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'Johan Gunnar Andersson' (1874-1960), Swedish archaeologist, paleontologist and geologist, closely associated with the beginnings of Chinese archaeology in the 1920s. His Chinese name was ''An Tesheng'' (安特生)[1].
After studies at Uppsala University, and research in the polar regions, Andersson served as Director of Sweden's National Geological Survey.
In 1914 he was invited to China as mining adviser to the Chinese government. His affiliation was with China's National Geological Survey (Dizhi diaochasuo) which was organized and led by the extraordinary Chinese scholar Ding Wenjiang (V.K. Ting). During this time, Andersson helped train China’s first generation of geologists, and also made numerous discoveries of iron ore and other mining resources, as well as discoveries in geology and paleontology.
In collaboration with Chinese colleagues such as Yuan Fuli and others, he then discovered prehistoric Neolithic remains in central China’s Henan Province, along the Yellow River. The remains were named Yangshao culture after the village where they were first excavated, in 1921.
In the following years, 1923-24, Andersson, in his capacity as a staff member of China's National Geological Survey, conducted archaeological excavations in the provinces of Gansu and Qinghai, again in collaboration with Chinese colleagues, and published numerous books and scientific papers on Chinese archaeology, many in the Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, which he founded and launched in 1929. Andersson's most well-known popular book on his time in China is ''Den gula jordens barn'', 1932, translated into several languages, including English (as ''Children of the Yellow Earth'', 1934, reprinted 1973), Japanese, and Korean.
Andersson is also famous for his association with the much older Paleolithic remains found outside Beijing at Zhoukoudian (Choukoutien), a site also first identified by Andersson in 1921 (but not excavated by him).
In 1926, Andersson founded the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities in Stockholm, Sweden (in Swedish: ''Östasiatiska museet''), a national museum established to house the Swedish part of the collections from these first-ever scientific archaeological excavations in China. Andersson served as the director of the MFEA until he was succeeded in 1939 by the famous Swedish Sinologist Bernhard Karlgren.
Selections of the Swedish portion of the materials is on display at the MFEA in a new permanent exhibit launched 2004. The Chinese part of the Andersson collections, according to a bilateral Sino-Swedish agreement, was returned by him to the Chinese government in seven shipments, 1927-1936. A Chinese exhibit with these objects was mounted at the new National Geological Survey complex in Nanjing, where Andersson saw them in 1937, the last time they were reported seen by anyone. The last documentary evidence of these objects was a 1948 Visitors Guide to the Geological Survey museum in Nanjing, which listed Andersson's Yangshao artefacts among the exhibits.
The objects were thought to be irretrievably lost in the civil war that followed, until 2002. After major renovations at the Geological Museum of China, the successor to the Geological Survey's museum, staff found three crates of ceramic vessels and fragments while re-organising items in storage. Following contact with the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities (Östasiatiska museet) in Stockholm, it was confirmed that these were indeed part of Andersson's excavations. In 2006, these objects featured in an exhibition at the Geological Museum on the occasion of its 90th anniversary, celebrating the lives and work of Andersson and its other founders.

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External links

Reference

★ Fiskesjö, Magnus and Chen Xingcan. ''China before China: Johan Gunnar Andersson, Ding Wenjiang, and the Discovery of China's Prehistory.'' Stockholm: Östasiatiska museet, 2004. ISBN 91-970616-3-8.

External links

★ The Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities in Stockholm

★ A bibliography of Andersson’s publications, at Projekt Runeberg