Li Ji (archaeologist)

Li Ji (around 1940)

Li Ji ( Chinese 李 濟 / 李 济, Pinyin Lǐ Jì , Wade-Giles : Li Chi; born July 12, 1896 in Zhongxiang , Hubei Province ; † August 1, 1979 in Taipei ) was a Chinese archaeologist , ethnologist and anthropologist . He is considered to be one of the founders of Chinese archeology and was the first Chinese to conduct modern archaeological excavations. With his excavations at Anyang he contributed decisively to the proof of the historicity of theShang Dynasty .

Li Ji was born into a wealthy family in Hubei Province . After attending the newly established Tsinghua University , he went to the United States in 1918 to study at Clark University in Massachusetts . There he earned a bachelor's degree in psychology and a master's degree in sociology and then began a doctorate in anthropology at Harvard University . His teachers included Roland Dixon and Earnest Hooton , and he also attended lectures on archeology with Alfred Tozzer . Li Ji graduated with a PhD in 1923 . His doctoral thesis was later published by Harvard University Press under the title The Formation of the Chinese People: an Anthropological Inquiry . After graduating from Harvard, he worked for a short time at the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington and then returned to China. There he taught at Nankai University and carried out 1925-26 excavations on the Yangshao culture in the south of Shanxi Province . In 1928 he was appointed first head of the archaeological department of Academia Sinica and then taught at Qinghua University .

From 1928 to 1937 he directed the excavations at Anyang ( Yinxu ). Over 300 tombs, including four royal tombs, and the remains of a royal palace were discovered here. The finds included early evidence of Chinese bronze art and a large number of oracle bones described , which contain an early form of Chinese writing. These excavations made a decisive contribution to establishing the historicity of the Shang dynasty, which was still controversial up to this point in time. In 1937 the excavations were ended with the outbreak of the Second World War in China and only resumed under new management after the end of the Chinese Civil War .

After the communists came to power in China by Mao Zedong , Li Ji fled to Taiwan in 1949, where he became head of archeology and anthropology at the Taiwan State University in Taipei in 1950 .

Works

• The Formation of the Chinese People. To Anthropological Inquiry. Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Mass.), 1928, OCLC 562507377 .
• The Beginnings of Chinese Civilization: three lectures illustrated with finds at Anyang. University of Washington Press, Seattle, 1957, OCLC 562507362 .
• Anyang. University of Washington Press, Seattle, 1977, ISBN 0-7129-0804-8 .

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• Timothy Murray: Milestones in Archeology. A chronological encyclopedia . ABC-CLIO, Santa Barbara Calif. 2007, ISBN 978-1-57607-186-1 , pp. 388ff., ( Excerpt in the Google book search)
• Barbara Ann Kipfer: Encyclopedic Dictionary of Archeology . Kluwer Acad./Plenum Publ., New York NY 2000, ISBN 0-306-46158-7 , pp. 310-311, ( excerpt from Google book search)
• Li Ji in the Encyclopædia Britannica
• Clayton D. Brown: Li Ji: Father of Chinese Archeology . In: Orientations Vol. 39, No. 3, April 2008, ISSN  0030-5448 , pp. 61-66.

Note: In this article, the family name is placed before the first name of the person. This is the usual order in Chinese. Li is the family name here, Ji is the first name.