People visiting the Chinese Archaeological Museum in Beijing Photo: Ren Guanhong/CSST

Archaeology, as a discipline that reveals human history through material remains, has greatly broadened the scope of historical research. However, with the rapid accumulation of archaeological materials and continuous deepening of exploration, certain challenges have become more prominent, particularly as the urgent need for “reconstructing ancient history” intensifies. This article argues that contemporary Chinese archaeology faces four major obstacles.

Four obstacles

The first obstacle is the paradox between objectivity and subjectivity. Human society exhibits a high degree of complexity, and attempting to study archaeological materials based purely on superficial appearances can often pose hindrances to understanding ancient human behaviors. Archaeological artifacts are typically fragmented and isolated, influenced by the contexts in which they were buried and later disturbed, complicating efforts to precisely identify behaviors. When interpreting these materials, resorting to fragmented historical documents or even ancient legends without a thorough understanding of how these texts were formed will barely meet the needs of science-based hypothesis testing, and may even risk generating pseudo-questions.

While efforts are made to objectively describe archaeological materials, interpreting them through textual sources as causal explanations or self-evident judgments inevitably introduces subjective biases, conflicting with the objective stance advocated in the field of archaeology. The interpretation of human behaviors through materials should focus on cultural processes, rather than striving for exhaustive reconstruction or forcing tenuous links with historical texts. If cultural processes are viewed as shifts in systemic states and archaeological materials as (by-)products of cultural system operations, then the examination of the past will become an exploration of how the world works.

The second obstacle is the conflict between small-scale excavations and grand research issues. From its inception, archaeology has been concerned with addressing grand issues. The establishment of human antiquity, the “three-age system” of the Stone, Bronze, Iron Ages, and the rise of classical archaeology are all related to the exploration of the profound history of mankind by the European academic community in the 19th century. In China, significant excavations, such as those at Zhoukoudian, focus on the origin of mankind and of the Chinese people. The excavation of the Yangshao Site seeks to study the origins of Chinese culture, while the excavation of the Yin Xu Site sheds light on the origins of Chinese civilization. However, archaeological excavations are limited in scale. The exploration of these grand issues requires adjustments in conceptual systems, changes in scale, and the construction of scientific methodologies. In archeology’s early stages, inductive methods based on archaeological materials played an important role in the accumulation of data and the reconstruction of ancient history. Yet as conflicting viewpoints emerged, the limitations of this empiricist epistemology became apparent. Evaluating the reliability of a viewpoint requires a rationalist research strategy, and combining inductive and deductive methods has become the foundation of contemporary archaeological reasoning—induction helps accumulate knowledge, while deduction evaluates the accuracy of knowledge.

The third obstacle is the separation of experience and theory. Archaeological reasoning follows the principle of inferring the unknown from the known. Only after understanding how the system works can the knowledge be projected into the unknown past to understand “what happened.” For major scientific issues, theories often arise from understandings of various processes of the current world, as is particularly evident in the exploration of the origins of mankind, agriculture, and civilization. The study of human origins essentially stems from evolutionism, which originates from our grasp of human evolutionary mechanisms. Charles Darwin was the first to propose that mankind originated in Africa based on the hypothesis of natural selection, while the “Out of Africa” theory developed more from the study of the distribution of human DNA today, combined with the molecular clock hypothesis. The origins of agriculture primarily involve a shift from an economy of plunder to one of production, with theories based on cross-cultural comparisons of hunter-gatherer societies. The origins of civilization are essentially understood as the growth of social complexity and the intensification of inequality. Both the classical division of stages—barbarism, savagery, and civilization—and the new evolutionary theory—band, tribe, chiefdom, and state—are grounded in ethnographic generalizations. When conducting empirical research in archaeology, these viewpoints undergo a transition from synchronic to diachronic projection. This transition enables researchers to bridge the social sciences with historiography effectively. Although patterns presented by archaeological materials can help test hypotheses about origin processes, they cannot directly refute the overarching theories. Instead, theoretical construction and correlation argumentation form a relationship of seeking common ground while reserving differences.

The fourth obstacle is the contradiction between particularity and universality. Chinese archaeology has long honored the tradition of historical material studies and undertaken the task of verifying classics and supplementing historiography, which has led to its emphasis on particularity in archaeological interpretation, such as the relationship between sites and historical events. This emphasis on particularity is also evident in prehistoric archaeology, where certain artifacts are treated as “standard artifacts” that define the fundamental attributes of archaeological culture. When artifacts are equated with intellectual templates, inferring group distinctions can be problematic, as the boundaries of the archaeological culture could be inadvertently aligned with ethnic group boundaries. In reality, various factors may affect artifact shape and form, as well as influence assemblages and variations; environmental adaptation and technical constraints have also played important roles. Identifying the specific influence of ideas on artifacts is complex and requires careful, step-by-step analysis akin to chemical purification. In contrast to particularity, if archaeological materials are regarded as products of adaptive strategies in the face of challenges, they more significantly reflect universal patterns from the perspective of cultural ecosystems. Constructing a pathway of scientific reasoning in the sense of “behavior” rather than “thought” offers a more direct and effective approach to understanding societal development pathways. Reasoning between commonality and individuality is also a common research strategy in the social sciences, which is conducive to organically combining universality with particularity.

Constructing archaeological theories in new era

As a modern discipline, archaeology must actively engage in theoretical construction. Theoretical construction goes beyond mere material induction, as theories are not entirely based on experience. Constructing a scientifically meaningful theory requires a blend of empiricist and rationalist epistemologies. Establishing an empirical scientific paradigm requires building a reference framework, adopting a pathway to hypothesis testing, and utilizing both induction and deduction. To explore behavioral evolution as revealed by remains, archaeology should leverage its interdisciplinary strengths, mapping insights from other fields onto the past. By testing hypotheses against patterns revealed in archaeological records and attributes, the discipline can deepen our understanding of humanity’s past and contribute to the creation of an effective knowledge base.

Archaeological remains have both material and cultural attributes, situating archaeology appropriately at a unique disciplinary intersection. Scientific and technological methods can extract information invisible to the naked eye and reveal the relationship between humanity and nature. The social sciences can reconstruct interpersonal relationships and chart social transformations. The humanities can rebuild past belief systems and explore the role of ideology in shaping social landscapes and cohesion. Integrating science and the humanities elevates archaeology into a vital discipline that enriches both fields while addressing the needs of societal development.

In scientific archaeological research, it is essential to maintain a problem-orientated approach and a systems perspective. Being problem-orientated means that archaeological research should be closely aligned with real-life problems, requiring archaeologists to pay attention to the extant achievements of other disciplines on the workings of human society, particularly those related to material culture. A systems perspective, on the other hand, requires archaeological research to focus on the operational mechanisms of a society, treating archaeological materials as products of the operation of cultural systems. Bridging these two requires archaeological research to focus on site formation processes and their connections to system structures, adopting a series of middle-range theoretical methods such as ethnoarchaeology, experimental archaeology, and computer simulation.

Being problem-oriented with a systems perspective also requires archaeological education to shift its focus. Rather than solely focusing on artifact identification, instruction should prioritize understanding how archaeological materials are formed, taking into account the impact of natural and human factors. Archaeological curricula should not only include traditional overviews of historical periods and field research courses, but also offer interdisciplinary courses, especially in the fields of archaeological science, anthropology, and art history. Additionally, developing a robust program in world archaeology is essential for understanding China’s position within the global context; only through comparative studies can we clarify the universal and unique aspects behind Chinese archaeological materials.

A paradigm shift in archaeology is also needed. Archaeologists can construct a research strategy for the new era through three interconnected frameworks: functionalism, systems theory, and process theory. Function places material remains within the context of human behavior, behavior integrates into systems, and transitions in system status constitute the process of social evolution. The interaction among the three can facilitate the conceptual scale transformation from artifact assemblages to social change, as well as the temporal and spatial transformation from short-term to long-term and from micro to macro. Only by relying on sound reasoning grounded in robust knowledge from other scientific fields can archaeologists avoid being led astray by intuition and superficial phenomena, and foster an approach that emphasizes agency and originality in exploring the evolutionary mechanisms of human behavior behind archaeological materials. With this foundation, archeologists can distinguish the influence of various factors on the variation of archaeological materials and reveal the forces driving societal change. It is hoped that with the joint efforts of scholars, a more systematic understanding of human society can be developed, and a deeper and broader human history can be constructed on the pillar of modern science.

Zhang Meng is an associate research fellow from the Department of Cultural Heritage and Museology at Fudan University.