Li Ji

Li Ji the Chinese archaeologist (1896-1979) often called the father of Chinese archaeology, who directed the first modern excavations at Anyang and trained the first generation of Chinese field archaeologists. His systematic work on the Shang capital laid the foundation for the study of the Bronze Age in China and for the discipline's subsequent development.

Early Life and Education

Li Ji was born on 12 July 1896 in Zhongxiang, Hubei Province. He went to the United States for his higher education and studied at Clark University and then at Harvard University, where he took a doctorate in anthropology in 1923. At Harvard he was trained in the four-field tradition of American anthropology, combining physical anthropology, archaeology, linguistics and ethnology.

His Harvard years introduced him to modern excavation technique and to the idea that archaeology was a branch of anthropology rather than a form of antiquarian collecting. He absorbed the methods of stratigraphy and careful recording and returned to China determined to apply them to the study of his own country's ancient past.

He took up a teaching post at Nankai University and then at Tsinghua University, where he introduced courses in anthropology and archaeology. His lectures and fieldwork seminars began to form a body of students trained in the new methods, a group that would later carry the discipline forward.

This was a period in which Chinese scholars were seeking to establish a national tradition of scientific research, and Li Ji saw archaeology as an instrument of both scholarship and national self-confidence. He argued that the country's ancient past should be investigated by its own trained specialists, using the standards of evidence accepted internationally.

The Anyang Excavations

In 1928 Li Ji took charge of the excavations at Anyang in Henan Province, the site of the last Shang capital. For nearly a decade he directed annual seasons of work at Xiaotun and nearby localities, uncovering the royal palace and temple foundations, the royal tombs at Xibeigang and a vast quantity of inscribed oracle bones, bronze vessels, jades and ceramics.

The finds at Anyang confirmed that the Shang dynasty was a historical reality and that the traditional accounts of early Chinese history rested on a genuine material foundation. The excavations produced the earliest substantial body of evidence for Chinese writing in the form of the oracle-bone inscriptions, which recorded divinations performed on behalf of the Shang kings.

Li Ji insisted on the systematic recording of everything found, from the layout of foundations to the smallest fragments of bone, and his reports established a standard of documentation that Chinese archaeology has followed ever since. The Anyang project became the model for later large-scale excavations throughout the country.

Method and Organisation

Li Ji approached archaeology as a scientific and comparative enterprise. He drew on anthropology, geology and the study of ancient texts, and he assembled teams in which specialists in ceramics, bronzes, animal bones and human remains worked together. This interdisciplinary style was unusual in his day and anticipated the collaborative practices of modern research.

He was an able administrator as well as a field director, and he secured funding and political support for the excavations at a time of great instability. He negotiated the difficult relationship between Chinese institutions and the foreign foundations that supported some of the early work, insisting that Chinese scholars lead the projects and publish the results.

His teaching emphasised the training of Chinese archaeologists to take charge of their own field. He persuaded the authorities to send promising students abroad and arranged for them to return to posts where their new skills could be used, thereby building a national community of practitioners.

Later Career and Writings

With the approach of war in the late 1930s the Anyang excavations came to an end and the collections were moved to safety. Li Ji took the material to the south and later, with the help of colleagues, arranged for a large part of the important objects and records to be shipped to Taiwan, where they formed the basis of the collections of the institute he directed.

In Taiwan he continued his research and teaching and published a series of major reports on the Anyang finds, including studies of the pottery, the bronzes and the chronology of the site. His writings remained rooted in the evidence he had helped to uncover and became indispensable to later scholars on both sides of the strait.

He also wrote on the broader problems of Chinese prehistory and on the relations between archaeology and the classical tradition, arguing that the material record and the written sources should correct one another. His cautious, evidence-based approach set the tone for the field.

Influence and Legacy

Li Ji is widely regarded as the founder of scientific archaeology in China. He created the institutions, trained the people and demonstrated the methods that turned the study of the Chinese past into a modern discipline, and the excavations he directed remain among the most important in the history of the subject.

His insistence that Chinese scholars should control their own archaeological work had a lasting political as well as scientific significance, and it helped to establish the principle that the country's heritage should be studied by its own people. The students he taught spread across the country and into many specialisms.

He died on 1 August 1979 in Taipei. His reputation rests on the Anyang campaign and on a career devoted to building a discipline from the ground up. Later generations of archaeologists, whatever their particular interests, trace the origins of their professional standards to his work.

See also

• Anyang
• Oracle bone inscriptions
• Shang dynasty
• Chinese archaeology