Unearthed bone hairpins from Yinxu, large in number and varying in type, are both utilitarian and symbolic in function. They were mainly buried with a small number of nobles, most of whom were female. This might demonstrate that the common burial custom at Yinxu was leaving hair untied after death. Buried bone hairpins are indicators of social status. A large number of bone hairpins unearthed from dwelling contexts suggests the Shang people’s preference for them, a continuous tradition since the Xiaqiyuan culture, indicating distinguishable hierarchy. Bone hairpins from Yinxu were necessary for daily life but also prestige goods, indicating differentiation in status, wealth, and hierarchy. Bone hairpins of the Yinxu style were used until the Western Zhou period. However, the rituality and symbolism behind the material gradually disappeared, which can be viewed as a material manifestation of reforms in power and ritual during the Shang and Zhou periods.

This paper reviews the process of exploring the origin of Chinese civilization from the centurial history of Chinese archaeology. Based on the academic research results obtained over the years, combined with major archaeological discoveries, and leveraging the author’s knowledge, it discusses the cultural and social evolution process and achievements in different regions of China during the early, middle, late Neolithic Age and the Bronze Age, as well as how different regional civilizations took shape one after another and developed from diversity to unity. It also highlights the characteristics of Chinese civilization; particularly, from a geographical perspective and by comparing the Chinese and Western civilizations, it briefly demonstrates the historical background and reasons for the continuity, openness, and inclusiveness of Chinese civilization.

Chinese civilization has unique characteristics in the world civilization history. Its most prominent characteristic is the continuity of the “5,000-year” civilization. Over 5,000 years ago, different civilizations appeared in different regions of China and the civilizations mainly included their different early-stage theocracy and reign modes. Among these civilizations, the civilization that was handed on from generation to generation was the states with a reign mode that originated in the Longshan culture of Central China and its successors such as the Xia Dynasty, the Shang Dynasty, the Zhou Dynasty, the Qin Dynasty, the Han Dynasty, the Yuan Dynasty, the Ming Dynasty, and the Qing Dynasty. This can be illustrated by the 5,000-year continuous inheritance of the country, people, and territory of China, proved by the 5,000-year inheritance and development of capitals, royal tombs, ritual and ceremonial buildings and vessels, and characters as the national culture (or major tradition) and resurrected by the capital’s centralization,“OneGate Three-Passage” pattern,“centralization of the main hall of the court” and the“Left Ancestral Temple and Right Altar” pattern, and the central axis of the capital, the four doors on four sides of the capital and court, etc. as the materialized forms of the core ideas of center and moderation. These materialized forms of the unbroken civilization became more and more in the past 5,000 years, which indicates that the ideas of center and moderation became stronger and stronger and were constantly deepened. The ideological roots of the 5,000-year unbroken Chinese civilization are the ideas of center and moderation, which are the ideological basis for the state identity and the core value of the Chinese national history.

Terracotta warriors are an important part of the burial system of the Emperor Qin Shi Huang’s Mausoleum and are the funerary objects of military themes. The appearance of terracotta warriors broke through the architectural structure of burial pits in early tombs, expanded the scale and object of burial, and realized the complicated and hierarchical concept of burial. Its emergence is related to the blending of the pre-Qin tradition and the concepts at that time, such as the change of the concept of human sacrifice, the rise of the burial of figurines, the change of the concept of funerary objects and objects for the living, etc., together with the ruling strategy of the Qin Empire and Emperor Qin Shi Huang himself, which contributed to the formation of terracotta warriors.

The discoveries of the Sanxingdui culture, including the magnificent ancient city, the splendid bronze ware clusters, the original characters, the great art, the grand ritual center, and other material civilizational elements, contain the essential and structural characteristics of the institutional civilization and spiritual civilization of the ancient Shu civilization and reflect the theocratic regime of the Sanxingdui civilization. As a symbol to command the ethnic groups from southwestern China, the ivory sacrificial ritual in the Sanxingdui culture played a significant role. The discoveries of silk residues and silk proteins at Sanxingdui provide important evidence for the historical records of the Shushan Clan and Cancong Clan, as well as the splendid clothing of the Large Standing Bronze Figure at Sanxingdui, and even the relationship between the Sanxingdui culture and the Southern Silk Road.

In the Qing Dynasty, agriculture as the state’s foundation was gaining increasing attention. In the 18th century, the rulers put forward the governance philosophy of “Revering Heaven and Serving Thy People” to meet the need of state governance. Therefore, the Ploughing Ceremony with distinct characteristics of the time was reconstructed to encourage farming and reinforce governance. Rulers of the Qing Dynasty paid special attention to the Ploughing Ceremony and made effort to turn it into a political ceremony with all the people participating so as to establish the image of the saintly emperor and provide values and norms for better operation of the empire. At the same time, in order to solve livelihood problems, rulers of the Qing Dynasty had a craving to the pro-ploughing ritual. Therefore, diligence had become the common ideal and belief during this period, and this provides certain impetus for social and economic development. The Ploughing Ceremony of the Qing Dynasty as an important part of the development of traditional Chinese etiquette culture, helped to shape the national spirit of hard work, and left a deep imprint on the development and continuation of the Chinese civilization.

Sticking to the stand of Chinese culture is the basic premise of promoting cultural self-confidence and self-improvement. Only by thinking rationally about the inheritance, borrow-in, development, and promotion of culture can we grasp the essence of sticking to the stand of Chinese culture. To inherit the traditional culture, we should combine the new practice with the requirements of the times and take its essence while discarding its dross. The key to learning from foreign cultures is to give priority to ourselves and use them for our purposes. We can not swallow it all down and blindly use it. To develop socialist culture, we should, on the one hand, respect the national cultural tradition and on the other hand, constantly innovate and create a new culture. To carry forward Chinese culture, we need to meet the people’s growing spiritual and cultural demands internally and strengthen the influence of the spread of Chinese civilization, promoting Chinese culture to the world.

Jade silkworms unearthed from the sites of the Hongshan culture reflect that the mulberry silkworms and tussah silkworms were recognized and utilized in the Liaoxi (west Liaohe River) valley from at least 5.5 to 5 thousand years ago. This not only makes the Yan-Liao region (extending from the Yanshan Mountains to the Liaohe River valley), where the west Liaohe River valley is located, become another prehistoric center of silkworm resource utilization besides the middle reaches of the Yellow River and the lower reaches of the Yangtze River, but also traces the earliest time and the area of the utilization of tussah silkworms in China from Shandong Peninsula in the Han Dynasty to the west Liaohe River valley in the Hongshan period. Meanwhile, the quantitative superiority of jade tussah silkworms implies that wild silkworm resources were still the main source of silk for the Neolithic inhabitants. The understanding and expression means of“taking jade as silkworm” and“turning silkworm into dragon” in the Hongshan culture coincide with those in the Shang and Zhou dynasties, and are a vivid portrayal of the Hongshan culture as a direct root of the Chinese civilization.

This paper attempts to collate archaeological discoveries of jade artifacts in the Central Plains of China at different stages of the prehistoric periods and investigate the jade artifacts’ geographical distributions, types, and employment statuses, to explore the jade employment features, concepts, and developments in the Central Plains. From the Peiligang period to the Longshan period, the jade employment culture in the Central Plains in the prehistoric periods obviously showed a formation process from scratch. The Central Plains was not the place of origin for the jade culture; instead, it was more about accepting external influences, developing its jade employment culture, and enjoying the advantages of a late-comer to develop rapidly. The late-comer advantages and the formation of a historical trend centered on the Central Plains enabled the jade culture to gather, merge, and popularize in the Central Plains in the prehistoric periods. The Central Plains not only served as a transit point for jade artifacts’ continued diffusion northward and westward but also further established jade artifacts as an indispensable factor in the early ritual system civilization and in their inheritance and development throughout historic periods.

The system of Three Courts and Five Gates is an essential content of the designs of the capitals and palaces of ancient China. The Three Courts and Five Gates planning of the Daming Palace is the adoption of this rule and the application to the spatial designing of the palace city. The archaeological fieldwork revealed that within the Daming Palace, the Three Courts pattern with three walls as the borders, and Hanyuan Hall, Xuanzheng Hall, and Zichen Hall as the centers formed the outer court, middle court, and inner court plan, which was the embodiment of the new interpretation of the Tang Dynasty to the traditional Three Courts and Five Gates ritual system. Through the trimming of the archaeological data fetched in the past 60 years about the southern part, which is the official affair zone, of the Daming Palace, this paper discusses the spatial structure of the Three Courts and Five Gates pattern of the Daming Palace, and analyzes the substantial relationship between this pattern and the political demands of the ruling class.

Harappa and Erlitou are representative sites of the Indus and early Chinese civilizations respectively. With different geographical environments, the two regions took different paths to civilization. The Indus civilization established early“city-states” based on regional groups. Under the influence of the loose power structure of the“city-states,” the Harappan culture formed an open economic system that was market-oriented. Foreign trade was prosperous and played an important role in its economy. The early Chinese civilization established a wide-area kingship state. Under the influence of the pyramidal power structure, the economic system of the Erlitou culture was dominated by the state and served the ruling class. Foreign trade accounted for a low proportion of its economy. Differences between the two sites are the epitome of those between the development patterns of the two early civilizations and have important research value.

Since about 8,000 years ago in China, humans started to hold ceremonies to offer sacrifices to heaven and reverence for heaven at low-lying terraced landscapes or on circular mounds on the hilltops. Typical archaeological features and remains of such activities can be noticed at the Gaomiao, Niuheliang, and Lingjiatan sites, indicating that a somewhat complex cosmology and definite concept of reverence for heaven and acts of offering sacrifices to heaven had well begun in the Yangtze River, Yellow River, and west Liaohe River valleys in the Neolithic Age, which continued, with succession, integration, and development, through the Xia, Shang, and Zhou dynasties, and even into the the whole ancient China after the Qin and Han dynasties. The concept of reverene for heaven co-evolved with ancient astronomy, which had far-reaching influences on the political system, philosophical thinking, science and technology of acient China. Like the veneration of the dead, it has become the core cultural gene of the Chinese nation.

An archaeological excavation was jointly conducted by organizations including the Sichuan Provincial Cultural Relics and Archaeology Research Institute in the first half of 2017 in the Jiangkou stretch of the Minjiang River in Pengshan District, Meizhou, Sichuan Province, where more than two hundred gold and silver xiwang shanggong coins were unearthed. This was the first time that the existence of xiwang shanggong coins was proved by a systematic archaeological excavation, providing a scientific basis for solving the long-standing unresolved historical problem. By sorting out the academic history of xiwang shanggong coins, this paper points out that in the past seven years, these coins have experienced the transition from being dug by robbers to being excavated scientifically, and have turned from a hot topic in collection to one in academia. This paper summarizes the characteristics of these gold and silver coins and presents an idea that those coins may have never been officially issued. Some of the coins have residual traces of being burnt, which may provide physical proof to prove the event in historical records that the fleet of Zhang Xianzhong was burnt by the army of Yang Zhan in the early Qing Dynasty. By using these unearthed xiwang shanggong coins as the standard and comparing them with some of the handed-down counterparts, this paper makes an in-depth analysis on the authenticity of the handed-down coins and indicates that some of the gold and silver ones may be authentic while some copper ones may be counterfeit.

Chinese President Xi Jinping, gave an important speech describing the great achievements and significance of Chinese archaeology, pointing out the way forward for the development of Chinese archaeology in the new era. By reviewing the century-long history of Chinese archaeology, its historical tradition and the mission of the times are distinctive. Since 1949, under the guidance of archaeological culture theory and regional systems and cultural types theory, Chinese archaeology has made a series of significant achievements and taken up the mission of the times in inheriting historical traditions and exploring major issues including the origins of Chinese civilization. The current development of Chinese archaeology should further the historical tradition of Chinese archaeology under the guidance of the spirit of Xi Jinping’s speech. From a longitudinal perspective, Chinese archaeology should strengthen the research on the origin of Chinese civilization and its characteristics, development trajectory, major landmark achievements, and the way of civilization inheritance after its formation, especially to strengthen the exploration of how the“5,000-year continuous unity” was formed after the unification of the Qin and Han dynasties. From a horizontal perspective, with the Belt and Road Initiative as the main thread, we should continue to strengthen archaeological research on cultural exchanges between China and foreign countries, advocate mutual appreciation of civilizations, tell the Chinese story well, and contribute Chinese historical wisdom and experience to the world. On the whole, we should strengthen the theoretical construction and ability training of archaeology, strive to build Chinese archaeology with salient Chinese features, style, and ethos, and realize the historical mission of the new era of the Centennial“Chinese Dream.”

The discovery in Yangshao, Mianchi, Henan in 1921 marked the beginning of modern Chinese archaeology. Nowadays, Chinese archaeology has gone through a full 100 years. Through the hard work of generations of archaeologists, Chinese archaeology has achieved sustained growth and development. Chinese archaeology has been advancing for a century and has made great contributions to the construction of Chinese history and culture. Archaeology has important practical significance in contemporary times. Archaeological exploration is not limited to discovering the past, but also lies in the thoughts of gazing at history in the current context. Chinese archaeology in the new era is committed to integrating the spirit of this discipline into cultural construction and social life, so as to learn the new by reviewing the past. After more than 80 years of archaeological exploration, many large tombs of the Liangzhu culture were discovered one after another, mainly including burial of jade, from the 1970s to the end of the 1980s. The ritual jade artifacts such as cong (a long hollow piece of jade with rectangular sides) and bi (jade disk), as well as the differences in the levels of tombs, all reflect the high development of Liangzhu society. The ancient city of Liangzhu was discovered in 2007, and the water conservancy system was confirmed in 2015, pushing the Liangzhu culture to the height of national civilization. In 2019, the Archaeological Ruins of Liangzhu City was listed as a World Heritage site.

Nihewan and Zhoukoudian are important areas where early humans and cultures originated and reproduced in northern China and even East Asia. Geologically, both site groups belong to the Haihe River valley; chronologically, the Nihewan sites date to ca. 1.7 million years ago, and the Zhoukoudian sites date to ca. 0.5 million years ago; and culturally, both are dominated by the small-flake-tool culture. Thus, it is speculated that the early culture in the Zhoukoudian sites came from the migrants from the Nihewan Basin who facilitated cultural diffusion in the area; in turn, it also affected the culture in the Nihewan area during the subsequent development. This paper proposes the development path of the Paleolithic culture in northern China, that is, early humans in this region roughly experienced three stages of subsistence from lake-dependent to cave-dependent and then to river-dependent.

Lithic technology, subsistence modes, mobility strategies, and habitation modes in the northern part of Northeast China co-evolved during the Paleolithic-Neolithic transitional period, from the end of the Pleistocene through the beginning of the Holocene, exhibiting notable continuity and the phases of development. The investigation of climate, environment, population, technology, subsistence, and mobility is helpful in understanding environmental adaptation strategies and reconstructing cultural adaptation processes. The study of paleoclimatic records in this region indicates that remarkable climatic turbulence during the late Pleistocene, alongside extreme fluctuations in temperature and humidity, significantly influenced human technological systems and behavior.

This paper conducts a thorough investigation into the graves dating from the early Western Zhou to the middle Spring and Autumn period where fish-shaped coffin ornaments were unearthed, summarizes the characteristics of these fish-shaped coffin ornaments in terms of shapes and regions, and discusses the relationship between the distribution of the string coffin ornaments in the graves and the age of the graves and the status of the grave owners. The development of the string coffin ornaments including the fish-shaped ones is divided into three major stages in this paper, namely the period from the early period of the early Western Zhou Dynasty to the early period of the late Western Zhou Dynasty, the period from the late period of the late Western Zhou Dynasty to the middle Spring and Autumn period, and the period after the middle Spring and Autumn.

Whetstone-as-funerary-object was a common practice seen in tombs at the Jinsha site. Commonly found in the tombs at the Jinsha site, whetstones could have been a signifier of professional soldiers or violence groups in the ancient Shu culture, thus a product of the stratified ancient Shu society. Whetstones have been largely discovered in boat-coffin burials. The practice took form no later than the early Western Zhou dynasty, went on the decline in the late Spring and Autumn period, and came to an end in the Warring States period. The burial custom in question reflects the rise and fall of Jinsha as the central settlement area, and is a likely result of the two major transitions the ancient Shu society underwent over the period from the Western Zhou Dynasty to the Spring and Autumn period. The ancient Shu society experienced regime changes and went under the reign of reshuffling rulers in the late Spring and Autumn period; as a result, the emerging ruling elite abandoned the old whetstone-as-funerary-object practice, and embraced the new world.

Rule of virtue and rule of law are institutional tools for maintaining social order. This paper selects typical cases recorded in “Biographies of Honest and Law-Abiding” in the official history and summarizes the practices and experiences of the ancient rulers in implementing the rule of virtue and the rule of law in the practice of governance. The honest and upright officials with the rule of virtue as the foundation aimed to develop the economy, benefit the people and enrich the people, and then teach them and promote ethical indoctrination. However, they did not rely on indoctrination alone, and those who could not be indoctrinated were punished according to law. Punishment was based on indoctrination. Litigation was transformed into a process of indoctrination as much as possible, and the rule of virtue and the rule of law were integrated with the process of litigation. Through indoctrination, the Confucian ideal of “no litigation” was gradually achieved. However, with the development of the commodity economy, social problems became more complex. Some local officials went to great lengths to pursue “zero litigation” in order to flaunt their achievements,which however deviated from the Confucian concept of “benevolent government.”

The manufacture of stone tools was one of the most important craft production activities in prehistoric human society. Previously, lack of sound evidence had made it too early to confirm whether or not stone tool production during the Longshan cultural period had already transformed from a primitive self-sufficient household mode of production to a specialized mode of production. Excavation of the site of the Longshan cultural site at Liangchengzhen in Rizhao, Shandong from 1998–2001 through meticulous field methods such as sieving and floatation yielded a large number of lithic reduction tools, ranging from grinding stones, stone hammers, and polishing stones to raw materials, semi-finished products, and lithic debitage of various sizes, resulting from the lithic reduction process. This excavation suggests that the Liangchenzhen site was a settlement site where the complete process of lithic reduction was practiced. Through comparison with contemporary large-scale excavated sites of the Longshan culture, it is suggested that the Area 1 at the Liangchengzhen site was a lithic reduction locality with a relatively high degree of specialization which was used for hundreds of years. It is possible that stone tool production had already advanced to a stage of relatively high specialization during the Longshan cultural period in the Haidai region.

The use of ding-tripod in Chu tombs was well established in the Warring States period and in most cases, it was strictly implemented. However, exceptions do exist. For example, in tomb of Marquis Yi of the Zeng state, archaeologists found two qiao-ding, which consists of two ding- tripods, one with a fitted lid and the other with a hooped lid. In the tomb No. 1 at Jiuliandun, a ding-tripod with a hooped lid was intentionally used and served as xu-ding. This paper attempts to understand burial rituals of the Chu state during the Warring State period by examining the tomb inventories (catalogues of funerary goods in the tombs) unearthed from the tomb No. 2 at Baoshan. It proposes that the use of ding-tripod in tombs was often adjusted according to the burial rituals.

Attaching importance to people’s livelihood is not only an important measure for rulers to consolidate their power, but also a concrete expression of Confucianism’s people-oriented thinking in state governance. Based on his own experience and his understanding of social relations in the late Yuan and early Ming dynasties, Zhu Yuanzhang, the founder of the Ming Dynasty, regarded the people at the bottom as the “foundation of the state,” and his concern for people’s livelihood became an important part of his governance. The development of China’s unified multi-ethnic state, including the Ming Dynasty, has repeatedly shown one fact: between success and failure, there are only two words—people’s livelihood.

The fable in the “Outer Congeries of Sayings: The Upper Right Series” of Han Feizi about the public welfare competition between Duke Jing of Qi and his imperial clan members and powerful officials contains the concept that people can choose their rulers through peaceful means. In other words, those who desire to gain ruling power would compete in public welfare and win by obtaining greater support from the people. This concept is significantly different from the Changing of the Mandate of Heaven in the Ages of Tang and Wu and other claims that rely on violent actions to implement people’s will. Although Han Fei opposed this concept, it provides a unique design or imagination of implementing the “popular opinion theory” during the pre-Qin period (before 221 BC). The views on the public opinion theory in early texts such as the Book of Documents and the Confucian and Mencian schools of thought may be regarded as the basis or source of the aforementioned design. This design is rooted in social conditions such as the traditional system of enfeoffment (fenfeng) and the traditional military system of integrating the army and people (bing min heyi) in the Zhou Dynasty (1046-256 BCE) but declined with the transformation of the social structure during the period of Warring States (403-221BCE) and Qin (221-206 BCE) and Han (206 BCE-220) dynasties, and was almost forgotten. From this perspective, the early public opinion theories, including the fable of public welfare, were not initially some kind of pedantic utopianism.

The large-scale special law sources in the Song Dynasty were diverse, and the special law in Tang Shi and Tang Liusi Ge opened the source of Song special laws. In addition to inheriting and drawing on special laws from the Tang and the Five Dynasties, the Song Dynasty also independently enacted a series of special laws in accordance with its own governance needs. Special laws were compiled from the emperor’s order, and their effectiveness rank was no longer lower than Ling like in the Tang Shi. In the seventh year of Yuanfeng reign, the code was reformed and was divided into four types: Chi, Ling, Ge, and Shi. Besides general laws, special laws could also be divided into different types: Chi, Ling, Ge, and Shi. In the construction of the new legal system, the special code pedigree of the Tang Ling was absorbed and inherited by the Song Ling. At this point, the new legal system and the dual structure of common laws and special laws in the Song Dynasty were formally formed.

The title of jinshi (presented scholar) was normally conferred upon graduates of the metropolitan and palace examinations. Exceptions did exist, since some would be granted by the special grace of an emperor. This phenomenon began to appear in the late Tang Dynasty, but it was only an occasional measure, used by an emperor to exert the “imperial control over the power of election of civil officials” other than the keju (imperial examinations). Through the development during the period of the Five Dynasties and the early Song Dynasty, the attainment of the jinshi title by special grace gradually became institutionalized. At the same time, the ci jinshi (granting of jinshi by imperial grace) became normalized in the early Song Dynasty, namely, all those passing the jinshi examinations were granted as jinshi, and those passing other examinations of various subjects were also granted corresponding academic titles. This marks that all those who attained an academic title were produced under the “imperial control over the power of election of civil officials.” In the late Tang Dynasty and the Five Dynasties, the rulers took many measures to solve the problems of the imperial examination. However,it was not until the early Song Dynasty that such problems were solved to some extent when the imperial authority was enacted in the imperial examination system. At that time, with the presence of the normalized ci jinshi and the palace examination (the final imperial examination presided over by the emperor), the imperial authority and its control over the power of election of civil officials was represented by the jinshi scholars granted by special grace.

The continuous growth of regulations in the Qing Dynasty has been documented and explained by voluminous literature. However, this study finds that this literature does not capture the full picture. The upward trend in the number of new regulations in The Great Qing Code is not sustained throughout the entire Qing Dynasty. Additionally, there are differences between various types of new regulations. The growth of regulations mainly occurs before the middle period of the Qianlong reign, but afterwards there is a decline. However, the decline in the growth rate of new regulations and precedents of the central government departments of the bureaucracy is relatively weaker and not as sustained as regulations in The Great Qing Code. With the change in the number, the structure of the regulations has also changed. The importance of “enacting regulations based on cases” increases compared with “enacting regulations based on high rank officers’ suggestions.”The tendency toward “criminalization” in The Great Qing Code is also strengthened. In the meantime, “governing officials” remains the main source of central regulations for The Great Qing Code. Governing officials also shapes the relationship between local government and society, and this provides a bit of room for private regulations to gain legal validity indirectly. This source of legislation increases the adaptability of the governance of the Qing Dynasty.