Archaeology is Not Often Thought of as a Tool of Politics

December 29, 2022 4:40 AM

Historical accuracy and truth are not important for Beijing’s purposes. China would obviously prefer a more comprehensive interpretation of Zhangzhung’s extent, and the lack of knowledge and certainty surrounding Zhangzhung make it ripe for exploitation and distortion. The importance of the kingdom is that it is tied to so many cultural and geostrategic dynamics China wants to manipulate today. Beijing is therefore actively creating historical revisionism through the sponsorship of archaeologists and historians to provide a new narrative of Zhangzhung in order to justify its territorial, cultural, and geopolitical control in the region. from How China Reinvented an Ancient Kingdom to Advance Its Claims in the Himalayas [The Diplomat]
posted by chavenet (20 comments total)

I really can't see the point. Domestic audiences already take for granted that Tibetans do not exist as an independent nation worth paying attention to, so this won't do anything to move them. And no foreign audience who knows or cares about this region will be convinced by such blatant nonsense. So who are these efforts meant to convince? Who is this for?
posted by 1adam12 at 7:57 AM on December 29, 2022 [1 favorite]

I don't think it's to convince this generation, or even the next. Repeat a big lie often enough and for long enough, and it'll become history. Archaeology can be really inconvenient for ideology. Japan, for example, has archaeology indicating the presence of both the Ainu indigenous people and a culture derived from Korea.
posted by scruss at 8:10 AM on December 29, 2022 [15 favorites]

Nice excerpt-as-post-title! Not the first time that archaeology in China has been political footballed! And politics and archaeology sure have interacted elsewhere, to one end or another[PDF]. As for what the plan is with China's claims about Zhangzhung... It's worth considering the long term value of such claims, beyond what we can see from our perspective. And surely in a nation of 1.4 billion, there are still some people in need of convincing, perhaps even folks in power who are unhappy with the Xinjiang situation.
posted by cupcakeninja at 8:23 AM on December 29, 2022 [1 favorite]

The other thing is that China is a state and it has archaeology programs and funding and students and institutes and proposals etc etc etc and all of those have an interest in getting money to do archaeology. Some of those people are purely cynical, many of them probably sincerely believe that Tibet belongs to China because that's what they've been brought up to believe with no access to countervailing information and a lot of well-funded propaganda, some of them are probably agnostic but want to go do digs and feel that they are going to say what they have to say in order to actually get on site and find things.

I think that a lot of analysis of China at the macro level overlooks that China is substantially people who are more or less like people in other places. The state makes big decisions and runs propaganda but there are also lots of people, good bad and indifferent, doing stuff. China is for China, a lot of the time.
posted by Frowner at 8:25 AM on December 29, 2022 [7 favorites]

The other other thing is that no other modern State can trace its origins to archaeological sources the way China can. Modern Egypt and Mesopotamia are not meaningfully related to the societies that invented agriculture there: not so in China. Of course archaeology is political in China.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 9:09 AM on December 29, 2022 [6 favorites]

What do you mean? Because that seems very similar to the point the air is getting at that thinking there's a connection is a political process.
posted by Carillon at 9:47 AM on December 29, 2022 [1 favorite]

Gonna quibble with the post title: archaeology is often a tool of politics. Indian archaeology has been a hot topic here for these past few years see for example here or here.

This fabrication of a Chinese claim to Tibet is new to me but Chinese scholars have been doing similar things for decades in service of the national story of a single uninterrupted nation going back 2000+ years. (Or 5000 years, improbably.)

Here in the United States archaeology was part of telling ourselves the lie that the Americas were practically terra nullius and ripe for Discovery by European Men. That there were a few uncivilized Indians but they had no cultural significance and their genocide hardly counted. Not only is such ideology odious, it's also just factually wrong. Fortunately these past 30+ years new generations of archaeologists have finally begun to correct the record. That revisionist archaeology is itself political, but hopefully more truthful.

Archaeology is a key tool of national mythmaking.
posted by Nelson at 9:54 AM on December 29, 2022 [13 favorites]

It's interesting whenever we hear serious Chinese intellectuals' comments around their expansionism, like say Liu Cixin's support of the Xinjiang internment camps.

It's straightforward to have most intellectuals on-board in the moment, like say Krugman's support for the climate genocide we're committing right now. It's harder to keep future intellectuals on-board because typically the current crime benefits their interests less.
posted by jeffburdges at 10:14 AM on December 29, 2022 [2 favorites]

Oh yeah, we all know China is traditionally a matrilineal, polyandrous, society, where women marry brothers, just like Tibet. A lot of people don't know, Tibet is bigger than the United States, and wolves don't have nothin' on Tibetan mastiffs. Chinese students have been taught that Tibet was a very small country like Bhutan, or Sikkim. And, the water off the Himalayan Plateau, means Tibet never gets it's nation back. I was alive when Tibet was stolen. I remember for those who can't.
posted by Oyéah at 10:53 AM on December 29, 2022 [2 favorites]

It's straightforward to have most intellectuals on-board in the moment, like say Krugman's support for the climate genocide we're committing right now.

[Citation needed]
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 11:06 AM on December 29, 2022 [2 favorites]

The other other thing is that no other modern State can trace its origins to archaeological sources the way China can.

I’m having trouble understanding in what sense. The CCP is only 101 years old, there is no continuity of government from the previous monarchy even in the vestigial way of e.g. Japan or many European countries, and China has been ruled by several different empires and dynasties from different ethnic groups within written history.
posted by mubba at 12:06 PM on December 29, 2022 [6 favorites]

Is this the same as how they make up BS maps to 'prove' that they've had historic ownership of all of the nearby seas while at the same time making artificial islands so that they have de facto control of the area anyway?
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 12:34 PM on December 29, 2022 [1 favorite]

I’m having trouble understanding in what sense. The CCP is only 101 years old, there is no continuity of government from the previous monarchy even in the vestigial way of e.g. Japan or many European countries, and China has been ruled by several different empires and dynasties from different ethnic groups within written history.

Because I'm guilty of conflating "State" and "Society." CCP China does not for ideological reasons make a straightforward claim to be heir to the Imperial Chinese State, which granted was not a single entity from the Shang or Zhou (or even the Han) to the Qing. Yes there were some interregna between dynasties, and what it meant to be an Imperial Dynasty changed a lot over time, and yes some of the dynasties were foreign conquerors. But in the latter cases China absorbed the society of the conquerors, not the other way around. There is in fact a basic continuity of Chinese society from roughly around the beginning of the Common Era down to the early 20th century, in a way that is legit and real and not replicated anywhere else in human experience. And so of course archaeology is political there in a way that it is nowhere else.

And also, while the CCP might not make a claim in so many words to be heir of the Imperial State, as a practical matter it is just that. As the Soviet Union's disavowal of any continuity of interest or policy with the Russian Empire was farcical, so is the CCP's claim just plain silly. And probably people who are more well-versed in Chinese affairs than I am can find evidence of the CCP exploiting that continuity for purposes of social control.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 12:59 PM on December 29, 2022 [2 favorites]

I would love to read more about the history of China. Both the common national understanding of the national story in the PRC and a more critical / historical view. My vague impression is China very much has a national myth that it is one great civilization going back to the first emperor and that ethnic Han and Mandarin speaking people are the leaders and heir to this unbroken legacy. But the reality is much more complex with many different cultures and ethnicities, wildly varying borders, civil wars, etc. I'd love a deeper understanding of both the national consensus story and the best critical understanding of that.

(Not trying to single out China for national mythmaking; we all do that, it's particularly visible in the United States since our history is so recent and therefore well documented.)
posted by Nelson at 1:14 PM on December 29, 2022 [1 favorite]

There is in fact a basic continuity of Chinese society from roughly around the beginning of the Common Era down to the early 20th century, in a way that is legit and real and not replicated anywhere else in human experience.

I would only argue with the exceptional part of that. I think there are millions of people in India, for example, who can legitimately feel their society in the sense of culture or religion has existed continuously since the Vedic period. And maybe even language — Sanskrit is still used in religious practice, and it’s one of the official languages of the nation!
posted by mubba at 1:38 PM on December 29, 2022 [2 favorites]

Archaeology is Not Often Thought of as a Tool of Politics
. (Laughs in Hebrew and Arabic.)
posted by ocschwar at 1:41 PM on December 29, 2022 [4 favorites]

"not replicated elsewhere"... well, kind of, depends on how you take certain historical events.

It is notable how people speaking Chinese have dominated a large region for 3000 years. (We know that the Shang were speaking Chinese because they were writing it, in an early version of the system still used today.) But that region isn't "China", it's the northern plains of China. Southern China was only slowly absorbed in the first millennium CE (and in the far south other ethnicities still exist). Tibet, Manchuria, and Xinjiang are a whole 'nother story.

But you could say the same for the Greeks, or the Arabs (of Arabia), or the Tamils, or the Romans, or the Basques.

The Chinese language has evolved as dramatically as Latin; the changes are just hidden by pronouncing words in a modern dialect, and for that matter writing them in a way that's only 2000 not 3000 years old. We may think of Egyptians as not being "ancient Egyptians" because their religion has changed, but same thing in China: the Shang didn't have Confucianism, Daoism, or Buddhism. I doubt any CCP theorist can even properly crack an oracle bone.

Back to the OP, I don't know how talking up an ancient Tibeto-Burman culture either advances the CCP's present-day claims or disparages another Tibeto-Burman culture. It's not like Zhangzhung was Chinese.
posted by zompist at 2:27 PM on December 29, 2022 [4 favorites]

There is in fact a basic continuity of Chinese society from roughly around the beginning of the Common Era down to the early 20th century

Interesting. The last emperor of China was Henry Puyi, died a gardener in Beijing in 1967. We all know about him though during the 66' red guards situation, leadership protected him and the Qing, he was buried in a commoners grave near the Western Qing tombs. Qua,

And also, while the CCP might not make a claim in so many words to be heir of the Imperial...
posted by clavdivs at 5:18 PM on December 29, 2022 [1 favorite]

A lot of people don't know, Tibet is bigger than the United States

Is this a joke I’m not understanding?
posted by MetaFilter World Peace at 6:07 PM on December 29, 2022 [4 favorites]

no other modern State can trace its origins to archaeological sources the way China can

The Latin alphabet, along with Arabic, Hebrew, Amharic, and many other world scripts can be directly traced to Egyptian hieroglyphics, if that's what we're doing, but the languages, customs, food, music, and almost everything else associated with ancient cultures of East Asia, particularly those predating the Qin, would be very nearly alien to anyone from the modern PRC. Anyone can trace anything as far as they like - nothing springs forth from the void.
posted by 1adam12 at 9:33 AM on December 30, 2022 [3 favorites]