Developing a New Framework for Great Wall Archaeological Research

This project seeks, through a programme of targeted academic collaboration between scholars of Roman frontiers studies and their Great Wall counterparts, to establish a process of an ambitious assessment of current archaeological knowledge of the Great Wall, consolidating current interpretations, identifying gaps in current understanding and potential priorities for future research. Great Wall studies in China are presently disparate in practice, with priority in recent decades given to conservation and monitoring of the monument, with limited scope for research. Building on the experience of UK-based scholars of Hadrian’s Wall and the benefits of co-creating a research framework, working with Chinese colleagues, particularly in archaeology, to initiate a similar project for the Great Wall would generate a framework or series of frameworks, against which individual research project proposals can be mapped as part of an evolving research strategy for the Great Wall. There are two principal challenges facing this project. First, no comprehensive assessment has yet been previously attempted in relation to archaeological knowledge of the Great Wall, meaning there is almost no previous synthetic work to build on. Second, current networking and interchange between scholars of Great Wall archaeology is insubstantial, limited to informal, personal networks and hampered by unpublished research. The project has two primary aims, identified through exchanges between UK and Chinese scholars over the past five years through the Wall-to-Wall project. First, to establish a stronger network of scholars, particularly archaeologists, working on the Great Wall, regardless of chronological, geographic, or material specialism. Second, through bringing these individuals together, to initiate the process by which a clear assessment of the current state of research can be undertaken, as well as a process by which research gaps and priorities can be identified. The project will commence with a three day workshop in Newcastle/Hadrian’s Wall where UK scholars will present and explain to the project’s principal Chinese academic leads the methodology and processes through which the Research Framework for Hadrian’s Wall archaeology was developed and collaboratively explore to what extent that approach might be appropriate and adapted for Great Wall archaeology. Subsequent workshops will be held in China attended by a wider group of Great Wall scholars convened by the project’s Chinese academic leads and supported by their UK counterparts. These workshops will progress through assessment of current knowledge, development of a research agenda and the subsequent derivation of an appropriate outline Archaeological Research Framework for the Great Wall. The essence of our approach is that it will be led throughout by the Chinese project team, with the primary role of the UK project team being to assist, interrogate, challenge and advise. The principal benefit of this project is that it will, for the first time, put individual research projects into a clearer and more comprehensive context of established and emerging knowledge. Equally significantly, it will engender a more coordinated approach and greater interconnectedness between the endeavours of individual researchers and institutions engaged in Great Wall archaeological studies.