Serials on Chinese Archaeology Published in the People's Republic of China: A Bibliographical Survey

Abstract

It has been a number of years since the last attempt at a compre hensive overview of Chinese archaeological publications appeared in the pages of Early China.1 In the meantime, the published scholarship in this field has become ever more diverse and complex. Due to the enor mous volume of recent material, the present attempt at a new survey is limited to the archaeological serials that have appeared in China since the founding of the People's Republic.2 Particular attention is paid to journals published at the provincial and local levels as these have so far been, for the most part, little used by Western scholars. The administrative decentralization brought about by the economic reforms of the nineteen-eighties has affected Chinese archaeology in a variety of ways. One consequence has been the reorganization of archaeological work in the country. In the time before the Cultural Revolution, most archaeological fieldwork was run through Beijing based institutions. While some of this centralism persists to this day, a significant amount of important research is now being conducted under the auspices of the provinces, autonomous regions, and special munici palities (henceforth collectively referred to as provinces), whose authority in the administration of archaeological sites and cultural relics has been greatly strengthened. A key factor in this regional florescence