中国古代考古惊人发现的历史人类学研究

A Historical Anthropological Perspective on Surprising Findings in the

Archaeology of Ancient China

王明珂

(台湾中研院历史语言研究所)

ABSTRACT

Few areas of the world can boast archaeological findings equal to that of China in recent half century. Following the great excavation of ancient remains of the Shang dynasty in the 1930s, more ancient civilizations have been found after 1960s; among them, the Sanxingdui culture in the upper Yangtze River valley, the Liangzhu culture in the lower Yangtze River valley, and the Hungshan culture in the Liao River valley, have drew most scholars’ attentions. Unlike the Shang civilization that was in the Central Plain of China and was described in ancient documents, all above mentioned cultures found after 1960s were located on China’s peripheral regions, and they were almost unknown to Chinese literatures. Therefore, while these archaeological findings unveiled, the most common response of archaeologists, historians and even common people who have basic knowledge to Chinese history were astonishing or surprising. After that, many archaeological and historical explanations were composed to interpret their existing, fruitfulness and decline.

In this article, I try to ask a simple but being ignored question: why the true past unearthed are surprising? People felt surprise to these archaeological findings because there is a discrepancy between “the past” as a common knowledge in their mind and the true past unearthed in peripheral China. Therefore, we shall ask when and how this historical knowledge toward peripheral regions and its peoples had formed, and when and how the true past had been forgotten. This article argues that the peripheral histories which ancient and modern Chinese believed are meanly products of “the historical mentality of heroic ancestor.” Under this historical mentality, ancient Chinese literati created “hero-went-to-frontier narratives” of vary kinds to delineate the spatial and blood borders of the Huaxia people (ancient Chinese). It is in this historical scenario, and the concomitant political activities, that the “centers” of many