Anthropology and Historiography: A Deconstructive Analysis of K. C. Chang’s Shamanic Approach in Chinese Archaeology

The hypothesis of ancient Chinese shamanism popularized by K. C. Chang in the 1980s has long been one of the central problems in the study of Chinese archaeology. By examining the structures that constitute Chang’s shamanic framework, this article argues that the problem centers around two major issues. The first is that Chang follows a tradition in Chinese academic historiography of using late historical texts to interpret Neolithic and Bronze Age materials. The second is that, in order to explore the dynamics of the formation of Chinese civilization, he employs Western theories in his construction of the history of shamanism. This article discusses the problems associated with using textual materials for interpretations of archaeological finds. It also discusses “substratum theory,” the way in which it influenced Chang’s understanding of shamanic civilization, and the manner in which Western anthropological theory was incorporated into Chang’s historiographical model. Accordingly, the author concludes that this shamanism problem in Chinese archaeology actually stems from a mixture of the Chinese historiographical tradition and Western anthropological theories, which together make Chang’s writing develop a meta-narrative that leads directly to two characteristics: generalization and polymorphism.

The language bioprogram hypothesis

It is hypothesized that creole languages are largely invented by children and show fundamental similarities, which derive from a biological program for language. The structures of Hawaiian Pidgin and Hawaiian Creole are contrasted, and evidence is provided to show that the latter derived from the former in a single generation. A realistic model of the processes of Creole formation shows how several specific historical and demographic factors interacted to restrict, in varying degrees, the access of pidgin speakers to the dominant language, and hence the nature of input to the children of those speakers. It is shown that the resulting similarities of Creole languages derive from a single grammar with a restricted list of categories and operations. However, grammars of individual Creoles will differ from this grammar to a varying extent: The degree of difference will correlate very closely with the quantity of dominant-language input, which in turn is controlled by extralinguistic factors. Alternative explanations of the above phenomena are surveyed, in particular, substratum theory and monogenesis: Both are found inadequate to account for the facts. Primary acquisition is examined in light of the general hypothesis, and it is suggested that the bioprogram provides a skeletal model of language which the child can then readily convert into the target language. Cases of systematic error and precocious learning provide indirect support for the hypothesis. Some conjectures are made concerning the evolutionary origins of the bioprogram and what study of Creoles and related topics might reveal about language origins.

A generalisation of Lorentz-equivalence in a substratum theory

It has been shown that the assumption of a specified cosmological substratum leads to the Lorentz-equivalencc of observers whose uniform motion in the substratum lies along a common straight line. The result is generalised for any pair of unaccelerated observers thus confirming that only the relative velocity of such observers is relevant in relating their observations of an event.