上星期五英雄祖先與族群歷史彭文斌發表的文章，
在會上問了一個問題，會後也聊了一下，是一個很好的人，
據說北大一直找他回去，但以這一篇文章來說，在大陸的學術界是很難生存下去的。
以下是初稿，以英文寫成:
近年來我對三星堆與區域歷史文化建構比較感興趣，對四川學界同仁的研究及媒體的報導
作了點膚淺的研究，有點東西可以用來討論多元與邊緣的關係，當然討論還是受Falkenha
usen教授的啟發很大，茲附於後面，討論"區域歷史文化中心主義" 與三星堆的媒體再現
問題。
遠古史与區域認同：三星堆与學術、媒体的再現
Remote History and Regional Identity: Scholarly and Media Representations of
Sanxingdui
Peng Wenbin
On a day in the early spring of 1929, a farmer named Yan Daocheng was working
on a ditch for irrigation not far from his house at Yueliangwan, a small
village in Guanghan County, western Sichuan Province. To Yan Daocheng, it was
just an another day of hard labor, and nothing particularly unusual had been
anticipated until he hit upon a pit filled with jade and stone artifacts in
the ditch. The antiques from the pit, numbering about three to four hundred,
did not seem to have brought much wealth to the Yan family, however. Yan
Daocheng and his children donated a few items to the-then West China University
Museum, gave some to friends and relatives as gifts, and sold a few jade pieces
to a collector in Chengdu, capital of Sichuan Province.
Such an inconspicuous beginning of an archaeological discovery,
simultaneous as well as accidental, seemed to have enhanced, rather than
diminished the mysterious aura cloaking the Sanxingdui culture, lauded by
the Chinese media as the "Ninth Archaeological Miracle in the World." The
telling and retelling of the Yan family story in the late 1920s have
subsequently become a standard format for journalists' or scholars' to follow
in their introduction of the archaeological site of Sanxingdui.
In 1986, the climax of the Sanxingdui excavation arrived when two pits
with more than a thousand artifacts were unearthed. Some of the objects
unearthed from the two pits in 1986 do not seem to find parallels in other
Chinese archaeological remains, such as the bizarre bronze masks, while some
are difficult to claim their autochthonous origins in the Sichuan Basin , such
as seashells and elephant tasks. Their discoveries have attracted much
attention and contributed to, what I would call, an industry of imagination,
which leads people to ponder relentlessly over the artifacts' origins and
connections to other cultures in the world, cases of which have been abundant
in recent Chinese media.
As an example, in December, 2000, a report in Wuhan Chenbao, the Wuhan
Morning Post, a local newspaper based in Wuhan city, central China, remarked
on similarities and possible contacts between Sanxingdui and other cultures on
a global spectrum. Quoting Zhang Jizhong, deputy director of the Sanxingdui
Museum in Guanghan, it wrote:
The plenty of bronze wares unearthed at Sanxingdui not only display remarkable
features of ancient culture of Sichuan (Shu), but are also rich in cultural
characteristics of West Asia and other regions. Artifacts like bronze-cast
figures and gold sheath, etc., are pretty close to the world-renowned Mayan
culture and ancient Egyptian culture. The bronze culture (of Sanxingdui) as a
"hybrid" one is quite distinct from that of the Central Plains in China.
Imagination related to the Sanxingdui archaeological project is thus
the focus of this talk. Instead of viewing imagination as something less
empirically grounded, as a pure mental activity that is difficult to wrestle
away from its unrealistic, or unreal connotations, this talk suggests
imagination as a genuine cultural process and political practice, linked
closely to the constructions of national and regional identities in China. To
support this argument, this talk explores the politicization of archeological
projects in China. An example close in hand will be an excavation at
Sanxingdui in December, 2000, a so-called "millennium excavation project"
that fanned much imagination in the Chinese media. This talk seeks to register
divergent views and considerations regarding cultural origins and
characteristics in scholarly and media representations of Sanxingdui. As such,
the talk offers some basic understanding of how the Sanxingdui project has
been related to a complex and dialogic relationship between state-local, or
center-periphery in the Chinese cultural arena in recent years.
Centralistic Evolutionary Model of Chinese Identity
For centuries, the classic notion of Huaxia, referring both to a
Confucian cultural order and its related spatial perimeters in defining China
and Chinesenes, has been perceived as centered in the Yellow River valley, or
Central Plain, where China as Middle Kingdom derived her name. Areas beyond the
reach of this particular region, called also as the cradle of Chinese
civilization, had been relegated to barbarian land, or frontier space in need
of colonization and civilizations.
This homogenizing view of Chinese culture with a nuclear center has
long dominated Chinese political, cultural and historical thinking. Dissenting
historical views against this centralist model did, at times, emerge in
Chinese intellectual circle. For instance, Gu Jiegang, an unorthodox historian
in twentieth-century China, persistently argued that the so-called
"Barbarians" in the peripheral regions of China had contributed substantially
to the evolution of Chinese civilization. Furthermore, they had long proven to
be vital sources of regeneration for a decaying Chinese culture in the past.
But Gu's voice had been weak as opposed to the traditional Chinese
historiography that had been entrenched in the unbridgeable distinctions
between Yi (Barbarians) and Xia (Chinese).
Only in recent decades, as Bagley, Falkenhausen and, et al have noted,
the "centralistic evolutionary model" of ancient Chinese civilization has been
gradually eroded, orienting toward a more "pluralistic" or "democratic" view
of Chinese cultural origins and identities. Archaeological projects in the
Yangzi River valley of south China have made great contributions to this kind
of model relaxation process, and have offered viable evidences of the existence
of multiple regional cultural centers in ancient China. The Sanxingdui
excavation project, in particular, stands prominently in constructing a
southern-based alternative view of the Chinese nation.
Sanxingdui and Scholarly Cultural Regionalism in China
In Sichuan, recent enthusiasm in the Sanxingdui culture and also a
series of excavations of the late Neolithic cultures in the Sichuan Basin
during these two decades, has certainly been part of historical responses of
Sichuanese intellectuals to Sichuan's marginality in mainstream Chinese history.
Such an assertion of regional cultural heritage through archaeological
projects does not necessarily, as Falkenhausen argues, "translate into a
present-day ethnic separatism." Rather, it offers a venue for regional scholars
to reconstruct their Chineseness, leaning toward a Chinese identity that is
more locally bound with distinctive cultural histories. In this regard,
regionalist cultural efforts in Sichuan have not been unique, and parallels can
be found in the promotions of the Jin culture, the Chu culture or the Minnan
culture in other parts of China.
Sichuan, as Zeng Dekun, a famous archaeologist, once remarked, "is
fundamentally a marginal area, and the culture of this province has never been
a result of independent development. It has always been under the influence of
some neighboring culture." According to the century-old centralist model,
Sichuan's history became reliable when it was occupied by the expanding Qin
state in 316 BC. By the irony of colonization, Sichuan "first entered the
mainstream of Chinese civilization," while "the pre-Qin Sichuan was anything b
ut a wild frontier region waiting to receive the blessings of civilization from
the more innovative heartland of China."
Allusions to the Ba and the Shu, two early states occupying the
Sichuan Basin in pre-Qing period did exist in some records and oral traditions
, yet rulers of these states remain largely as mythical or legendary figures.
Modern studies of Ba and Shu first entered the intellectual scene in the 30s
and flourished in the early 1940s.
The wartime years witnessed a massive exodus of scholars into SW China
, and a lot of them sojourned in Sichuan. Research of frontiers and local
cultures became a vogue at the time, responding to the Nationalist government's
call to turn SW China as a base for national salvation and reconstruction.
Most remarkable in studies of Sichuan during the period was Gu Jiegang's
radical view that ancient Sichuan had developed independently before its
assimilation into the Qin during the Warring State period (fifth to third
century, B.C.). Gu's revisionist was built upon his debunking of the
mainstream historiography of Sichuan, though not quite substantiated by any
significant archaeological finds at the time, had raised a critical issue
concerning the multi-origins of ancient Chinese civilization.
The excavation at Sanxingdui in the 1950s and 1960s ignited some thinking in
the Sichuan archaeological circle that Sanxingdui might have been a political
and economic center of the ancient kingdom of the Shu in the west Sichuan
Basin. The remarkable 1986-excavation at Sanxingdui, in views of Sichuanese
archaeologists, has finally turned the "misty legends of ancient Shu…into a
reliable history, leading also to a confirmation of the origin of ancient Shu
history and the center of ancient Shu kingdom."
Elaborating upon some wider ramifications of the Sanxingdui discoveries, one
analyst in Sichuan wrote enthusiastically:
"Sanxingdui culture," as an outstanding example of ancient civilization on the
upper Yangzi River valley, represents a remarkably shining period in histories
of SW China…Confirmation of the Sanxingdui culture announces that ancient
Shu region on the upper Yangzi, like the Yellow River valley, has also been a
cradle of Chinese civilization, suggesting strongly the multi origins of
Chinese culture.
It should be noted, however, that not all analysts, particularly those from the
West, shared this kind of strong optimism at the present stage of the
Sanxingdui excavations.
While acknowledging that the Sanxingdui finds have enhanced our knowledge of
the complexity of the early Bronze Age in China, Bagley suggests that
excavations at Sanxingdui have probably raised more questions than we could
answer at such an early stage. Future excavations may lead us to a better
understanding of the issues. Thorp, on the other hand, looks forward to a
final excavation report and more substantive data of the Sanxingdui finds, not
just some "interpretative essays on broad topics," which remains less
persuasive about a number of issues, including the connections between the
Sanxingdui culture and the Shu culture.
Falkenhausen strongly opposes the "tendency… to go beyond the time
frame of available textual documentation and to equate prehistoric remains
with the historical ancient nationalities." He has singled out the equation
of the Sanxingdui culture with the Shu as a typical example in this regard.
"The fact remains," he argues, "that the archaeological record shows few if
any significant similarities between the Sanxingdui culture and the remains of
the Shu kingdom." In analyzing recent regionalist paradigms in Chinese
archaeological projects, Falkenhausen has further cautioned us against "a
tendency toward a new regionalist form of centralism," which focuses on
"constructing cultural master sequences specific for each province," and in
doing so, tends to emphasize the autochthonous elements in the archaeological
finds as opposed to cultural traits diffused from elsewhere. As we shall see in
the following, his critique has direct relevance to our understanding of media
representation of a recent excavation at Sanxingdui, albeit in more variegated
forms,
Ups and Downs, and Twists and Turns in Media Reports of Sanxingdui Excavation
On December 2, 2000, a field research team from the Sichuan Provincial
Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology arrived at Sanxingdui, Guanghan
city. The team, consisting of about 20 researchers in addition to 40 hired
labors, were making preparations for an excavation that was about to take place
in two days. Excavation this time, numbered as the 13th in the series of
excavations at Sanxingdui during the 20th century, was going to last from
December 4, 2000 to some time in March 2001, extending over three months. It
would cover an area of 500 sq meters--a scale that was fairly modest as
compared with various projects in the 1980s that encompassed more than 1,000
sq meters. Neither was the goal of this excavation as much dramatic as we might
have assumed--the State Bureau of Cultural Relics in China authorized and
funded this excavation to collect data for the drafting of an overall
preservation plan for the Sanxingdui remains. For years, the Sanxingdui
archaeological site has lacked not only an official and complete excavation
report, but also a preservation guideline even if it had long been designated
as an Important National Cultural Property Protection Unit, over 10 years ago,
in 1988.
What had been truly unique of the excavation this time, Mr. Zhang
Xiaoma, an archaeologist from Sichuan told me in Seattle, was the extent of
media exposure unsurpassed by any previous excavation at Sanxingdui. Mr. Zhang
is a researcher of the Sichuan Cultural Relics and Archaeological Institute.
During my interview, he was in Seattle to assist the Sichuan exhibition at SAM
. According to Zhang, more than one hundred reporters and TV crews had poured
in Sanxingdui during the first few days' excavation. Not only had local
newspapers, and televisions broadcasting stations in Sichuan been much
enthusiastic about the excavation project, but major state media, such as
Xinhua News Agency, China News Agency, and the People's Daily had all been
attracted to the Sanxingdui archaeological site. Perhaps more important, Zhang
said, was the CCTV's (China Central Television Station) involvement in the
media coverage. CCTV's Zhibo Zhongguo, Live Broadcast China, a weekly program
of China's cultural heritage and folk customs, decided to air a live show of
the excavation process, titled "Sanxingdui in Mysteries" on December 17, 2000.
During the excavation, the People's Daily also devoted a web page to
the coverage of the whole process, through which I have been able to track
down the latest developments in the excavation reports. The website now
contains 34 messages assorted from various newspapers in relation to the
Sanxingdui excavation in 2000 and other periods. About 30 of them focused
exclusively on a ten-day period excavation, from Dec. 11, to Dec. 20, 2000.
After the CCTV's live broadcast at Sanxingdui and the withdrawal of its film
crew, media attention of the site waned considerably, Mr Zhang told me.
No less dramatic and sensational during the excavation process had been
twists and turns, or ups and downs in media report of the excavation process
. Related topics include cultural status of Sanxingdui, its relations to
Central Plain and other worldly cultures beyond China's national boundary,
and finally to the scope of the excavation project itself,
Patterns are discernable in the reportage of the Sanxingdui excavation process
in December, 2000. Here, I focus on the 10-period excavation I just mentioned
that drew intense media attention. The first five days, from December 11 to
15, was a period when the reports of Sanxingdui were characterized by, what I
would call, suspense creation, which had been filled with various kinds of
mysteries about Sanxingdui and also high expectations about the excavation as
sort of treasure-hunting and riddle-solving mechanism. From the 15th to the
20th, the overheated tone in the media cooled down, and scholars involved in
the excavation began to clear various "rumors" about the Sanxingdui culture.
In the initial suspense-creation process, or called "mystification" in
the later reportage, the Sanxingdui site, its connections to other cultures,
and the excavation agenda itself had been geared up for much imagination,
which seemed to have been part of media's necessary steps to attract public
attention
Floating in the reports was the "Millennium Wonder," a phrase that was
intended to capture the seven riddles linked to the Sanxingdui culture, such
as its origin, peopling, social and religious forms, bronze techniques, and
its final disappearance, etc.
In the process of suspension creation, Sanxingdui's distinctiveness in
bronze culture vis-a-vis that of the Yellow River valley was much talked about
, an example of which has been mentioned in my previous quote of a remark by
Zhang Jizhong, deputy director of the Sanxingdui Museum. Sanxingdui's links to
other cultures, like the Mayans had also been a favorite topic in media
coverage. One reporter, after interviewing with Chen Dean, an archaeologist in
charge of the research station at Sanxingdui, wrote:
After his careful examinations of the gold sheath, gold masks and bronze
figures previously unearthed at Sanxingdui, Chen Dean feels that these objects
have many similarities to civilizations in other continents, therefore the
Sanxingdui people might have been "foreigners' from other continents.
In another report, Mr. Zhang Jizhong was quoted as saying that Sanxingdui used
to be a world pilgrimage center. Discoveries of a great amount of seashells
and ivory tasks might have been the sacrificial offerings brought to Sanxingdui
by pilgrims from tropical and maritime regions.
Accordingly, the excavation project in December, 2000 was described as
the biggest one in history, designed to search the palace of the ancient Shu
capital, as a important step for the 21st century excavation, having great
potentials to solve the thousand-year mystery of the Sanxingdui culture.
Media representation since the 15th experienced a downturn from sort
of expansion to contraction in various claims. Lying behind this twist was of
course, an anxiety, a fear that from both sides, researchers and reporters
alike, the excavation might not yield something really eye-catching to
conform to the extent of media coverage. On the other hand, the overzealous
reports also caught attention of the state bureau of Cultural Relics, and Chen
Dean was phoned up for questioning about those unscientific claims in the
reports, such as the unproven linkage to the Mayan culture, etc, A flurry of
actions had thus been taken clear up clouds of rumors surrounding the
excavation. They could be summed up as the follows
1. lower down the expectation and stress of the arch work
2. reaffirming the connection to Central plains, Chen Dean was now being
quoted to stress the connection between the Sanxingdui culture and the Shang
in terms of bronze cultures
3. During these downturns, On the twentieth, a reporter interviewed
relevant authorities in Beijing that seem to have finally stepped a brake on
all these sensations.
Conclusion
Two sets of problems seemed to have emerged in the media representation of
Sanxingdui, i.e. the balance between universality and particularity, media
publicity and scientific integrity in a project. To claim the connection to the
Mayan or Egyptian culture not only sounds premature at the present stage of
the Sanxingdui excavation, but also risks turning the latter as a derivative
culture of the former, thus losing its distinctive regional as well as
national identity. On the other hand, media interests and research agenda could
overlap at times, but media's quest for sensation seems to have been a threat
to the research process despite its need for publicity, too. As a final word,
after the media sensation receded, the so-called millennium project went on
the march in the 21 century, more silently in later periods, only 3 messages
showed up in later periods of excavation. Perhaps another round of intense
coverage will resurface in the next excavation, leaving behind previous
imaginations, and invent new ones. In the process, the trend of "regional
supremacism" (cf. Falkenhausen) that valorizes Sichuansese identity and
emphasizes the region's unique contribution to the Chinese civilization and
world heritage will continue in the Sichuanese academic and archaeological
world.
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