economic reform promoted new developments on all fronts of Chinese archaeology. Salvage excavations conducted by regional archaeological institutes have been the most in demand, as a decentralized economic system stimulated construction projects across the country. Support from the central government has been shrinking, and most provincial institutes have become financially dependent on salvage archaeology. By 1978, a total of eleven universities had developed archaeology programs, training hundreds of archaeologists each year. These new graduates soon became the backbone of local archaeological institutes. The number of archaeological periodicals had multiplied from “the great journals” to a list of some 140 periodicals on archaeology-related subjects by 1991, most of which are published on a local level (Falkenhausen 1992). As a result, provincial archaeological institutions became increasingly independent of control by the Institute of Archaeology in Beijing with regard to administrative, academic, and financial aspects (Falkenhausen 1995).

Policies of economic reform have also opened China’s doors to the world. Scholarly exchange between China and western countries has been encouraged, and western archaeological methods and theories have been brought in. Archaeologists in China found themselves facing new challenges from the outside world. During the 1980s and 1990s, as Deng Xiaoping was searching for a way for China to become a Chinese-style socialist country, archaeologists were struggling to find a way to make an archaeology with Chinese characteristics. There have been some increased nationalist feelings among many Chinese intellectuals, partially in reaction to the rapidly changing relationships between China and the rest of the world, and archaeology in this era has been strongly influenced by new concepts of nationalism.

As an enormous amount of archaeological data on all periods has been accumulated since the end of the Cultural Revolution, and three major topics have become the focal points of Chinese archaeology: the origins of early humans, the origins of agriculture, and the origins of civilization.

Paleolithic Archaeology and the Multiregional Model of Human Evolution

By the 1990s, more than sixty sites containing human fossils had been recorded as well as many more sites that have yielded Paleolithic artifacts. As world Paleolithic archaeology has been engaged in the debate between “the out-of-Africa” and “the multiregional-development” schools, evidence from China has become crucial. The majority of Chinese archaeologists and paleontologists support the multiregional development model, arguing for an independent system of evolution from Homo erectus to Homo sapiens in East Asia (e.g., Wu 1995). Some have gone even further and attempted to find evidence of the earliest hominids in China. The argument for indigenous evolution in east Asia is primarily based on two factors. First, similar to Weidenreich’s observation, paleontologists continue to find morphological characteristics that are shared by hominid fossils and modern populations in the same region. Second, archaeologists have defined regional lithic traditions throughout the Paleolithic period in China that appear to be distinct from those in Africa and Europe (Chen 1999b).

The driving force for archaeologists has been to find evidence of the earliest hominid remains and the missing links in the developmental progress of modern humans in China. New evidence remains promising for the current evaluation and debate about human evolution. In 1984, for instance, a nearly complete skeleton of archaic Homo sapiens was found at Jinniushan (Gold Ox Hill) in Liaoning Province in 1984. The fossils were dated to 310,000–160,000 years ago, making the skeleton one of the earliest examples of this taxonomic group. Some typical morphological features of the skull are observable in earlier hominids and modern populations in the region, which seems to fit a model of local evolution (Chen, Yang, and Wu 1994).

It should be noted, however, that some recent claims about the early hominids might be problematic and lack credibility in light of the data; it has been suggested that some archaeologists have been too eager to find the first man-made stone tool in China (Lü 2000). In 1985, cranial remains of Homo erectus associated with