Li Chi (1896-), archaeologist who became head of the archaeology' section of the Academia Sinica"s institute of history and philology in 1928 and director of that institute in Taiwan in 1955. He was best known to Westerners for his direction of the excavations at Anyang. A native of Chunghsiang, Hupeh, Li Chi was born into a scholarly family. His father, Li Hsün-fu, served in the Ch'ing government in Peking, where Li Chi received his childhood education. When the Tsinghua Academy was established in 1911 to prepare students for higher education in the United States on Boxer Indemnity Fund scholarships, Li took and passed its first entrance examination. After being graduated in 1918 he went to the United States, where he studied psychology and sociology at Clark University in Alassachusetts. He received the B.A. in 1919 and the ^LA. in 1920.

In the fall of 1920 Li began graduate work at Harvard in anthropology and archaeology. He received the Ph.D. in 1923. His doctoral dissertation was The Formation of the Chinese People: An Anthropological Inquiry. An abridged Chinese translation by Lei Pao-hua appeared in the journal K'o-hsueh [science], in 1925. Li later expanded the dissertation, and it was published by the Harvard Universitv Press in 1928.

After returning to China in the autumn of 1923, Li accepted an appointment as lecturer at Xankai University in Tientsin. He soon met '. K. Ting Ting Wen-chiang, q.v.), who was then general manager of the Pei-p'iao Coal Company. Later, when Ting heard that a large number of ancient bronze vessels had been discovered in Hsincheng, Honan, he sent Li and a member of the China Geological Survey to investigate the site of discovery, but, because of the uncooperative attitude of the local populace and a rumor of banditry, nothing came of the effort.

In 1925 Tsinghua Academy was reorganized as a university. A research institute for Sinological studies was established with the aim of applying modern research methods to the study of traditional Chinese culture. Li was asked to join its faculty in company with such eminent scholars as Liang Ch'i-ch'ao, Wang Kuo-wei, and Chao Yuen-ren I'qq.v.). In the meantime, the Freer Art Gallery, through its representative Carl W. Bishop, had invited Li to join its field archaeology^ staff. Because of his obligation to Chang Po-ling (q.v.), the chancellor of Xankai University, Li found it difficult to decide which offer to accept. On the advice of '. K. Ting, Li accepted the Tsinghua appointment and advanced two conditions for participating in the Freer venture: that excavations must be done in cooperation with Chinese academic organizations and that all cultural relics must remain in China. Two months later, he received a letter from Carl Bishop which stated that the Freer Gallery would never ask a patriotic man to do what he did not want to do. Li was satisfied with the answer. Subsequently, an agreement was made between Bishop and the Tsinghua Research Institute by which the Freer Gallery would finance an expedition directed by Li and sponsored by the university. Li and Yuan Fu-li, a geologist, then undertook the Hsia-hsien expedition in Shansi. Excavation was begun in the spring of 1926 at the village of Hsi-yin-ts'un, and numerous prehistoric painted potsherds and some silkworm cocoons were found. The result of this expedition was reported in Li's Hsi-jints'un shih-ch'ien ti i-ts'un [prehistoric remains at Hsi-yin-ts'un], published by Tsinghua University in 1929. In 1928 the research institute at Tsinghua was discontinued. Li then went briefly to the United States to discuss with officials of the Freer Gallery the possibility of continuing his excavating work. The Freer Gallery agreed to give Li complete freedom to collaborate with any Chinese academic institution he chose. When the institute of history and philology of the Academia Sinica was formally established in Canton in November 1928 under the direction of Fu Ssu-nien (q.v.), Fu wired Li Chi asking him to head the archaeology section of the institute. In December, Li met Fu in Canton, where the two men came to an understanding on Li's status with the Academia Sinica and with the Freer Gallery. Li was to undertake a planned excavation of the Yin site at Anyang, Honan, for both the Academia Sinica and the Freer Gallery, with the latter providing the financial support. Soon after, in the spring of 1929, the institute of history and philology was transferred to Peiping; Li remained in Peiping until 1934.

Previously, in October 1928, before Li had been appointed to his new post, Fu Ssu-nien had sent Tung Tso-pin (q.v.), a member of the institute, to make a preliminary survey of the Anyang site. The excavation under Li's direction which began on 7 March and which lasted until 10 May 1929, was the second of a series of fifteen digs undertaken at Anyang prior to the Japanese invasion. A great quantity of potsherds, some bronzes, and 684 inscribed oracle bones and tortoise shells were uncovered. Work at the site was interrupted by civil war between Feng Yü-hsiang (q.v.) and Chiang Kai-shek, but excavations were resumed in the autumn. From 7 October to 12 December an unprecedented number of inscribed oracle bones and shells, some pottery and bronze vessels, and two inscribed oracle bones and skulls were unearthed. A unique fragment of painted pottery was also discovered at the site. This discovery created the possibility of identifying for the first time the chronological relationship between the prehistoric painted pottery culture of Yangshao, discovered in 1921 by J. G. Andersson, a Swedish geologist, and the historic Shang- Yin culture.

Disputes with the Honan provincial authorities and unauthorized diggings ca^jed on under their auspices caused suspension c^l^^e Anyang excavations. Li tendered his resigiferlion to the Freer Gallery on 22 February 1 930. Thfe burden of the financial support for the operation was then assumed by the China Foundation for the Promotion of Education and Culture, which presented the institute with a chair in archaeology with an annual salary of 6,000 yuan for five years and an annual grant of 10,000 yuan for three years for field work to begin in 1931.

With the Anyang excavations halted and the financial question waiting to be settled, Li devoted his time to writing and editing the reports of the Anyang finds. In May, he went to Nanking to investigate the site of Six Dynasties tombs and then to Shantung province where Wu Chin-ting, an assistant at the institute, had discovered a black-pottery site at Ch'eng-tzu-yai in Lich'eng. Realizing the importance of the find, Li decided to start excavating there on 7 November 1930. After 30 days of digging, the expedition confirmed the existence of a new culture complex, which Li designated the Lungshan culture in honor of the township in which Ch'eng-tzu-yai is located.

The excavations at Anyang were resumed on 21 March 1931, with the' support of the Honan government, and lasted until 1 1 May. Li was joined by tw^o other trained archaeologists, Liang Ssu-yung (q.v.) and Kuo Pao-chun. At Houkang, the fifth series of excavations, from 7 November to 9 December, unearthed Yin, Lungshan, and Yangshao strata in clear stratigraphic sequence. This was the first time that strata representing these three culture complexes had been found in a single site. The Japanese invasion of Manchuria on 1 8 September 1931 aroused Li's patriotism. A group of scholars, including Fu Ssu-nien and T. F. Tsiang (Chiang T'ing-fu, q.v.), had written Tung-pei shih-kang [outline history of the Northeast], an historical account of China's relationship with the northeastern provinces, designed to refute Japanese propaganda saying that Manchuria had never been a part of China. Li took time out from his archaeological work to abridge and translate this work into English. It was published in Peiping in 1932 as A/a«churia in History : A Summary. The deepening national crisis lent a sense of urgency to the task of completing the Anyang excavations. The sixth series of excavations was carried out from 12 April to 31 May 1932, the seventh from 19 October to 15 December 1932, and the eighth from 20 October to 25 December 1933. In 1934 the institute of history and philology was moved from Peiping to Nanking. The ninth series of excavations, from 9 March to 31 May, shifted the base of operations from Hsiao-t'un on the south bank of the Huai River to Hou-chia-chuang on the north bank. In the tenth series, from 3 October to 29 December, four large tombs were opened, in which more than a thousand stone implements were discovered. Li agreed with Liang Ssuyung, who was the field director, that Hou-chiachuang was undoubtedly the burial ground of the Yin capital unearthed at Hsiao-t'un. Since it was known that the Yin people paid much attention to the dead, it was decided that a largescale excavation of the new site was justified. li By that time Li had succeeded Fu Ssu-nien as the director of the preparatory office of National Central Museum, which was organized in April 1933 with the support of the British Boxer Indemnity Fund. V. K. Ting, thcdirector general of the Academia Sinica, was a member of the museum's board of directors. Since additional financial support was needed to finance the Hou-chia-chuang excavation, Li proposed that the museum assume part of the expenses. Ting readily gave his consent. In March 1935 work began on the burial site. A great variety of bronze, jade, ivory, and pottery remains were uncovered before digging ceased on 15 June. After a summer recess, the excavation was resumed with a force of 500 workmen. In the period from 5 September to 16 December, 8 large tombs and 785 small tombs were opened. Beginning with the thirteenth series of excavations, from 18 March to 24 June 1936, the operation was shifted back to the Hsiao-t'un site, where an unprecedented number ofinscribed oracle bones and tortoise shells were found. The Anyang and Lungshan discoveries gained world-wide attention through the reports issued by the institute and the writings of such noted scholars as Paul Pelliot, Bernard Karlgren, and W. P. Yetts. In the spring of 1936 some of the Anyang bronzes were displayed at the Chinese Art Exhibition held in London. That winter, Li was invited by the English Association of Universities and the Swedish heir apparent, later King Gustav T, to lecture at London and Stockholm.

The fifteenth series of excavations were undertaken from 16 March to 10 June 1937. Several weeks later, the Sino-Japanese war broke out. Li, who had just returned from Europe, supervised the removal of all the records and remains of the Anyang excavations from Nanking to Changsha, Hunan, where the institute of history and philology found a temporary home. When the Japanese advanced toward Hankow, the institute was evacuated farther inland to Kunming, Yunnan. In 1938, in recognition of his contributions to the development of archaeology in China, the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland elected Li an Honorary Fellow.

Li soon resumed field investigations. Expeditions were dispatched to Shensi, and to Tali and Kunming in Yunnan. In 1939 the institute was moved to Lichuang, a village in Nanch'i, Szechwan, where it remained until the end of the war. In the spring of 1946 the institute returned to Nanking. Soon afterwards, Li was appointed a member of the Chinese delegation stationed in occupied Japan. His task was to trace and recover cultural objects pillaged from China by Japanese soldiers and civilians during the war. In March 1948 Li Chi was among the 81 scientists and scholars elected to the Academia Sinica. These men were to be responsible for the direction of the scientific development of postwar China. Liang Ssu-yung, Tung Tso-pin, and Kuo Mo-jo (q.v.) were also elected to represent the field of archaeology.

By the winter of 1948 the tide of civil war was turning against the National Government. The Academia Sinica had to be evacuated to Taiwan. Li aided in removing the art treasures and archaeological specimens of the institute of history and philology, the Central Museum, and the Palace Museum from the mainland to Taiwan. In February 1949 he was appointed professor of history at National Taiwan University. In August, he became the chairman of the university's department of archaeology and anthropology.

Li led a Chinese delegation to the Eighth Pacific Science Conference and the Fourth Far Eastern Prehistory Conference held in the Philippines in 1953. He accepted a Rockefeller grant in 1954 to lecture at the Escuela Nacional de Antropologia e Historia in Mexico. In 1955 the University of Washington at Seattle invited him to lecture on ancient Chinese culture. The three lectures he gave there were published in 1957 as The Beginnings of Chinese Civilization. After returning to Taipei in the summer of 1955, Li was appointed director of the institute of history and philology. He left Taiwan for the United States on 20 October 1959 to do research and lecture at Harvard. In June 1960 he visited the Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., and later, the Toronto University Museum in Canada to advise on the display of their collections of ancient Chinese artifacts. In July, he attended the Sino- American Conference on Intellectual Cooperation held at Seattle, Washington. He then returned to Taiwan, arriving there on 3 September. As an advocate of new methodology Li Chi succeeded through his writings and field work in making systematic excavation, stratigraphy, and typology essential to the scientific study of China's past history. He demonstrated that modern archaeology and the traditional study of ancient artifacts enhance each other. In this respect the An-yang fa-chueh pao-kao [report on the An-yang excavations] for 1928 edited by Li is epoch-making. Under his leadership Chinese archaeologists, with limited financial backing and working in a time of political turmoil, carried out significant excavations. Many leading Chinese archaeologists, such as Yin Ta, Hsia Nai, Yin Huang-chang, Shih Chang-yu, and Kao Chu-hsun received their practical training under Li.

As a student of China's ancient history Li wrote the pioneering study of the formation of the Chinese people, contributed significant studies of Shang artifacts, and formulated a precise and workable terminology for the description of ancient artifacts. His interpretations of the ancient cultures of north China, based on his intensive knowledge of many prehistoric and historic sites and collections as well as his wide acquaintance of archaeological developments in other parts of the world, greatly increased understanding of a still dimly known period of China's past. In these areas his most significant publications were The Formation of the Chinese People, Hsi-jin-ts'un shih-ch'ien ti i-ts'un, and Ch'eng-tzu-yai (1934), in which Li hypothesized a Lungshan culture complex extending over eastern China during the neolithic period and indicated its relationship to the civilization of Shang; the An-yang fa-chueh pai-kao for 192933, also edited by Li; "Yin-ch'ü t'ung-ch'i wuchung chi ch'i hsiang-kuan wen-t'i" [five bronze objects from Anyang and problems related to them], an article of 1933; and "Chi Hsiao-t'un ch'u-t'u chi ch'ing-t'ung-ch'i" [Hsiao-t'un and the bronzes discovered there], an article which appeared in Chung-kuo k'ao-ku hsueh-pao [Chinese archaeolog'] in 1948-49 and which established a precise and well-organized terminology for bronzes and the details of their decor.