of Chinese prehistory, as it shifted away from the center-periphery model to a multiregional approach to the development of Chinese civilization.

As stated by Su Bingqi (1991), after 10,000 b.p., six relatively stable regional divisions (quxi) formed within the area embraced by historical China. The six regional cultures are further divided into a number of local phases (leixing). Each of these regions, according to Su, had its own cultural origins and developments and interacted with the others in the developmental processes of Chinese civilization. Yan Wenming suggested a similar model as “the unity and variability of Chinese prehistoric culture,” seeing the central plains as the center of the flower and cultural traditions and the surrounding areas as layers of petals (Yan 1987). Instead of giving equal weight to all regional cultures implied in Su’s hypothesis, Yan’s model emphasizes the leading role of the central plains in the movement toward civilization while acknowledging the existence of elements of civilization in the peripheries in prehistory.

The general trend shifting from a monocentered to a multicentered development of Chinese civilization, as Lothar von Falkenhausen (1995, 198–199) observed, is also reflected in the four editions of the Archaeology of Ancient China by kwang-chih chang, which have been the most comprehensive and authoritative sources of Chinese archaeology in English for decades. In the first three editions, published in 1963, 1968, and 1977, the central plains was seen as the nucleus from which complex society and dynastic civilization rose. In the fourth edition, published in 1986, this view was replaced by the concept of “a Chinese interaction sphere,” covering a geographic dimension much broader than the central plains, which formed the foundation for the development of the three dynasties (Chang 1986b, 234–242). Such a change of paradigm in Chinese archaeology seems to integrate very well with a new perspective in the reconstruction of national history.

Nationalism, National History, Legends, and Origins of Civilization in Archaeology

Since its birth, Chinese archaeology has had one clear objective: to reconstruct national history. The concept of nation, and thus of national history, however, has changed over time, as the tasks of reconstruction have been inevitably affected by new perspectives of national history.

As the state has attempted to bring China’s multi-ethnic population into a viable political entity since the1950s, the concept of the Chinese nation has become equivalent to that of the state, best described by Fei Xiaotong (1989) as a single entity with multiple components (duoyuan yiti). According to Fei, China as a nation (a substance without self-consciousness) has gradually come into existence through thousands of years. This formative process was amalgamative, with a dominant core constituted first by the Huaxia and then by the Han people. However, the cultural interaction between the Huaxia-Han and other groups was not a one-way diffusion but a mutual influence. This national entity now, according to Fei, includes all nationalities (more than fifty) and covers the entire territory of modern China. It seems that this new concept of nationalism fits relatively well with the archaeological quxi leixing paradigm and, in particular, with “the unity and variability” hypothesis. Evidently, the archaeological and sociological models mutually support each other in constructing national history.

With increased knowledge of regional archaeological cultures, scholars have developed a strong willingness to construct cultural history based on archaeological material remains and the historical record. There has been a tendency to identify archaeological cultures and phases, sites, and even artifacts directly with specific ancient groups of people or places named in legends or historical literature. The continuing debates on the cultural identification of several Bronze Age cities—such as Erlitou, Erligang, and, most recently discovered, Yanshi Shang city near Yanshi and Xiaoshuangqiao near Zhengzhou—best exemplify this attempt. By doing so, archaeological assemblages (mainly pottery typology) become historically meaningful, although the logical connections between the two sets of information—ceramic typology and ethnic affiliation—have not been made explicit.

The phrase “five-thousand-year history of civilization” has been commonly used in China