Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-t5tsf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-09T13:24:29.219Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

A Marxist Perspective—In Perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 March 2015

David W. Goodrich*
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, Yale University

Abstract

It Is widely assumed that archaeological material does not speak for itself but requires interpretation. Marxism provides an interpretative framework that can be useful, but not when applied dogmatically and mechanistically. Careful reading of recent archaeological work from China suggests increasing sophistication in the application of Marxism, raising the possibility of eventual convergence in archaeological thinking between Chinese and Western scholars.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Study of Early China 1981

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

FOOTNOTES

1. Thorp, Robert, “The Chinese Bronze Age from a Marxist perspective,” Early China 6 (19801981): 97102CrossRefGoogle Scholar: review of Heng, Zou, Shang Zhou Kaogu (Beijing, 1979)Google Scholar.

2. Kwok, D.W.Y., Scientism in Chinese Thought 1900-1950 (New York, 1971):165ffGoogle Scholar.

3. Chang, Kwang-chih, Shang Civilization (New Haven, 1980):6063Google Scholar.

4. Dirlik, Arif, Revolution and History: Origins of Marxist Historiography in China 1919-1937 (Berkeley, 1978):12Google Scholar.

5. “One of the reasons Gordon Childe is the best archaeologist the field has produced is that he possessed and used a powerful paradigm, Marxian materialism,” writes Leone, Mark in “Issues in Anthropological Archaeology” in Leone, Mark, ed., Contemporary Archaeology (Carbondale, Illinois, 1972):8Google Scholar For the influence of Soviet archaeology on Childe, see Trigger's, BruceGordon Childe: Revolutions in Archaeology (New York, 1980):94–6, 124–25Google Scholar.

6. Neither Marx nor Engels holds slavery to be a necessary stage in the evolution of stratified society. See Hobsbawm, Eric J., “Introduction,” in Marx, Karl, Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations (New York, 1964): 36–8Google Scholar; and Engels, Frederick, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (New York, 1972): 216, 228–29Google Scholar.

7. Resumption of the debates can be dated to the November 1978 conference on the subject. See Sizhi, WangZhongguo guddi shi fenqi wenti taolun shaping, Zhongguo Lishixue Nianjian 1979 (Beijing, 1981):1327Google Scholar.

8. Weichao, Yu, “Gu shi fenqi wenti de kaoguxue guancha part l, Wenwu 1981.5:4558Google Scholar; part s, Wenwu 1981.6: 2940Google Scholar.

9. Kaogu 1980.4_384Google Scholar.

10. “It is reasonable to estimate that uo or 90 percent of an archaeologist's time and energy Is spent in classifying his material, the remaining 10 or 20 percent being consumed in doing something intelligent and useful with the resultant categories.” Chang, K.C., Rethinking Archaeology (New York, 1967): 71Google Scholar.

11. This grave Is more commonly known as the Fu Hao burial; by using its original name, Zou avoids committing himself to a date in the time of the Shang king Wu Ding .

12. All of the particulars used here are from Zou's discussion of Late Shang burials (pp. 101-5) except the number of human sacrifices and bronze vessels in Hougang M47, which can be found “1971 nian Anyang Hougang fajue jianbao 1971 , Kaogu 1972.3:25Google Scholar.

13. Shang Civilization:306.

14. Heng, Zou, Xia Shang Zhou Kaoguxue Lunwenji (Beijing, 1980):331Google Scholar.

15. Gellner, Ernest, “The Soviet and the Savage,” The Time Literary Supplement, 10 18, 1974: 6668Google Scholar.

16. E.G., , Klejn, Leo S., “A Panorama of Theoretical Archaeology,” Current Anthropology;8.1 (1977;142Google Scholar.

17. Masson, V.M., Ekonomika i Sotsial'nyi Stroi Drevnikh Obshchestv [The Economy and Social Structur of Ancient Societies], (Leningrad, 1976):163Google Scholar.

18. Ibid.:178-79.

19. E.g., Xueqin, Li, “Qin guo wenwu de xin renshi, Wenwu 1980 9:2531Google Scholar.

20. Yu, op. cit., part 1, p. 45.

21. Khazanov, A. M., “Tazlozhenie pervobytnoobshchinnogo stroia i vozniknovenie klassovoqo obshchestva [The breakdown of the primitive commural structure and the beginning of class society],” in Pershits, A. I., ed., Pervobytnoe Obshchestvo [Primitive Society], (Moscow, 1979):113Google Scholar.

22. Eleanor Burke Leacock summarizes the work of several Western scholars on slavery and relates it to Engels' notions in her “Introduction” to Engels, Frederick, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (New York, 1972): 5155Google Scholar.

23. Frumkin, Gregoire, “Archaeology in Soviet Central Asia and its ideological background,” Central Asian Review 10.4 (1962):35Google Scholar, quoted by Klein, L. S., “Characteristic methods in the current critique of Marxism in archaeology,” Soviet Anthropology and Archaeology 7 (19681969): 48Google Scholar.