| Chapter 1: | Introduction |
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Archaeological investigations in southeast China started in the 1930s. The early archaeological activities were individual expeditions. A number of individuals, including university professors and missionary priests, collected artifacts from the locals and occasionally went out looking for archaeological sites, and their practices pioneered the accumulation of archaeological data in southeast China. Since 1950, the Chinese government has sponsored archaeological surveys and excavations. Until very recently, exclusively Chinese archaeologists from the local provinces and universities have conducted field archaeological projects in southeast China, and consequently their publications are in Chinese. The following summary is mostly based on the available published reports and papers in China, and on my personal communications with archaeologists in Fujian, Guangdong, and Zhejiang Provinces. On the basis of the research topics, the archaeology of the prehistory of southeast China can be divided into the following three periods.
First Period: 1930–1950
The first period is from 1930 to 1950. Discoveries were mostly surface collections, and the research was conducted by individual scholars and missionary priests.
The most conspicuous figure is Fr. Rafael Maglioni, an Italian missionary priest, who not only collected a large number of artifacts from eastern Guangdong Province, but also visited many archaeological sites. During the period of his missionary service in eastern Guangdong from 1936 to 1946, he collected about “1800 pounds of pottery and 400 adzes from the Hoifeng (Haifeng) sites alone, which constitutes less than half of his total surveys” (Meacham, 1975, p. 9). Maglioni‘s surveys, collections, and publications are pioneering works in this area. Most of his collections are the first archaeological discoveries in southeast China. His efforts to organize a chronological sequence for his discoveries merit further discussion. Based on pottery and stone tools, Maglioni named three Neolithic cultures: Sonian (SON), Sakian (SAK), and Patian (PAT). SON (Soa-khe or Shakeng North) was the earliest culture in Maglioni‘s chronology, and he suggested a date of 3000 B.C. The artifacts of SON include painted pottery vessels with ring foot, corded and combed pottery, “rough implements of stone,” and polished stone axes with lentoid shape. Sakian (SAK) was derived from the previous SON. The material inventory of SAK includes coarse corded pottery, combed pottery, stone axe with lentoid cross-section, and stone arrowheads. SAK was replaced by PAT (Patian), characterized by materials including stemmed leaf-shaped stone arrowheads, stepped stone adzes, and dark, coarse, and sand mixed pottery decorated with cord marks and net impression.