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Liang Siyong stayed on the mainland. Xia Nai was the one who eventually gained the most international recognition in the discipline (Falkenhausen 1999b). For the rest of the twentieth century, archaeological fieldwork, research, and training developed rapidly, but dramatic fluctuations occurred as a result of various political waves. Archaeological activities can be divided into three periods: before, during, and after the Cultural Revolution (1966–1977).
Soon after the founding of the People’s Republic of China in the 1950s and early 1960s, archaeologists were in great demand by the state as the country underwent tremendous construction. In 1950, the Institute of Archaeology, led primarily by Xia Nai, was established under the Academia Sinica (AS), which changed its name to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) in 1977. The Archaeology Program, headed by Su Bingqi, was set up in 1952 under the Department of History at Beijing University. These two institutions were the leading forces at that time in conducting archaeological research and in training young archaeologists. Many provinces also set up archaeological institutes or management of cultural relics bureaus, which were primarily involved in salvage archaeology.
In addition to Beijing University, two other universities (Northwestern and Sichuan) also started archaeology programs to train students, and the number of professional archaeologists multiplied from a mere handful before 1949 to more than 200 by 1965. The first C-14 laboratory was set up in 1965 at the Institute of Archaeology, and it was soon followed by a second one at Beijing University. The first archaeological journals, the so-called three great journals—Kaogu [Archaeology], Kaogu xuebao [Acta Archaeologica Sinica], and Wenwu [Cultural Relics]—were established in Beijing.
paleolithic archaeology was carried out by the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology at the Academia Sinica. The number of excavated Paleolithic sites increased from three locations before 1949 to more than a dozen distributed in many parts of the country. Excavations at Zhoukoudian were resumed after the 1950s, and to date, that site has yielded hominid fossils of more than forty individuals dating from 550,000 to 250,000 years ago, more than 100,000 stone artifacts, and a large number of mammalian fossils. In addition, cranial remains of Homo erectus dating to 700,000 years ago were discovered in Lantian, Shaanxi Province, and two incisors of Homo erectus dating to 1.7 million years ago were found in Yuanmou, Yunnan Province. Homonid fossils and stone implements belonging to archaic Homo sapiens and Homo sapiens sapiens have been found in many locations over northern and southern China (Chen 1999b; Wu and Olsen 1985).
Most fieldwork projects in the 1950s were carried out in the Yellow River valley in connection with hydraulic construction in the region. The excavations at Miaodigou in Shanxian, Henan Province, were a breakthrough and completely changed the proposition of dual origins for Chinese civilization. Archaeologists identified a ceramic assemblage, named the Miaodigou Phase II, that represented a transitional culture between Yangshao and Longshan (Institute of Archaeology, Academia Sinica 1959). This discovery clarified the relationship between the Yangshao and Longshan cultures as successive rather than contemporaneous. Chinese civilization, therefore, seems to have been derived from a single source—the Yangshao culture, which originated in the central plains region (Chang 1963; Chen 1999c).
It should be noted that the first attempt to interpret ancient Chinese history with a Marxist model of social evolution can be traced back to guo moruo’s A Study of Ancient Chinese Society (1930). Under the Communist regime, and influenced by Soviet archaeology, many Chinese archaeologists wanted to employ the Morgan-Engels evolutionary theory in archaeological practice, and this Marxist interpretation of Chinese history was then seen as a new mission for the discipline in addition to the search for Chinese cultural origins. The most successful application
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