Bulletin No. 2, 2014

8   Chinese University Bulletin No. 2, 2014 CASS-CUHK Chinese Archaeology Joint Research Base Director : Prof. Tang Chung The research base, inaugurated in 2014, is jointly established by CUHK and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS). It is Hong Kong’s first research unit dedicated to combining archaeological expertise from mainland China and Hong Kong. It will study early civilizations in China through a global perspective, conduct in-depth investigations of ancient cultures in Hong Kong and Macau, explore new research areas in Chinese archaeology, and train professionals in Hong Kong archaeology. The establishment of the research base has important cultural and historical significance as Hong Kong currently has few archaeologists and no tertiary education programmes in archaeology, despite the known existence of over a hundred ancient cultural sites. The research base connects up various disciplines and unit s acros s CUHK , such as the Centre for Chinese Archaeology and Arts (CCAA), the Institute of Chinese Studies, and the Departments of History, Anthropology, Fine Arts and Physics, in its strive to push the global frontiers of Chinese archaeology, jointly with the Institute of Archaeology (IA) of the CASS. The base marks a culmination of two decades of collaboration between the IA and the CCAA, a partnership that has had great impact on studies on the ancestry of Austronesian populations in Southeast Asia, and the origins of early jade cultures in East Asia. ‘ The study of Hong Kong history should not be confined to local findings. For a balanced picture, it was important to weave the different threads of East Asian history.’