Introduction
Antiquarianism has long been intertwined with historical and historiographical narratives in China and can be understood as an attempt to bridge the divide between the present and the past through written and material sources. Harking back to the primal stages of dynastic rule in China, history and historiography played a vital role in political and philosophical thought and speculation. Thus, a concern for ancient artifacts and the material residues of the past to undergird historical scholarship has formed an integral part of Chinese historical thought.
Although we can find traces of collecting and proto-antiquarian pursuits from as early as the Han 漢 dynasty (206 BCE-220) – with a first apogee during the years of the Wang Mang 王莽 (r. 9–23) interregnum (Falkenhausen 2013) and another crucial period during the Tang dynasty (618–906) in which the preoccupation with the material remains of the past facilitated the development of an interest in antiquarian studies that laid...
References
Bai, Qianshen. 2013. Antiquarianism in a time of crisis: On the collecting practices of late-Qing government officials, 1861–1911. In World antiquarianism. Comparative perspectives, ed. Alain Schnapp, 386–403. Los Angeles: The Getty Research Institute Publications Program.
Buckley-Ebrey, Patricia. 2008. Accumulating culture: The collections of Emperor Huizong. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
Buckley-Ebrey, Patricia. 2010. Replicating Zhou bells at the Northern Song court. In Reinventing the past: Archaism and antiquarianism in Chinese art and visual culture, ed. Wu Hung, 179–199. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Buckley-Ebrey, Patricia. 2014. Emperor Huizong. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Clunas, Craig. 2004. Superfluous things: Material culture and social status in early modern China. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.
Demattè, Paola. 2011. Emperors and scholars: Collecting culture and late imperial antiquarianism. In Collecting China: The world, China, and a history of collecting, ed. V. Rujivacharakul, 165–175. Newark: University of Delaware Press.
Elman, Benjamin. 1984. From philosophy to philology: Intellectual and social aspects of change in late imperial China. Cambridge, UK: Harvard University Press.
Grimberg, Phillip. 2019. Collecting for power and pleasure – A comparative study of the imperial collections of Emperors Huizong and Qianlong. In 歐洲漢學 1/2019 (in press).
Guy, R. Kent. 1987. The Emperor’s four treasuries. Scholars and the state in the late Chʻien-lung era. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Hammond, Kenneth J. 2012. Wang Shizhen and Li Shizhen: Archaism and early scientific thought in sixteenth-century China. In Antiquarianism and intellectual life in Europe and China, 1500–1800, ed. Peter N. Miller and François Louis, 234–249. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.
Holtzwarth, Gerald. 2005. The Qianlong Emperor as art patron and the formation of the collections of the Palace Museum, Beijing. In China: The three Emperors, 1662–1795, ed. E.S. Rawski and J. Rawson, 41–53. London: Royal Academy of Arts.
Hsu, Ya-Hwei. 2013. Antiquaries and politics: Antiquarian culture of the northern song, 960–1127. In World antiquarianism. Comparative perspectives, ed. Alain Schnapp, 230–248. Los Angeles: The Getty Research Institute Publications Program.
Mattos, Gilbert L. 1988. The stone drums of Ch’in. Monumenta Serica monograph series, 19. Nettetal: Steyler.
Rawson, Jessica. 2005. The Qianlong Emperor: Virtue and the possession of antiquity. In China: The three Emperors, 1662–1795, ed. E.S. Rawski and J. Rawson, 270–305. London: Royal Academy of Arts.
Rudolph, Richard C. 1963. Preliminary notes on Sung archaeology. The Journal of Asian Studies 22.2 (1963): 169–177.
Shambaugh Elliot, Jeanatte, and David Shambaugh. 2005. The Odyssey of China’s imperial art treasures. Seattle/London: The University of Washington Press.
Su, Rongyu. 2004. The reception of ‘archaeology’ and ‘prehistory’ and the founding of archaeology in late imperial China. In Mapping meanings: The field of new learning in late Qing China, ed. M. Lackner and N. Vittinghoff, 423–449. Leiden: Brill.
Visconti, Chiara. 2015. The influence of Song and Qing antiquarianism on modern archaeology. Ming Qing Yanjiu 19: 59–86.
von Falkenhausen, Lothar. 2013. Antiquarianism in East Asia. A preliminary overview. In World antiquarianism. Comparative perspectives, ed. Alain Schnapp, 35–66. Los Angeles: The Getty Research Institute Publications Program.
Wang, Tao. 2018. Mirroring the past: Emperor Qianlong and his bronzes. In Mirroring China’s past: Emperors, scholars, and their bronzes, ed. Tao Wang, 127–139. Chicago/New Haven: The Art Institute of Chicago/Yale University Press.
Yu, Hui-chun. 2007. The intersection of past and present: The Qianlong Emperor and his ancient bronzes. PhD dissertation, Princeton.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Section Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this entry
Cite this entry
Grimberg, P. (2019). Archaeology and Antiquarianism in China. In: Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51726-1_3363-2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51726-1_3363-2
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-51726-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-51726-1
eBook Packages: Springer Reference HistoryReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Humanities
Publish with us
Chapter history
-
Latest
Archaeology and Antiquarianism in China- Published:
- 02 April 2019
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51726-1_3363-2
-
Original
Archaeology and Antiquarianism in China- Published:
- 27 February 2019
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51726-1_3363-1