Aiming to Clarify the Civilization Process in Southwest China, Center for Archaeological Science, Sichuan University Established - China News Network
China News ServiceChengdu, November 18th (Reporter He Shaoqing) "Today's archaeologists work at the intersection of humanities and traditional hard sciences. They face countless possibilities and countless challenges. The opportunity is that we may know more and more, and the challenge is that we may find it difficult to grasp the 'elephant of history'." Lu Hongliang, director of the Center for Archaeological Science, Sichuan University, said in Chengdu on the 18th that after the establishment of the Center for Archaeological Science, Sichuan University, it will clarify the process of civilization in Southwest China from an overall perspective and other cutting-edge issues.
The Center for Archaeological Science, Sichuan University, was established. Photo by He Shaoqing
On the same day, the inauguration ceremony of the Center for Archaeological Science, Sichuan University, and the Academic Forum on New Advances in Archaeological Science were held in Chengdu. The center consists of an archaeological dating laboratory, a molecular archaeology laboratory, an archaeological materials and cultural relics protection laboratory, a geoarchaeology laboratory, and an archaeological resource bank encompassing more than 10,000 pieces/sets of samples from home and abroad.
Lu Hongliang introduced that in 1982, Tong Enzheng of Sichuan University and Zhang Guangzhi of Harvard University planned to establish archaeological laboratories such as a carbon-14 laboratory, zooarchaeology, and geoarchaeology at Sichuan University, but failed due to various reasons. Forty years have passed, and archaeology around the world has undergone earth-shaking changes. From satellite imagery to physical, chemical, and biological analysis, more and more interdisciplinary achievements have made archaeology more fascinating. "Archaeological science" seems to have become a term that is no longer debated.
Today, almost every actively excavated archaeological site in China uses technological means to varying degrees. These all show that the connection between archaeology and other sciences is becoming more and more seamless, and archaeological science is at the forefront of interdisciplinary research in the humanities and social sciences." Lu Hongliang said that current archaeology is beginning to explore increasingly grand themes, because every technological innovation, every domestication of plants and animals, and every wave of population migration has determined the modern world in which humans live today.
At the ceremony, Chu Liangyin, Vice President of Sichuan University, introduced the construction plan of the Center for Archaeological Science, Sichuan University, and the three major research directions, including clarifying the process of civilization in Southwest China as a whole.
Southwest China accounts for a quarter of China's area. The academic community is not clear about how this region integrated into the process of early Chinese civilization from the long hunting and gathering era, but the emergence of the Sanxingdui and Dian culture-represented bronze civilizations has refreshed the world's understanding of the diversity of ancient Chinese civilization. The Center for Archaeological Science, Sichuan University, plans to focus on three major scientific issues: "Neolithization", the political system of the Bronze Age, and the ethnic relations in the early Iron Age (archaeology of the Southwestern Yi), and select a number of typical sites for detailed excavation.
Chu Liangyin revealed that the Center for Archaeological Science, Sichuan University, will establish an absolute chronology framework with high-precision carbon-14 dating, strengthen the re-examination of historical documents and myths and legends and their integration with archaeological materials, use cutting-edge materials science and technology to track technology and commodity circulation, and use high-sensitivity ancient DNA capture technology to explore regional and extra-regional population migration and integration, and comprehensively reconstruct environmental changes and livelihood patterns over the past 10,000 years, in order to clarify the cultural interaction between Southwest China and the Hexi Corridor, the Central Plains, Southeast Asia, South Asia, and the Eurasian Steppe in different periods. (The End)