Geoarchaeology, Geomythology, and the Origins of Chinese Civilisation

Abstract Over the past several decades, Chinese archaeology has developed into a multifaceted field of study that is often at the cutting edge of archaeological science. Chinese archaeologists, like archaeologists around the world, have focused their research efforts on increasingly compartmentalised domains of expertise; nonetheless there are key differences between regional traditions. Perhaps foremost among them are the ways in which Chinese archaeologists have adopted advances in geoarchaeology. Geoarchaeology as a subfield of environmental archaeology has grown in the past several decades. In this chapter, I compare the origins of geoarchaeology in the US and the UK to contemporaneous developments in China to understand how different institutions and individuals helped create the increasingly global field of geoarchaeology. From this overview, I argue that from the beginning of geoarchaeological thought in China, archaeologists have used stratigraphic principles and geoscientific methods to test the veracity of the historical record. In recent years, geoscientists have tried to apply this approach to find material evidence to verify the ‘Great Flood’ myth of how the legendary Yu the Great controlled the waters. Recent geoarchaeological studies from China retell this legend using geologic evidence ranging from paleoclimate studies to microstratigraphic analyses, lending scientific support to a story that many historians of early China consider apocryphal. This interest in using geological methods to test the veracity of the received textual tradition in China has led to science and myth becoming unlikely bedfellows.