由“文化形成的滯後性”所引起的新思考

王立新在討論二里頭文化和早商文化的形成時,提出了'文化形成的滯後性'問題,遭到尚友萍全面的駁斥。本文擬對此進行剖析:一、一種穩定形態的考古學文化的形成在時間上要滯後於王朝的更替,這在夏、商、周三代都是如此,西周尤爲明顯,且已得到公認。所以'滯後性'的問題,並不是王立新首先提出的,在考古學文化的夏、商分界討論中早已有人提出過。二、尚友萍的觀點實際是把考古學文化的界定和國族文化(夏文化、商文化)的界定混爲一談了。這種方法論實際上源於鄒衡、夏鼐,是需要商榷的。三、考古學界目前仍頗盛行的把考古學文化和國族文化混爲一談的觀點,和中國古史學界仍普遍認爲夏商時代的國家組織仍有濃厚的血緣特點有關。事實上,這種觀點正在被考古實際發現不斷衝擊。夏代和商代的方國聯盟的盟主國,都已經是由聯合了衆多族姓的民衆構成的。他們本來有着不同的文化傳統。因而在國内要重新形成一種相對穩定的能'排出一個有邏的演變序列的'考古學文化,必然會滯後於朝代的更替,而且隨着這種聯盟的不斷擴大和組成成分的複雜化,滯後會越來越明顯。

In studying the culture formation of the Erlitou ruins and Early Shang,Wang Lixin has employed a model called“the lagging of the formation of culture”to illustrate the relationship between cultural changes as reflected from the unearthed archeological artifacts and political changes as reflected by dynastic transition.However,Wang’s proposal has been criticized by Shang Youping.In light of the importance of the topic to our understanding of the Early China,we will focus on this issue by reviewing several salient features of the“lagging”model and its application in relating archeological data to the three Dynasties,Xia,Shang and Zhou.We argue that the appearance of a stable and archeologically identifiable culture would always lag behind the change of dynastic political system and that the controversy stems from the confusion in distinguishing“archeological”culture from the“dynastic”culture.The dynastic name Xia or Shang originally represented an alliance of states,with Xia or Shang as the first one among equals.The so-called dynastic change from Xia to Shang actually represented absorption of new states and an expansion of alliance circle.Thus the dynastic transition would always be followed by aprocess of fusion of different cultural elements,until a“new”culture became archeologically identifiable.As such,the formation of a new archeologically identifiable culture would have to occur long after the dynastic transition.