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2005 Media Releases

New professor bridges gap between Western and Chinese archaeology

A leading scholar who has helped bridge the gap between Chinese and Western archaeology since the mid 1980s has been appointed Professor of Archaeology in the School of Historical and European Studies at La Trobe University.

She is Dr Li Liu, a PhD graduate in anthropology from Harvard University. Professor Liu came to La Trobe University as a lecturer in 1996, having taught previously at Tufts University and Johns Hopkins University in the United States. The appointment was announced today by the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Michael Osborne. Initially educated in China, Professor Liu was a researcher during the early 1980s at the Shaanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology, Xi'an, China.

Her research deals with Neolithic and Bronze Age China, focusing on topics such as settlement pattern, ritual practice, state formation, craft specialization, and zooarchaeology.

An expert in the settlement and rise of early states in China, her work has been published in both Chinese and English, reaching many readers in China and the West. Her English publications provide up-dated interpretations of Chinese archaeological findings while her Chinese publications have introduced new methods and theory to Chinese archaeology.

Professor Liu is the chief investigator of a large-scale international and multidisciplinary archaeological research project titled Settlement Patterns, Craft Production, and the Rise of Early States in China. The study probes processes which led to the rise of these states in the Yiluo River Valley in western Henan Province.

Other primary investigators are from the Institute of Archaeology at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Harvard University, the University of Michigan, and University College London. Professor Liu says many interdisciplinary approaches are being used in the study.

Regional survey programs examine settlement patterns in core areas of the early states. Reconstruction of climate using isotope analysis on stalagmites from local caves and understanding craft production of goods, such as stone tools and fine ceramics, have involved geologists and postgraduate students from La Trobe University and the University of Queensland.

Investigations of plant and animal remains from 6000 to 200 BC by specialists at La Trobe and other universities have provided crucial information about the development of agriculture, land use, and exchange. Research into population and land use is assisted by computerised Geographic Information System (GIS) studies. These allow researchers to locate the exact sites of a vast amount of important original archaeological data.

Professor Liu’s role as chief investigator is to integrate results from all these scientific programs to explain social, ecological and environmental changes in the emergence of Chinese civilizations.

As well as their publication in Chinese and English, many of these research results have been presented at international conferences in recent years where she has been an invited guest lecturer at Harvard University, Columbia University, University of Michigan, Peking University, and several archaeological institutions in China.

Professor Liu says: ‘The wide scope of the work has provided opportunities for students from Australia, USA, Canada, and Poland to study Chinese archaeology in China, and will continue to do so. It has also enabled archaeologists in China to test and evaluate Western archaeological theory and method through fieldwork experience.

Professor Liu and her colleagues have published preliminary results from these studies in the Journal of Field Archaeology. She has recently published a book, The Chinese Neolithic (Cambridge University Press), which analyses progress from the Neolithic era to the rise of states. Another book she co-authored is State Formation in Early China (Duckworth, London), which reconstructs political-economic systems of early states relating to resource procurement, such as copper and salt.

Since 1997 the research has been supported by grants from the Australian Research Council (ARC), the National Geographic Society, La Trobe University, and Harvard University. More recently, the project has been awarded a five year ARC Discovery Grant which supports the work until the end of 2008.

Since 2003 Professor Liu has also led an internationally collaborative interdisciplinary research project on wild and domestic buffaloes in China, involving researchers from Australia, China, Canada, and the USA. This examines buffalo remains from the Middle Pleistocene to the Holocene, and uses methods including zooarchaeology, ancient DNA tests, ethnohistory, ethnography and art history.

She is helping clarify whether the domesticated buffalo was developed indigenously in China or introduced to China from elsewhere. ‘Answering this question will help us understand cultural interaction and the dispersal of rice agriculture technology in China, South Asia, and Southeast Asia.’

Professor Liu has published two books, a museum catalogue, and about 30 refereed journal articles or book chapters. She is currently writing Archaeology of China for the World Archaeology Series of Cambridge University Press.

‘This is an urgently needed book since a comparable book, Archaeology of Ancient China by late Professor Kwang-chih Chang, was published nearly 20 years ago, and has been out of print.’

She is also working on a book with archaeologists at Peking University to produce the first Chinese textbook on Western archaeological theory, Fundamentals of Western Archaeological Theory, to be published soon by Peking University.

Professor Liu has helped the University develop collaborative research projects and scholarly exchange programs with China. La Trobe Archaeology now has formal relationships with five Chinese archaeology institutions.

For further information:

For interviews or further information, please contact Professor Liu on Email: l.liu@latrobe.edu.au or Tel: 61-3-9479-1392. For the Yiluo project, please visit the website: http://www.latrobe.edu.au/archaeology/research/survey/index.htm