The development of typology in Chinese archaeology

Summary

This paper offers an overview of the development of typology in Chinese archaeology. In particular, we focus on how it has influenced and yet distinguished itself from typologies developed in western disciplines—and especially on how Chinese archeologists have relied largely on objects’ appearances to define types. In this manner, they have eagerly used typology in dating and defining archaeological cultures. The philosophy of classification, by which such typologies have been established, has not only in large part determined the way researchers view an object’s function, but has also guided their schemes of data collection. Most notably, Chinese archaeologists have used typology as a tool to conjecture about the “kinship” of and evolutionary relationships among archaeological cultures or their affiliations. This analogy to biological classification has crowded out other ways of categorization and presented difficulties, reminiscent of cultural diffusionism. The practice of typology in Chinese archaeology appears to be a supplement to the Chinese idea of history. This has also hidden the fact that types can be constructed in diverse ways, depending on a researcher’s purposes, and social groups or relations inferred thereby represent only a single dimension of the cultures we study.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• Guava Cat Archaeology: Papers in memory of Prof. Pochan Chen

Keywords

Spatial Coverage