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Johan Gunnar Andersson (1874–1960) was a Swedish geologist and archaeologist. Because it opened the curtain on the excavation of the Zhoukoudian Peking man site and directly led the excavation of the Yangshao site, it was called the "father of Yangshao culture", which changed the face of modern Chinese archaeology.
From October to December 1921, with the approval of the Chinese government, Anderson and The chinese archaeologist Yuan Fuli conducted the first excavations together. According to the excavated cultural relics, it is confirmed that it is a remnant of China's ancient culture. According to archaeological conventions, the place of first discovery is used as the name of the type of culture, so it is called "Yangshao culture".
Johan Gunnar Andersson, July 3, 1874 – October 29, 1960
In 1921, Yang Shao in Anderson's shots
In 1901, after graduating with a Ph.D. from uppsala University in Sweden, Anderson participated in two Antarctic expeditions in Sweden from 1901 to 1903, so he became famous and was appointed director of the Swedish National Geological Survey. In 1914, he was appointed as a mining consultant to the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce of the Beiyang Government of China, engaged in geological surveys and paleontological fossil collection in China.
Anderson's letter of appointment
He is affiliated with the National Geological Survey of China, organized and led by Chinese scholar Ding Wenjiang and his colleague Huang Wenhao. During this time, Anderson helped train China's first generation of geologists and made many discoveries in iron ore and other mining resources, as well as geology and paleontology. Later, due to the turmoil in China, the research of geological investigation gradually stagnated, and Anderson turned his energy to the collection and collation of paleontological fossils.
In the history of Chinese archaeology, Anderson also has a famous title - "the father of Yangshao culture".
In 1918, when he was first approved to collect fossils, Anderson came to the Swedish mission site in Henan to collect fossils. At that time, Maria Peterson, a missionary in Xin'an County near GuanyinTang, helped Anderson search for sites in western Henan, including some sites in northern Shichi County, where Anderson found some fossils. It is worth noting that these sites are very close to Yangshao Village, which soon had major archaeological discoveries.
In the late autumn of 1920, Anderson sent his assistant Liu Changshan to the area west of Luoyang, Henan Province. In December, Liu Returned to Beijing, bringing back hundreds of stone axes, stone knives and other types of stone tools. These stone tools were purchased from a location, Yangshao Village. Anderson had long noticed that Japanese scholars had discovered stone axes in northeast China and other places, and he himself had published a short article about "Neolithic Chinese stone axes", so he attached great importance to these stone axes brought back by Liu Changshan, and he felt that there was a major secret hidden in them.
On April 18, 1921, Anderson and five people came to Henan For the first time, and it was Hu Yufan, the governor of the county, who greeted him at the station. On April 21, when he went to Yangshao Village, Hu Yufan arranged for an escort, wang Maozhai who was also a recorder of the third section of the county government, and also traveled by car under the escort of four policemen. That time, the place where he lived was also in the idle house of Wang Zhaoqi's family.
However, the first time he went to Yangshao Village, Anderson did not excavate, he just took people around the village every day to observe, photograph, investigate and collect pottery pieces, stone axes, stone knives and other relics, and also bought pottery pieces or stone tools that villagers picked up or stored in their homes.
Yangshao Village is located on a gentle slope terrace surrounded by mountains on one side and water on three sides, with beautiful scenery and abundant products. As soon as Anderson arrived, he was overwhelmed by its perfect geomorphology, superior natural conditions and tranquil idyllic scenery. He devoted himself to field archaeology and investigation, and in 8 days, he collected and excavated a large number of stone tools and pottery pieces, as well as a small number of bone and mussel tools, and finally filled 4 large boxes, hired a car to transport to the third section of the Shichi County Government, and then loaded and transported by train back to the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce in Beijing.
After returning to Beijing, Anderson studied the collected stone tools, bone tools, mussels and pottery pieces, and combined with his own knowledge of actual archaeological and geological surveys, he preliminarily determined that Yangshao Village was an important cultural relic of ancient China, and it was necessary to carry out an archaeological excavation.
Yang Shao in Anderson's shots
Anderson went to Ding Wenjiang and Weng Wenhao, the heads of the Geological Survey, told them his ideas, and won their support. He went to Zhang Guogan, the chief of agriculture, industry and commerce, and in order to win his support, he gave his beloved golden pipe to Zhang Guogan. General Zhang approved, but the archaeology was not under their control, and the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce submitted Anderson's report on the request for archaeological excavation to the then State Council. Subsequently, the State Council issued a approval document, and the Henan Provincial Government also agreed, so and Anderson had the opportunity to carry out on-site archaeological excavations in the second pond.
In the early summer of 1921, Anderson was sent to the vicinity of Shanhaiguan to investigate the prepared port of Huludao and estimate the coal reserves in the area. In June, as the work was coming to an end, he launched an archaeological survey of the area around Fengtian Shaguotun . Eventually, they discovered the ruins of Shaguotun Cave, unearthing a large number of pottery artifacts comparable to those from the Yangshao site.
Passports that Anderson used when Chinese mainland
Anderson at work
Anderson's Chinese
Anderson in the pool
On October 25, 1921, Anderson went to Henan, and Hu Yufan, the governor of Shichi County, assigned Wang Maozhai, the third section of the county government, to accompany them, and called 4 policemen to escort them to Yangshao Village by car, and arranged them to enter the idle house of Wang Zhaoqi, a large family in the village.
Then, they began to prepare for the excavation: Wang Maozhai was responsible for contacting and socializing, Wang Zhaoying and Zhang Xingmin were responsible for purchasing, and Wang Zhaoqi was responsible for organizing the excavation of the personnel. Anderson himself, on the other hand, set up a small tent on the excavation site and set up a camp bed for the archaeologists to use when they rested.
After everything was ready, on October 27, Anderson and archaeologist Yuan Fuli and others conducted the first excavation. This excavation, which he once described as an "epoch-making scientific achievement" by Li Ji, his former Chinese assistant and later an important scholar in the Field Ofeye, "marked the beginning of field archaeology in China, one of the oldest countries in Eurasia."
Yuan Fuli participating in the archaeology of Yangshao Village (1893-1987)
Even dr. Hu Shi, who is famous all over the world, praised in his diary on April 1, 1922, that "his (Anderson's) methods are very sophisticated, and his judgments are also very deliberate... His own method, focusing on the environment of everything; He first drew the excavation area in layers, and the production of each layer was recorded in layers; In the future, if a problem occurs, everything can be re-pressed."
Anderson was born in Yangshao Village
Anderson's work deserves the praise of Li Ji and Dr. Hu Shi. He was a serious man, spending all day on the site to guide the excavations, never neglecting any of the details of the excavations, and sometimes even spending the night on the site, in order to solve the problems found during the excavation process at any time.
The Chinese scholars who worked with him gained the knowledge, scientific principles, concepts and methods of modern archaeology from him, changing the current situation in China that only epigraphy and no archaeology in the modern sense.
Anderson may not have realized this, and he continued to demonstrate. When he was not too busy, he did not want to rest, so he asked villager Wang Derun to take him to collect rock and paleontological specimens to investigate the surrounding geology, landforms and strata in detail. This also set an example for the later prehistoric archaeology of China.
Anderson's excavations lasted 36 days and did not end until December 1. They excavated a total of 17 excavation sites, and successively unearthed a large number of pottery, stone tools and a small number of bone and mussels and other precious relics. After the excavation, Anderson also erected a wooden plaque on the weir of the villager Wang De's family, which read "Yangshao Cultural Area" in five large characters to show protection.
After returning to Beijing after the excavation of Yangshao Village, Anderson immediately organized experts and scholars to conduct a "consultation" on the physical objects brought back, and found that these objects were characterized by the coexistence of grinded stone tools and faience pottery, and after systematic and comprehensive research, identification, comparison, discrimination and demonstration, layer by layer analysis according to the depth of the remains, the results unanimously determined Anderson's judgment: Here is the cultural relics of the Neolithic era of the Chinese nation. According to archaeological practice, the place of first discovery is named "Yangshao Culture", because there are many faience pottery in its remains, so it is also called "Faience Culture".
The discovery of "Yangshao culture" not only made the theory of "China's Stoneless Age" self-defeating, but also provided clues for finding possible links between Chinese culture and Western prehistoric culture.
According to relevant articles, the small courtyard where Anderson lived was located in the northwest corner of Yangshao Village, sitting north to south, with a front house and a kiln. The East Xiamen House is still intact, but the gable wall of the green brick-clad stone heart is mottled and older; the West Xiamen House has collapsed, only half of the gable is left; the North Kiln is still there, after more than a hundred years of wind and rain erosion, only the original door stone remains at the kiln door.
Yangshao faience pottery
(This article is based on the relevant Anderson information and Mammoth News Li Changwen and other comprehensive collation)
Editor-in-Charge: Li Mei