The discovery of the Neolithic Yangshao Culture in 1921 is widely held to herald the beginning of modern archaeology in China. In this paper we explore what this discovery introduced to archaeology, arguing that several factors coalesced to shape this change and its impact. One of these was the political changes at the time and the search for a new historiography. However, we argue that another formative influence was the new mindset that geology and mining introduced. We propose that the Yangshao Culture excavations became sites of ‘discipline formation’, where a new vocabulary was developed as well as a new way of ‘seeing’ the landscape.

1921年新石器時代仰韶文化的發現，普遍被視爲中國現代考古學的開端。本 文深入探討了這一發現爲考古學領域帶來的新視角，並論述了是由多種因素共同促成 了這一重大變革及其深遠影響。其中包括當時的政治變革以及對新史學的探索。此 外，我們認爲地質學與采礦學引入的新思維模式也是一個重要的形成性影響。文章提 出，仰韶文化的考古挖掘成爲了“學科形成”的重要場域，這裏不僅孕育了新的專業術 語，還形成了一種“觀察”與理解景觀的新方法

1. Introduction
2. Traditional approaches to China’s past
3. Interaction between China and other parts of the world before 1912(the early stages of the Republic of China) – from adventurers tomining engineers
4. An Intellectual Background: The New Culture Movement andchange in attitudes to Chinese historiography
5. The geologist’s discovery and exposure of the Yangshao Culture
6. Conclusion
Acknowledgement
References
中文摘要

• Marie Louise Stig SØRENSEN(Cambridge Heritage Research Centre, McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge)
• Guohua YANG(Cambridge Heritage Research Centre, McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge) | 楊國華 (劍橋大學) Corresponding author