Introduction

Definitions of historical archaeology range from the archaeology of literate societies, of societies with written records, of historically documented cultures, and the branch of archaeology that supplements written history to create a more complete account of the past. Each definition has nuances that allow slightly different understandings and approaches, and all are applicable to practice in East Asia, where archaeology is, in general, characterized by its historiographical approach.

Written records are generally regarded as the key factor dividing the historic period from the prehistoric, yet where this division falls is anything but clear in East Asia. Literacy may have been achieved by c. 2000 BCE in the Yellow River Valley of China, and unquestionably attained by c. 1200 BCE in the same region by a few elite members of society. Slowly, writing spread to other areas of East Asia, to different levels of society, and was used in the service of broader goals. Within the modern nation-state of China, there are areas that were not mentioned until very late in the historical record, as well as regions that, while being mentioned earlier in the records of their neighbors, took considerable time to produce their own. Korea and Japan first appear in Chinese records before they themselves adopted the Chinese writing system sometime between the fourth and sixth centuries CE. Later, both developed sophisticated writing systems of their own while also retaining use of Chinese characters.

While it is clear that the regions of East Asia entered the historic period at very different points, many scholars tend to take the beginning of the historic period as the first textual mention of a region, regardless of where or when the document was produced. The concept of protohistory, or the period when a region is known through secondary sources or extremely fragmentary primary sources, is resisted in many instances, partly due to tradition, but also to nationalistic desires to extend a historical presence back in time.

Further complicating both the interpretation of the historical record itself and its use in archaeology is the complex interweaving of ancient myth and oral tradition into the historical record. Chinese, Korean, and Japanese historical traditions all incorporate ancient mythological and supernatural origin stories, written by early ruling clans to legitimize their emergence and right to power. Again, traditionalism and nationalism contribute to some scholars’ resistance to recognizing both the mythological strains in accepted history and the inability of archaeology to recover evidence of these phenomena.

This complex historical background in tandem with many recent or ongoing historical events gives historical archaeology its particular approach in East Asia. Twentieth-century East Asia has seen episodes of militarism, aggression, colonization, humiliation, modernization, and nationalism. These events have greatly affected the region’s historical archaeology, its goals, and the interpretation of results. While the nature of East Asian historical archaeology has changed much over the course of the twentieth century and continues to do so in the twenty-first, Fumiko Ikawa-Smith’s statement that East Asian archaeology is not a generalizing and comparative discipline such as anthropology, but is ‘‘national history or it is nothing’’ still rings true.