疑古、考古与古史重建

Doubt of the old, archaeology and historical reconstruction

20世纪初的疑古思潮对中国现代考古学的起步产生了很大的影响,也对它的学术定位起到了决定性的作用。科学考古学理论方法的精髓本来在于超越文献资料,从无言的物质遗存中提炼社会文化信息;考古学最大的优势也正在于能从生态环境、生存方式、技术经济、社会结构乃至意识形态等各个层次来全面分析原始社会在长时段中的历时演变,并梳理各种对文明演变至关重要的因素的变量以及它们所起的作用。“疑”和“思”当然是科学研究的基本要素,考古学也并非仅是为编史学提供地下材料的工具,而是独立探索的一个领域。从学科范例的变更上来说,西方历史学和考古学都发生了向社会学和人类学的转变,提倡超越政治史和贵族史的范畴,采取一种自下而上的视野来研究整个社会的各个层面。我国的古史重建和文明探源同样应该超越编年学和文献学的窠臼,全面了解文明和社会发展具体轨迹并阐释其原因。

Historical skepticism in the early 20th century had great influence on the beginning of modern Chinese archaeology, and also played a decisive role in its academic orientation. The quintessence of scientific archaeological method lies in exceeding the textual documents, as well as refining social and cultural information from the silent material legacies. Meanwhile, the greatest preponderance of archaeology is just the overall analysis of the diachronic evolution of primitive societies in the long term from the aspects of ecological environment, living style, technical economics, social structure and even the ideology, and carding the variables and influencing factors critical to the evolution of civilization. ＂Doubt of the old＂ or textural criticism must be a basic element of scientific research. Archaeology has long been an independent discipline, and not merely an implement to provide historians with writing records. Viewed from the paradigm revolution, the Western history and archaeology both have made transformation toward sociology and anthropology, which advocate to exceed the categories of political and aristocratic history, and to take the bottom-up vision in studying every aspect of the whole society. In the historical reconstruction and the study of the origin of early civilization, Chinese scholars should free themselves from historiographical and documentary perspectives and make every endeavor to understand and explain social processes and causality.