BOOK REVIEWS
343
Even so, it is out of place in this volume, unless the title is intended to imply “a Chinese style of archaeology" rather than "the archaeology of China."
The first chapter is the only one of real substance in the book, at least for those seeking a reasonable summary and interpretation of Chinese archaeology, but it is marred by the unlabelled mixing of fact and opinion. Entitled "The Beginning of Chinese Civilization," this recently revised essay presents an overview of the prehistoric and Shang periods. Cheng rightly points out the emergence of the various Early Neolithic cultures from their regional antecedents in the Paleolithic, though he is speculating wildly in assigning a date of 25,000 years before the present for this transition.
Unfortunately, Cheng still clings to the outmoded “nuclear area hypothesis" applied to the Late Neolithic. In spite of much evidence to the contrary (some of which is even mentioned in this essay), Cheng still maintains, as he has for many years, that "the expansion of the Late Neolithic culture beyond the Central Plain was responsible for the diffusion of the new pattern of food production [cereal agriculture] in various parts of China." And, ignoring all the botanical, archaeological, and ethnographic evidence to the contrary, Cheng then claims that "rice found a most agreeable home in the wet South" after being introduced by farmers from the North. A few pages earlier, Cheng had described the important Ho-mu-tu site in Chekiang, i.e., in the South, as one of the most agriculturally advanced and the earliest dated Late Neolithic site excavated in China so far. Cheng also makes the highly disputable claims that painted pottery spread throughout China from a Yangshao origin, and that "the expansion of the Mongoloid people into the South Seas [? the South China Sea] was an event closely related to the spread of agriculture in China.” Most archaeologists would not claim a single origin for all the painted pottery of China, and very little, perhaps nothing, is really known about the spread of "Mongoloid people" or agriculture in the Neolithic of East Asia.
In dealing with the earliest historical period, Cheng again on occasion mixes fact and good and bad hypothesis with pure conjecture and cultural bias. Cheng implies that Chinese writing
BOOK REVIEWS
343
Even so, it is out of place in this volume, unless the title is intended to imply “a Chinese style of archaeology" rather than "the archaeology of China."
The first chapter is the only one of real substance in the book, at least for those seeking a reasonable summary and interpretation of Chinese archaeology, but it is marred by the unlabelled mixing of fact and opinion. Entitled "The Beginning of Chinese Civilization," this recently revised essay presents an over-view of the prehistoric and Shang periods. Cheng rightly points out the emergence of the various Early Neolithic cultures from their regional antecedents in the Paleolithic, though he is speculating wildly in assigning a date of 25,000 years before the present for this transition.
Unfortunately, Cheng still clings to the out-moded “nuclear area hypothesis" applied to the Late Neolithic. In spite of much evidence to the contrary (some of which is even mentioned in this essay), Cheng still maintains, as he has for many years, that "the expansion of the Late Neolithic culture beyond the Central Plain was responsible for the diffusion of the new pattern of food production [cereal agriculture] in various parts of China." And, ignoring all the botanical, archaeological and ethnographic evidence to the contrary, Cheng then claims that "rice found a most agreeable home in the wet South" after being introduced by farmers from the North. A few pages earlier, Cheng had described the important Ho-mu-tu site in Chekiang, ie, in the South, as one of the most agriculturally advanced and the earliest dated Late Neolithic site excavated in China so far, Cheng also makes the highly disputable claims that painted pottery spread throughout China from a Yangshao origin, and that "the expansion of the Mongoloid people into the South Seas [? the South China Sea] was an event closely related to the spread of agriculture in China.” Most archaeologists would not claim a single origin for all the painted pottery of China, and very little, perhaps nothing, is really known about the spread of "Mongoloid people" or agriculture in the Neolithic of East Asia.
In dealing with the earliest historical period, Cheng again on occasion mixes fact and good and bad hypothesis with pure conjecture and cultural bias. Cheng implies that Chinese writing
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