Great Wall Encyclopedia: Archaeology

Author: China Encyclopedia Press
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 1998-10-01
Features: "The China Encyclopedia" is a large-scale comprehensive encyclopedia in China. China has a long tradition of compiling encyclopedic works. Over two thousand years, more than four hundred types of encyclopedic works have been published. These works are treasures of Chinese cultural heritage, collecting, organizing, and preserving important materials from the scientific and cultural classics of China's dynasties. Some of the earlier encyclopedic works have been lost, but many have been passed down or partially preserved to this day, valued by scholars in China and the world. Various encyclopedic works differ in structure, with some approaching the type of modern encyclopedias but not meeting the criteria of modern encyclopedias. In the mid-18th century, as China was compiling the massive "Siku Quanshu," encyclopedias of modern type were published successively in Western Europe, including France, Germany, England, and Italy. Later, countries like the United States, Russia, and Japan also followed suit. Modern encyclopedias briefly summarize the knowledge and history of humanity and emphasize the latest achievements in contemporary science and culture. Over the past two hundred years, the experience of compiling encyclopedias has been accumulated, with improvements in knowledge classification, editing methods, illustration, and indexing systems, making them increasingly complete and scientific. Today, encyclopedias play a very important role in human cultural activities, and various types of encyclopedias have become necessities in daily life, much like dictionaries. The Chinese intellectual community, with a long tradition of compiling encyclopedic works, has long set the goal of editing modern encyclopedias. In the early 20th century, several small-scale practical encyclopedias were attempted, including the encyclopedia-like dictionary "Cihai," but none met the requirements of modern encyclopedias. When the People's Republic of China was founded, the then-Publishing Bureau considered publishing a Chinese encyclopedia, and later plans for the development of science and culture over twelve years also included the compilation and publication of encyclopedias. However, plans to launch this work in 1958 were not realized. It was not until 1978 that the State Council decided to compile and publish "The China Encyclopedia" and established China Encyclopedia Press to oversee the project. As China's first encyclopedia, the compilation work was inevitably challenging. However, due to the urgent demand from the academic community, it was not feasible to wait for the collection of relatively complete materials from all disciplines before compiling and publishing; nor was it possible to wait for all entries to be written before mixing them alphabetically and publishing the entire work. Instead, experts and scholars from across the country were invited to write entries by discipline, with each discipline published in separate volumes. This approach allowed the encyclopedia to be released in installments. While this inevitably introduced many shortcomings, it was the only viable solution under the circumstances. We plan to adopt the common practice of encyclopedias edited by other countries in the second edition, arranging all entries alphabetically rather than by discipline, making it easier for readers to find and check information. The first edition of "The China Encyclopedia" is organized by discipline, with entries still arranged alphabetically, supplemented by a stroke index and other indexes for easy reference. The content of "The China Encyclopedia" covers various disciplines and fields, including philosophy, social sciences, literature and arts, culture and education, natural sciences, and engineering technology. It is preliminarily planned to have a total of 80 volumes, with each volume containing approximately 1.2 to 1.5 million words (including illustrations and indexes), with the entire work scheduled for completion in about ten years. The first edition of "The China Encyclopedia" will have more volumes and characters than most general encyclopedias published abroad but will be comparable in length to some foreign encyclopedias in their initial editions. We plan to adjust and compress the content in the second edition. The volumes of "The China Encyclopedia" are published by discipline without numbering, each volume simply labeled with the discipline's name, such as "Philosophy," "Law," "Mechanics," "Mathematics," "Physics," "Chemistry," "Astronomy," and so on. The content of each discipline is written in the form of entries, following the system and hierarchy of the discipline, with a planned total of about 100,000 entries. The entries in each discipline provide detailed descriptions and introductions to the fundamental knowledge of the discipline, suitable for readers with high school education or above, equivalent to university-level knowledge. This encyclopedic reference tool serves as a bridge and stepping stone for readers to enter and explore each discipline in depth. The book is published by discipline, with one discipline forming one or more volumes, and sometimes two or more disciplines combined into one volume. The volume on "Archaeology" in this discipline is a single volume. The entries in this book are arranged in alphabetical order based on the Pinyin of the entry titles. When entries have the same pronunciation, they are ordered by the four tones of Mandarin. When entries have the same pronunciation and tone, they are ordered by the number of strokes and stroke order. For entries with identical characters, the second character is used for further sorting, and so on. Each discipline includes a classified index of its entries to help readers understand the discipline's structure. The classified index in this volume is provided for easy retrieval by category and to show the hierarchical relationship of entries, but it does not fully reflect the system of sub-disciplines in archaeology. Generally, each discipline includes an introductory article summarizing its content before the classified index. Entries that intersect between disciplines, such as "Guo Moruo" in both "Archaeology" and "Chinese Literature," or "Quaternary Geology" in both "Archaeology" and "Geology," are included separately, with their explanations tailored to the requirements of each discipline. Some entry titles are single words, with Pinyin annotations above them. Titles related to fundamental concepts in archaeology or foreign archaeology may include foreign language equivalents, though this is not common. The explanations in the entries strive to use standardized modern Chinese, and the explanations generally do not repeat the entry title. Longer entries are organized with hierarchical headings, using bold and italic fonts for one and two levels of headings, respectively. Foreign names, places, organizations, book and journal titles in the explanations are generally not repeated in their original form. Some proper nouns and academic terms may include their original forms when necessary. Color illustrations are compiled into inserts and are noted in the relevant explanations. Reference bibliographies are provided after important entries for further reading. Each volume of the discipline includes a stroke index, a foreign language index, and a content index. The scientific and technical terms used in this book are approved by relevant authorities, and those not yet standardized are used according to convention. Place names are based on the approvals of the Chinese Geographical Names Commission, with common alternative translations provided in parentheses when necessary. Except for cases where traditional characters must be used, simplified characters are based on the "Total List of Simplified Characters" published by the State Language Commission in October 1986. Numbers in this book are generally written in Arabic numerals, except for those traditionally expressed in Chinese characters.