Gwen Bennett

This project looks at archaeological findings and the practice of archaeology in northwestern and northeastern China. The study provides new understandings of these regions’ cultural heritage, illuminate the influences affecting our current understandings, and stimulate and enable international communication on the regions among and between Asian and US scholars. As most Chinese archaeologists and historians have now concluded, archaeological findings over the past 25 years have clearly evidenced the shifting territories, multi-ethnic, and multi-cultural roots that compose the Chinese heritage. These findings, and the discussions they stimulate on ethnicity and cultural affinity in the Chinese archaeology and history journals, are playing a role in China’s addressing of numerous issues of relevance to its current development and growth into a global economic, political, and cultural presence. This project places the archaeological findings of these understudied regions into a broader context that takes account of both local and global past and present.