Project

Transparent transcription, Contextual Reconstruction, and Holistic Interpretation: An Innovative Approach to the Study of Excavated Chinese Texts

Program

American Research in the Humanities in China

Department

Asian and Middle Eastern Languages and Literatures

Abstract

This project develops an innovative Chinese paleographic approach. Different from the traditional approach that is subjective and not transparent, this novel approach features three aspects: transparent transcription, contextual reconstruction, and holistic interpretation. Providing transparency of transcribing process, a transparent transcription traces the original form of an archaic graph and directly transcribes it rather than simply gives its interpretative modern form. Contextual reconstruction and holistic interpretation pay particular attention to the context-specific information of the excavated texts, from the formats of the original materials, textual design layouts, to related tomb information, etc. Procedures and working principles will be established and demonstrated.