The integrated development of history and archaeology is not a combination, but an interactive model and dialectical relationship. Together, it promotes and cultivates new subject growth points, which is helpful to better understand the profound Chinese civilization with a long history.
The historical construction with China characteristics, China style and China style cannot be separated from the strong support of archaeology. China has a long historical tradition in ancient times, but there is no archaeology in the modern sense. After the Tang and Song Dynasties, epigraphy came into being. Some people regard it as the predecessor of China archaeology, but in fact there are essential differences between them. The strength and ability of epigraphy to promote the development of ancient historiography is limited.
Archaeology in the modern sense in China began to take shape only after the 1920s. Over the past century, especially since the founding of New China, several generations of archaeologists have opened up a glorious road for the archaeological cause in China and made remarkable achievements.
These achievements are not only manifested in discipline construction, personnel training and dazzling archaeological discoveries, but also in many aspects such as archaeology revealing the origin of ancient humans in China, the origin of Chinese civilization and the country, supplementing history, verifying history and correcting historical mistakes.
History cannot be separated from the support of archaeology, which is the inherent requirement of China's historical development since 100, and it is also an objective reflection of the great achievements made by archaeology. In the first half of the 20th century, great historians such as Wang Guowei and Chen attached great importance to "new underground materials" and "underground objects", which promoted the emergence of historical methodology (double-proof method) and new consciousness of historical issues, with far-reaching influence.
The history of human beings with written records is limited, and more is the period without written records. Without archaeology, it is impossible to walk out of myths and legends and build early human history with physical materials. Nowadays, with the efforts of archaeologists, history can give a preliminary description of the human origin and regional development and evolution of China based on archaeological materials.
China's archaeological achievements in the Neolithic Age are equally remarkable, and its discoveries have played an extremely important role in revealing the origin of agriculture, social complexity, civilization and the origin of the country.
Especially the issue of the origin of civilization and state, the archaeological practice in Neolithic Age made it possible for China history to go out of the legendary era and construct the theory of the origin of civilization and state with China characteristics, which is of great significance to explain the development path of the history of civilization in China for more than 5,000 years, something that historians wanted to do but could not do in the past.
Even if there is a written history, archaeological data is still an important basis for historians to understand the history of this period.