Chinese Archaeology in the International Academic Community

Recent years have seen an increased interest in understanding publication patterns in academia and how they reflect and are influenced by broader developments in a given field as well as inherent inequalities and biases, asking questions about whose voices get heard, how, and why. Within Chinese archaeology, the representation and reception of Chinese scholarship in the international academic community have been hotly discussed, using mostly qualitative but in recent years also quantitative approaches, in particular bibliometrics. So far, the focus has been on the percentages of publications led by Chinese scholars in English-language journals in an attempt to evaluate the internationalisation of the discipline. The present chapter takes a broader view, seeking to understand how China-based and non-China-based scholars engage through their research within the field of Chinese archaeology. For this purpose, this study collected archaeology-related articles from the databases of the Web of Science and Chinese Social Sciences Citation Index, analysing citation network through data visualisation methods. Parameters considered include language preferences and engagement with literature from other contexts. Highly cited references are used to reflect on the engagement between scholars from different backgrounds and the impact of specific scholars. Such analyses go a long way to understanding the position of Chinese archaeology on the international stage, how scholars engage across national and language boundaries, and potential differences in research interests and questions.

Academic community · China · Citation · Discipline · Field (mathematics) · Internationalization · Publishing · Representation (politics) · Scholarship · Anthropology: Ethics, History, Culture · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies · Environmental and Cultural Studies in Latin America and Beyond