Scholars › Historian
Li Ji
Archaeologist and anthropologist who excavated Xiyin village in Shanxi in 1926 and from 1929 headed the archaeology section of the Institute of History and Philology, directing the Yinxu excavations until 1937.
Mural of the event “Excavating Yinxu”, which this person took part in.
At the end of the Qing, inscribed bones from around Xiaotun in Anyang were recognised as Shang writing, and many were then dug up privately and scattered through the antiques trade. In 1928 the Institute of History and Philology of Academia Sinica set out to excavate Yinxu by scientific method, and on 13 October Dong Zuobin opened the first trial excavation at Xiaotun. Li Ji then took charge, and by 1937 there had been fifteen seasons: the foundations of Shang palaces and temples at Xiaotun, Shang royal tombs at Xibeigang, and in 1936 pit YH127, which yielded more than 17,000 inscribed oracle-bone pieces.
Also known as Zi Jizhi · Li Chi (Wade-Giles)
- Roles
- Historian
Li Ji, courtesy name Jizhi (earlier Shouzhi), was born at Zhongxiang in Hubei in 1896. He took a doctorate in anthropology at Harvard in 1923. In 1926, with Yuan Fuli, he excavated the site at Xiyin village in Xiaxian, Shanxi, the first field excavation led by Chinese scholars. From 1929 he headed the archaeology section of the Institute of History and Philology of Academia Sinica and directed the excavations at Yinxu in Anyang, fifteen seasons up to 1937, which uncovered palace and temple foundations and the royal cemetery and set excavation on a stratigraphic footing. Late in life he wrote Anyang in English. He died in Taipei in 1979.
Life and times
Dates 1896 CE–1979 CE
- 1928Excavating YinxuTook partage 32
- c. 1934Liang Siyong Excavates Xibeigang Royal Tombsage 38