Marxism in Chinese Archaeology

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Since the founding of the People's Republic of China, Marxism became a kind of official philosophical thinking embeded in all the humanities. Thus, in most Western archaeologists’ minds, Chinese archaeology is a kind of Marxist archaeology, as Bruce Trigger described. We admit to this kind of definition, but the status of contemporary archaeology is already changed just as the transition with Marxism. There are three major stages of the transition which correspond to social and political changes. First was in the 1950s, when the basic theory was heavily effected by Soviet archaeology. Then, in the 1960s to 1970s, scholars were drawn into leftism. After that, Marxism seemed to be weakened in academic research; indeed the authority insisted that Chinese archaeology must be guided by Marxism. In general, the concept of social modes from Marx and Engels is always used in the analysis of subsistence strategies. Also, because of the similar pursuit in science, objectivity and techniques, Chinese archaeologists seems to be more interested in processual archaeology, as the practical archaeologists seek to find a base theory pattern in the new period.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

Keywords

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23924