistory and civilization. To the hyperdiffusionists, civilization was perceived to have originated in the Middle East before it spread elsewhere and acquired regional variations. The archaeological work at Anyang from 1928 onward substantially changed scholars’ understanding of human civilization in general and Chinese civilization in particular. Is Chinese civilization a secondary and derivative one, with its ultimate origin in the Middle East? Should the Chinese civilization be properly comprehended in the singular, referring to the Han civilization only? Is it correct to conceive of the origin of Chinese civilization—and of its central layer, huaxia—from a decentralized perspective? By investigating early archaeological endeavors in China and related historical discourses, this essay shows how human civilization, Chinese civilization and huaxia civilization eventually became decentralized in the scholarly understanding, particularly regarding their origins. In this decentralization of the origins of civilization, the underlying archaeology was driven by both science and politics, both rationalism and nationalism. Archaeology during the Republic of China (1912–49), which had the special mission of reconstructing Chinese national history, was guided by this dual tendency.