History of Chinese archaeology

[3] Some attempted to recreate these bronze vessels by using imagination alone, not by observing tangible evidence of relics, a practice criticized by Shen Kuo in his Dream Pool Essays published in 1088.

[2] The scholar Ouyang Xiu (1007–1072) analyzed alleged ancient artifacts bearing archaic inscriptions in bronze and stone, which he preserved in a collection of some 400 rubbings;[4] Patricia Ebrey writes that he pioneered early ideas in epigraphy.

[7] Song scholars established a formal system of dating these artifacts by examining their inscriptions, decorative motif styles, and physical shapes.

[9] Trigger asserts that archaeology as a discipline of its own never developed in China until adoption of Western methods in modern times, and was always considered a branch of historiography instead.

Under the leadership of the founder, Director Ding Wenjiang, geology has made great achievements in China, hired many foreign experts, trained a group of professional local field workers, disseminated a large amount of Western scientific knowledge, and made science fall in the practice, creating a new paradigm for scientific research in China.

Although later this view was largely abandoned in academia,[13] Andersson represented the spread of modern archaeology based on fieldwork and excavation materials to China.

Wang Guowei once proposed a "dual evidence method" that combines written documents and underground relics to study history.