Outline

Shinichi NAKAMURA
(Kanazawa University Faculty of Letters)

　In China in the late Neolithic period (late 3rd millennium BC), artefacts that were widely distributed beyond the boundaries of archaeological cultures appeared. These included jade, turquoise, cowry shells, crocodile leather drums, ivory, lacquer ware, special earthenware, and mercury vermilion. Archaeological cultures that exchanged such various prestige goods include the Longshan, Taosi, Laohushan, Qijia, and Shijiahe cultures. This phenomenon, in which the symbols of authority of the elite class (prestige goods) were shared across archaeological cultures, characterizes the cultural situation on the eve of the formation of Chinese civilization.

　When similar artefacts are widely distributed, archaeologists usually consider them to be the result of long-distance trade. Of course, there must have been people who carried them. There is another problem: human movement behind the movement of artefacts. The issue of human movement is not limited to peaceful activities such as trade. In the latter half of the 3rd millennium BC, customs such as martyrdom, human sacrifice, and skull pits began to be seen in many areas. We need to explore the history of those who came to such an extraordinary end.

　Interestingly, the Bronze Age civilization was born hundreds of years later in Henan Province, a blank area of local civilization in the late Neolithic era. It can be rephrased as the process of transforming the frontier into the center. It is thought that the fusion of people, things, and information, that is, the acquisition of hybridity, played a major role in this.

　Based on the awareness of such issues, we have set the following three goals in this project.

　❶ Investigation of the role played by cultural hybridity during the formation of Chinese civilization
　❷ Reconstruction of human movement behind the movement of artefacts at the group / individual level
　❸ Elucidation of the actual conditions of the foreign elements of early Chinese civilization and the Proto Silk Road

　In order to achieve these goals, archeology, which reconstructs history from visible materials, and archeological science, which derives invisible information from those materials, need to work on an equal footing. By using the most advanced analytical methods of geochemistry and life sciences, we can extract the maximum amount of information from archaeological sites and remains, and even enable historical reconstruction at the individual level, which was previously impossible in archeology. “The New Archeology Initiative” transforms archaeological research into a higher-dimensional comprehensive historical science that is qualitatively different from the past.

　Through such activities, we will try to renew the conventional theories about Chinese culture and civilization, and reevaluate the effectiveness of the strong resilience of the Chinese civilization, which is also called “the 4,000 year history of China”, in considering the ideal form of human civilization in the future. We would also like to create a new academic field by making connections between archeology and the various related sciences.