Essays on Prehistoric Archaeology and Ancient Civilizations, by Professor Zhang Zhidong, of archaeology in the Department of History at Nanjing University (now the Department of Archaeology and Cultural Relics in the School of History), is about to publish by the Cultural Heritage (or Wenwu) Publishing House.

The collection of essays was compiled in our remembrance and admiration of Professor Zhang, who passed away on December 28, 2010, after long illness.

As this book is published on the tenth anniversary of his eternal rest, let us offer it as a gift to Professor Zhang!

張之恒教授Professor Zhang Zhiheng

Notes from the Editors

This year marks the tenth anniversary of the passing away of Professor Zhang Zhiheng, and on this occasion we have edited and published a collection of his writings to remember him.  

The editing of this collection began when Zhang was seriously ill and was made possible by the proposal of Professor Liu Xinglin of the history department (now the School of History) at Nanjing University, who, while running a busy teaching and archaeological schedule, still squeezed time to collect almost all the essays, carefully selected from them upon consultation with Zhang several times in person, and settled on the present title and table of contents.  

Substantial assistance was also offered by Mr. Guo Lixin, of the Department of Anthropology at Sun Yat-sen University, Mr. Zhou Chongyun, of the Department of History at Anhui University, and Ms. Zhang Pingfeng, of the editorial board of the Southeast Culture, journal of Nanjing Museum. Besides, Mr. Li Huren, of the Nanjing Museum, volunteered to look up essays of Zhang published in the journals published beyond Nanjing, and Mr. Liu Xinglin's graduate students Zhang Renjie, Zhou Jinren, Zhang Wei and Wu Hao all contributed their labor in locating essays and doing preliminary proofreading. After the sample copy came out, Wang Genfu, an associate professor at the Department of Cultural Heritage and Museum Studies at Nanjing Normal University, concentrated his efforts on another round of extensive proofreading. Meanwhile, Xiao Dagui and Huang Qu, of the Cultural Heritage Publishing House, worked hard on the publication of the collection from start to finish, putting in a lot of hard and meticulous work.

This collection is part of a series of academic treatises written by archaeologists of the last generation and published by the Cultural Heritage Publishing House. It contains a total of 40 essays by Zhang, divided into four parts: overviews of prehistoric archaeology, studies of regional Neolithic cultures, studies of prehistoric agriculture, and research on the origin of civilization and ancient cultures. Zhang had never ceased to write throughout his life and therefore produced multiple works, with a particular focus on prehistoric archaeology and the ancient civilization. As the fruit of his lifetime hard work, this collection reflects Zhang’s academic contributions and his research history.

Professor Zhang Zhiheng was born on December 23, 1938, in Luli Township, Dantu County, Jiangsu Province, entered the Department of History at Nanjing University in July 1959, Professor Zhang Zhiheng was born on December 23, 1938, in Luli Township, Dantu County, Jiangsu Province, entered the Department of History at Nanjing University in July 1959, graduated in 1964 and then joined the faculty in the department. When the archaeological research was set up in 1972, Zhang was among the first to join the new faculty for the new discipline and devoted himself to teaching and researching in China’s Stone Age archaeology for more than 30 years. His textbooks, including Chinese Palaeolithic Archaeology (co-authored), Chinese Neolithic Archaeology, Archaeology of the Xia, Shang and Zhou Dynasties (co-authored) and General Theories of Chinese Archaeology, have become the most popular books and important references for archaeological, cultural and museological university students in China. In particular, General Theories of Chinese Archaeology has been reprinted for several times and guided countless young scholars on the path of archaeology. Zhang has also published three monographs, including Neolithic Culture in the Yangtze River Basin, and nearly a hundred essays, which had won him a high status and reputation in the field of prehistoric archaeology in China.

Professor Zhang once took charge of archaeology teaching and research affairs at the history department and made important contributions to the building of the discipline of archaeology at Nanjing University. The discipline, thanks to his years of  efforts, became one of the first group of doctoral programs in archaeology in China in 1998.  

In addition to his extensive classroom teaching duties, he persisted on the frontline of field archaeology until his retirement in 2003, when, in very frail health, he still insisted on visiting the archaeological sites of Yunyang and Fengjie counties in Chongqing, under the care of his family, to guide his students in their excavations. He was a man of integrity, adhered to his principles, devoted himself to training and guiding his students, taught and nurtured them by establishing himself as examples, and cared for and loved them in all aspects related to their studies and lives. From him, students acquired knowledge, felt warmth and learned the principles of being a person of integrity. As his students, we all miss him deeply, and the publication of the collection is the best way for us students to remember our beloved teacher.

Editors

June, 2020

The remembrance of Professor Zhang Zhiheng

(January 7, 2011)

Liu Xinglin

At 6:55 a.m. on December 28, 2010, Professor Zhang Zhiheng, our beloved teacher, professor and doctoral supervisor of archaeology in the Department of History at Nanjing University, completed his 72 years of life and passed away quietly at Nanjing Drum Tower Hospital. Hearing it on the phone, I rushed to the hospital at 9 o'clock, when Zhang’s wife Teacher Jiang, as we call her, was sitting alone in the lounge of the hepatobiliary surgery department. As she saw me coming, she stood up and grabbed my arm, tears streaming down her face. Choking on her sobs, she said，"He is gone, He is gone..." At that moment, I was at a loss of words to comfort her, only to ask, "Is Shaohua back yet?" She said, "He is on the way."  

On the 27th, their son Zhang Shaohua, who works in Beijing, went to their hometown in Zhenjiang to finish preparing for Professor Zhang's funeral and then came back to Nanjing where he saw that his father was still in good spirit and therefore he left Nanjing at one o'clock in the afternoon for home in Shanghai. But now he was again on the way from Shanghai to Nanjing.

Professor Zhang is gone? The news of Professor Zhang diagnosed with liver cancer came to me very late. In his last year or so, his condition had been on and off, and he had been hospitalized from time to time. A few days ago, he was seen out for a walk with the help of his wife. Moreover, other family members from his hometown were going to take them to Zhenjiang where more hands were available to take care of him, and Professor Zhang agreed to them.  

After their son’s visit on the 27th, Zhang was found in a long silence while sitting still in the chair and wearing a blank expression. He used to sit for a short time and then had to lie down for a rest, so his stiff sitting frightened Teacher Jiang. She talked to him but he had no response. She kept asking, only to find two lines of tears on his cheeks. Teacher Jiang had never seen Zhang shedding tears before, so she became anxious and asked him, "Are you going to hospital?" Professor Zhang nodded his head. Then she and the nanny got him into a wheelchair and pushed him to Drum Tower Hospital. That was the last time Professor Zhang went there.

Teacher Jiang repeated to the head of the department the will given to the Party organization by Professor Zhang earlier: no memorial service, no farewell ceremony and keeping everything in a simple manner. Teacher Jiang only wanted a short obituary in the China Cultural Heritage News, to tell the friends in the archaeological community. During his illness, Professor Zhang never asked for anything from the department, nor did he want anyone to visit him, and he did not want to cause any trouble at all when he was gone. At the same time, to look after Professor Zhang, Teacher Jiang, who had been able to straighten up and tutor secondary school students a year ago, was now a haggard soul, with her body hunched due to countless days and nights of nursing and running back and forth between home and hospital. She clutched a glasses case in her hand and told someone to put it by Professor Zhang's side: "He didn't bring anything with him when he came in, only this pair of glasses. Let him take them with him."

Professor Zhang was gone. He took nothing with him but left us with plenty of invisible heritage and a strong sense of remembrance for him.

II

In the autumn of 1981, the first semester after I entered Nanjing University, I took a class on "Ancient Chinese History" and the department organized a visit to the stone carvings of the Southern Dynasties (410-589) in the eastern suburbs of Nanjing. That was the first time I saw Zhang. He was then in his early 40s, physically fit and fast-paced, with a dark face that made you imagine how hard an archaeologist must have worked. He explained the shape, origin, use and meaning of each stone carving, making me feel enlightened.  

With this impression of his briefings on the stone carvings, I was excited to take his Neolithic Archaeology class in the following semester. But Zhang's class was all about the knowledge and left no time for stories, well organized but still slightly boring. He was attentive in his class. While his neatly transcribed lecture notes on the lectern, he kept his eyes slanting upwards, and merely looked at the notes. He was serious and earnest during the class time, and it was rare to see him try to enliven the class, let alone adopt exaggerated gestures to impress students. There was no nonsense, and everyone listened with eyes wide open and took careful notes. When reviewing the notes at the end of the semester, I found that the development of the Neolithic cultures in several regions of China was clearly laid out in front of me, and that I had grasped the main features and interrelationships of each local culture, so I felt relaxed and confident for the exam.  

Consequently, in my third year, I chose Professor Zhang as my supervisor for my yearly dissertation on the Neolithic inscriptions of the Yellow River Basin, and in my fourth year, I went on to do a study on the origins of Chinese prehistoric inscriptions and writing, which raised my interest and laid the foundation for my future graduate studies in palaeography.

Professor Zhang taught us to write papers with great emphasis on revision, three or four drafts, or five or six if it did not work. He himself did the same thing. Whenever a paper was handed back from him, there were always many pencil marks on it, such as underlining and question marks. He checked every mistake, minor or big, including punctuation marks, typos, and writing format, wrote suggestions and comments in detail at the end, and then explained to the author in person on how to do revision.

In the second semester of the third year, the first Marxist research group was launched in the history department by the students in the class of 1980. Soon, various interest groups sprang up among the students. Liu Zhuangji,Wang Jing and I started a Neolithic Archaeology 'club' in our class, of course with Professor Zhang as the supervisor. Later, due to our busy schedules, we graduated before the group could be declared disbanded after a few activities. Overall, our enthusiasm for the Neolithic age came from Professor Zhang.

Professor Zhang cared about all his students in an equal way. He taught and nurtured his students as if they were his own children by encouraging, helping, recommending and also criticizing them when necessary, because he took their difficulties to heart as long as he learned about those. For instance, in the spring of 1985, when I was about to graduate from university and was anxiously waiting for the results of my graduate program entrance examinations, Professor Zhang approached me and asked me about my employment situation. "You are from Shandong,” he said to me, “if you want to return to Shandong, I will recommend you to Zhang Xuehai, director of the Institute of Archaeology. I met him at a meeting and mentioned you in particular." With Zhang's words, I was able to sleep and eat well in the days before the results came out. Bai Jiujiang, of the Institute of Archaeology in Chongqing, was a graduate in the class of 1992, for whom Professor Zhang wrote a two-page recommendation letter to the Chongqing Museum even though he barely knew anyone over there. In 1988, when I was about to graduate from my graduate program and everyone was anxiously looking for a job, Professor Jiang wrote a recommendation letter for me to the Nanjing Museum, and my supervisor, Professor Hong Jiayi, took me to the museum to meet with Professor Liang, director of the museum, and I needed another teacher to make a recommendation to the provincial personnel department. When Professor Zhang learned this, he wrote a two-page note and delivered it in person to the Jiangsu Provincial Personnel Department on Qingdao Road. The university stipulated that if one did not get a notification from the employer by the end of April, the student would be included in the unified job-assignment plan. Mr. Zhang learned about it again and ran to the graduate school to explain on my behalf that the unit I had applied to would soon send the letter of recruitment, so the school should not include me into the unified job-assignment plan. Apparently, Professor Zhang showed care for many students, often without telling them or others.  

In the case of criticism, it particularly showed how he cared for his students. Even if we had graduated and left school, he would still talk to us when he thought of something important. For instance, a student who had already joined the workforce, participated in the excavation at a site not far from Nanjing University, Professor Zhang had someone bring him to school in one evening, pointed out his shortcomings, and offered him advice on work and life. Undoubtedly, he knew all his students' strengths and weaknesses. He was particularly strict with his graduate students, contacting them at least once a week for a meeting, whether they had his classes or not. I joked with him by saying, "Professor Zhang, chicks will leave their mother hen. They can take care of themselves by that time.” Professor Zhang turned serious and said, "No, that's not possible, how can they leave their mother once for all?” However, we never heard of Professor Zhang being sarcastic with any of his students, so they were never afraid of the serious and even inflexible professor.

We are not afraid of Zhang, mainly because of his honesty, frankness and simplicity. He spoke as he thought and never hid his intention, so we never need to guess his purposes, nor did we have to ponder over his words.

By the end of 2007, some of the students in Nanjing celebrated Professor Zhang's 70th birthday, and when it was=== time to blow out the candles, they said, "Professor Zhang make a wish.” Professor Zhang grinned, gestured with both hands to the students gathered around him, and responded in a clear and loud voice: "Yes! I wish you all good health and good work!" Everyone was pleased by the words while saying, "Professor Zhang, how can you make a wish out loud?" Zhang always spoke loudly, and when we talked to him in a whisper about something, his reply could be heard five meters away. There was a time when we were about to leave for the Three Gorges for excavation work. Zhang had withdrawn money from the bank before the trip. For the sake of safety, I asked a taxi to send him home which was not far, and the driver mumbled that we should not have taken a taxi for such a short distance. Standing outside the car door, Zhang tapped on the handbag and said, “Why not?! We got 30,000 yuan right here!” That's our Professor Zhang!

III

Li Shiyuan, of the Zhuhai Museum, who studied at Nanjing University back then, gave a precise comment on Zhang after getting to know him for a very short time: Professor Zhang was serious but not intimidating, and as you got closer to him, you would find him more approachable, lovable and respectable.

IV

Archaeological sites brought Zhang even closer to his students. Since the 1970s, Zhang had taken his students to archaeological sites for internships and participated in excavations at many important sites such as Caoxieshan hill in Wuzhong district, Suzhou, Jiangsu Province; Jiangzhai in Lintong district, Xi’an, Shannxi Province; Qingdun in Hai'an, Jiangsu Province; Taosi in Xiangfen County, Linfen, Shanxi Province; Qiandixiang in Changshu, Jiangsu Province; Zhongbaodao Island in Yichang, Hubei Province; Shendun in Yizheng, Jiangsu Province; and Baojingwan in Zhuhai, Guangdong Province.  

In the autumn of 1983, he and two other teachers, Dai Ningru and Song Jian, took our class of 1981 to the Jiangchengzi site of the Nanjing Museum in Jiangpu County (now Pukou District) in Nanjing, where we learned the fundamental skills for field archaeology including how to keep an excavation diary, to tell the color of soils, to divide the layers of soil, and with a particular emphasis on seeking remains of pillar holes. For this, Zhang asked us to scrape the ground in time and to make a mark as required when we found suspicious phenomena. Following his instructions, we found several suspected poles, dissected them and at last found none to be real, so we began to slacken off a bit, not taking seriously Zhang’s reminder. In retrospect, Zhang was correct in reminding us that we should think of the possibility of pillar holes in early settlement sites, as it would have been irreparable if we damaged important remains due to carelessness.

In the spring of 1999, I accompanied Professor Zhang as he led graduate students to excavate the Zhangjiawan site in Wushan, Chongqing. The site is located on the banks of the Daning River, a primary tributary of the Yangtze River, and we often found time to look for “rain and flower stones” on the river floodplain, and in the evenings we would sit in front of the television of the house owner and watched TV, when Professor Zhang would always asked a student to play go with him. He said, "I'm not like you young people, I'm too old to have desires.” I said, “Aye! Professor Zhang, you still have to have an appetite.” He smiled, "I don't have an appetite either." He often played go with students such as Guo Yanbing, Huang Houming and Lyu Chunhua, but generally they were no match for him. One night, in the middle of a game, I went over to the students and jokingly said, "Hey! Make sure Professor Zhang wins the last game so he can get a good sleep!" Professor Zhang looked up at me and pointed to the board, "I gave him two extra moves." During the day, he moved back and forth across the structure on the site, giving specific instructions and noting down the situation on his diary. He was in control of the whole of the excavation, like he was playing a big game of go.

The excavation in the autumn was not smooth because of the labor unrest, and Professor Zhang had to go back to Nanjing, so I was struggling alone. The slightest carelessness in the students' speech would invite hostility, and one student was pushed and shoved during an argument. Although this incident had subsided, when Professor Zhang returned and heard about it, he went straight to the village head's house and sternly reprimanded: "Dare you hit people?" "I dare not." "Can you drive us away?" "No." A lesson on the importance and significance of the excavation followed, and Zhang convinced the village head. It turned out that the next day the village head stood on a mound of earth and screamed at the Cao family who had led the trouble: "I am a member of the Communist Party of China and there are also Party members in your family. Face your conscience and ask yourself: do you still hold the principle that the Party requires of you? You have brought a bad reputation to our place ..." The result was that our work became smooth all the way to the end.  

In 2001, during the excavation at the Jiangdongzui site in Wushan, Chongqing, a village bully obstructed our work. Standing in front of Professor Zhang and making a fuss, he refused to listen to any reasoning. Running out of ideas, Zhang tapped on his chest and said, “I have been a Party member for 30 years!” The bully took two steps back in panic. Only a Communist Party member holding the Party’s principles and an ardent sense of righteousness would have such an intimidating effect. When he took his class of 1978 to the Taoshi in Shanxi Province for internship, on the way back from a visit to a site, everyone was too tired and hungry to walk anymore. Professor Zhang, however, waving a twig, shouting the workers’ chant and singing revolutionary songs, led the group back to the residence in a high spirit. For this, the students appraised that Zhang had the poise of a great general.

In 2001, the excavation sites were scattered and Zhang walked around from site to site. The pedometer hanging from his waist showed that he walked more than 10,000 steps every day. He was 63 years old that year, but his body was still strong and he was totally himself when he walked. It was close to our retreatment in the late November, when we excavated a large brick tomb of the Jin Dynasty (266-420AD), and it was too late to finish cleaning it up that day. So Zhang arranged several local workers to be on night duty, and out of a sense of worry, he divided us into several shifts to take turns for patrolling, while he himself insisted on patrolling at 3:00 a.m., saying that at 3:00 a.m., it was easy to fall asleep but hard to wake up and so since young people were prone to sleep, he should take that shift. The path to the site was halfway up the hill near a river, and the potholes were covered with weeds, so even in the daytime we had to be careful when walking. I could not talk him out of it, so I asked the graduate student who was accompanying him to take good care of him, while Professor Huang Jianqiu and I took charge of the other two shifts. Fortunately, it was still "All Quiet on the Western Front,” but I am afraid he would not have slept all night without such an arrangement.

When he arrived in Yunyang in the autumn of 2002, he was very weak and stayed on site under the care of Teacher Jiang for half a month before returning to Nanjing to recuperate. Later when he went to Fengjie in the autumn of 2003, his health improved and he stayed on the site for more than half a month, still under the care of Teacher Jiang. He retired that year and had not been to the Three Gorges since then.

Like the way he cared for his students, Zhang loved his archaeological career as well.

V

Zhang had been a diligent writer throughout his life. In addition to his busy teaching schedule, he continued to research, summarize, assimilate and improve in his field and devoted a great deal of energy to writing textbooks. In 1988, Nanjing University Press published his first textbook, Neolithic Culture of China, the first systematic, specialized textbook on prehistoric archaeology published in China. It was the culmination of his 15 years of teaching.  

When we were in the university, the textbook he used was still a mimeograph book, in which the new concepts of Mesolithic and Fine Stone tools that should be introduced in class had not yet been included in. For that, after the scheduled classes, Zhang found time to give an additional lecture on the "Pre-Pottery Neolithic Culture."  

In 2004 he published a heavily revised edition of China's Neolithic Archaeology with 370,000 words, with the addition of new archaeological material and research findings over the past decade. In 1991, he published The Palaeolithic Culture of China (with an appendix “On the identification of common mammal fossils from the Quaternary period,” written by Professor Wu Jianmin), and in 2003, he published a revised edition of The Palaeolithic Archaeology of China, in which he invited Professor Huang Jianqiu to write the chapter "On archaeological methods of the Palaeolith." The monograph has a total of 485,000 words, of which Zhang wrote 400,000.  

In 1991, he published General Theories of Chinese Archaeology, in which he wrote three chapters: "Introduction," "The Palaeolithic" and "The Neolithic." In 2009, he published a revised edition of the General Theories of Chinese Archaeology, which was expanded from 565,000 words in the first edition to 936,000 words, with 443,000 words written by Professor Zhang; the chapter "Introduction" alone is 65,000 words long.  

In 1995, Professor Zhang invited Zhou Yuxing from the Nanjing Museum to co-author and publish Archaeology of the Xia, Shang, and Zhou Dynasties, with the addition of new material after the publication of the 1979 Peking University's Archaeology of the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, with a total of 350,000 words, of which Professor Zhang wrote 190,000. At a rough count, in the above textbooks, Zhang himself wrote over one million words. As he taught us, it had to go through three or four or even five or six drafts before it could be put into print. What hard work this was for Professor Zhang, who did not know how to use a computer!

Zhang's textbooks have been chosen by universities as textbooks for liberal arts and archaeology majors, while his General Theories of Chinese Archaeology has also become a required reference book in graduate school entrance examinations and has been printed several times to meet the increasing demand. The second edition was published in October 2009 and was printed again in less than a year's time by August 2010. When the director of Nanjing University Press ran into the head of the history department, he mentioned the book, saying that it had generated good economic benefits for the publisher. What’s more, these textbooks benefit thousands of students, as it promotes the archaeological knowledge and leads young students on their archaeological journey. What a social benefit that is! Professor Zhang could write good textbooks, because he himself was a living textbook!

In 1999, the Academy of Social Sciences in Hubei Province planned for the "Research Library on the Culture of the Yangtze River," of which Ji Xianlin was the chief editor and Yu Weichao was one of the deputy chief editors. Professor Yu recommended Zhang's book Neolithic Culture of the Lower Yangtze River to the Hubei authorities, which was published by Hubei Education Press in 2004. He also edited the books including A Guide to the Identification of Cultural Relics (888,000 words, Southeast University Press, 1995) and The Origin and Development of Agriculture (375,000 words, co-edited with Wang Yutang and others. Nanjing University Press, 1996), both of which have considerable numbers of pages written by Professor Zhang.  

In the early 1980s, he made important contributions to the study of prehistoric archaeology in China with his introduction to the "pre-pottery Neolithic culture" and the Neolithic culture of Taiwan, which were still unknown to mainland scholars at that time, and later with his research on the subdivision of the Neolithic culture and geometric-patterned pottery in the southeastern coastal region of China.

After his retirement in 2003, he continued to write and publish several papers each year. Even in 2009 when he was ill, he still managed to write a paper “On the nature, distribution and typology of the Yangshao culture and its controversies” for Jiangsu Literature and History Studies (No. 4, 2009). Now, Essays on Prehistoric Archaeology and Ancient Civilizations, with 400,000 words, is about to be published by the Cultural Heritage Publishing House, with more than 40 essays selected from his over 80 published ones. It is a pity that Professor Zhang could not see its publication.

Professor Zhang's fruitful achievements came from his diligence, as he wrote and corrected his work over and over again, not knowing how to use a computer or find information in a quick way. For instance, Fan Jinmin and I undertook the task of writing the book Silk Culture of the Yangtze River, in the series of Research Library on the Culture of the Yangtze River, and we felt too busy to write it. However, we were told by the editor that Zhang had finished his book Neolithic Culture in the Downstream of the Yangtze River early on. The editor asked us, “When are you going to submit the manuscript?”  

At that time, I just thought that Professor Zhang was familiar with the material and could thus write quickly, and when I followed him to the Three Gorges, I figured that he was very good at managing time. He usually got up at 5 o’clock in the morning, wrote for an hour and then went out for a walk. That hour was the quietest and most productive time for him to write—that was also the time when we were sleeping soundly. We at least made less effort than he did for this hour every day.

Professor Zhang had dedicated his life to education, and his writings and research are of immense use to archaeologists of later generations, and our society will give him the fair assessment and respect he deserves.

VI

Professor Zhang followed the music of life while living and thus left the world in a carefree state. He made his will a year ago: no portrait, no cemetery, no ashes, no memorial service and no farewell ceremony. He wrote his will carefully on the paper and sent it to the department. In early December 2010, he sent his family to the department to pay his Party dues in full for a year. He had no demands on the Party organization and he went away without regrets. He passed away in a coma, quiet and painless, and this could be a consolation for the living. After his cremation on December 30, Teacher Jiang, accompanied by their son Shaohua's family and friends, buried Professor Zhang's ashes under a four-season osmanthus tree bought in advance in his hometown of Zhenjiang, where his ashes will be transformed into soil that will nourish the delicate osmanthus flowers and give off pleasant fragrances year after year, thus continuing his life. He will live on.  

Farewell, Professor Zhang!

張家灣遺址發掘(2000年)

Excavation at the Zhangjiawan site(2000)

張老師在三峽考古工地(2003年)

Professor Zhang, at the Three Gorges site(2003)

張老師和師母(2007年)

Professor Zhang and his wife