From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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 Desheng (安德生).

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 kaochasuo) 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 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. 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).

Andersson is also famous for his association with the much older Paleolithic remains found outside Beijing at Zhoukoudian (Choukoutian), 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 1938, and was succeeded by the famous Swedish Sinologist Bernhard Karlgren. Selections of the Swedish portion of the materials is on display at the MFEA.

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. These objects, which include hundreds of prehistoric painted ceramic vessels, may have been irretrievably lost during the subsequent war, but a new search has been launched in 2000.

• Fiskesjö, Magnus and Chen Xingcan. China before China: Johan Gunnar Andersson, Ding Wenjiang, and the Discovery of China's Prehistory. Stockholm: Östasiatiska museet, 2004.

• The Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities in Stockholm
• A bibliography of Andersson’s publications, at Projekt Runeberg