Transnationalism, Borderlands, and the History of Archaeology in Twentieth-Century East Asia

Session Submission Type: Organized Panel

Abstract

The study of archaeology and antiquities in twentieth-century East Asia is an emerging field of study, but most scholars have limited their analysis to major intellectual and political figures in the metropoles. Archaeology and the trade in antiquities were fundamentally transnational enterprises, however, ones that not only entailed frequent collaboration with foreign colleagues throughout the world, but also required participation in the politics of the politically sensitive borderlands where they often worked. With four papers focusing on connections among East Asian cultural and political elites with archaeological sites and professional counterparts in Korea, Central Asia, Egypt, and the United States during the first half of the twentieth century, this panel will explore the ways in which transnational influences and borderland politics informed the ideological, economic, and legal development of archaeology and the attendant trade in antiquities throughout China and Japan. Three of the papers examine such exchanges in geographical and cultural margins (Xinjiang, Egypt, and Tsushima) of the late Qing, Republic, and postwar Japan, while a fourth paper examines the collaboration of Chinese and American cultural elites during the Republican era. Common to each study is the flexible posture of Chinese and Japanese cultural elites who used archaeology for the benefit of domestic agendas in their own borderlands. By expanding coverage of the archaeological discipline in East Asia to include ideological influences across Eurasia and the Americas, this panel aims to highlight the ironies and contradictions of an ostensibly objective science that was nonetheless utilized to serve decidedly nationalist agendas.

Area of Study

• Interarea-Border Crossing

Session Organizer

• Justin Jacobs, American University

Chair

• Justin Jacobs, American University

Individual Presentations

• Preserving China’s Past: Sino-American Collaboration in Archaeology and Cultural Heritage Management, 1912-1940 - Clayton D. Brown, Utah State University

• Xia Nai’s Egypt in the Archaeology of China - Wendy Doyon, University of Pennsylvania

• The Compensations of Plunder: Why Chinese Officials Aided and Abetted Foreign Explorers in Xinjiang - Justin Jacobs, American University

• Excavating Nation from Empire: Transwar Japanese Archaeology in Tsushima - Miriam Kingsberg, University of Colorado Boulder

Discussant

• Judd Kinzley, University of Wisconsin-Madison