ISAW Library: New acquisitions and gifts strengthen ISAW's holdings in Ancient China

The ISAW Library is pleased to report significant new additions to its Chinese language holdings this past semester. In addition to our regular acquisition of recent and current scholarship in Chinese on the archaeology, art, and history of ancient China, we also acquired dozens of volumes from Profs. Edward Shaughnessy and Valerie Hansen.

From Edward Shaughnessy, the Lorraine J. and Herrlee G. Creel Distinguished Service Professor in Early Chinese Studies of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at University of Chicago, we acquired a small, but comprehensive set of titles on Chinese bronzes. The most important addition to our collection is 殷周金文集成, a standard 18-volume collection of approximately 12,000 bronze objects and their inscriptions from Yin and Zhou dynasties. This acquisition complements our deep holdings in oracle bone inscriptions, making ISAW’s collection in early Chinese epigraphy and paleography more comprehensive.

This past July Valerie Hansen, Professor of History at Yale University, donated to the ISAW Library nearly 100 titles in Chinese on the social history of Tang and Song China and the Silk Road. This generous gift greatly strengthens ISAW’s holdings on Dunhuang and Turfan, ancient frontier cities along the Silk Road, with several important publications on the archaeology, art, and texts discovered in this fascinating region of the ancient world.

In addition to targeted purchases and welcome donations, we of course continue to build our Chinese language holdings through systematic collection development. The ISAW Library purchased approximately 300 new titles this past spring as part of our effort to build a comprehensive and current collection on ancient Chinese archaeology, paleography, and art. Particular highlights include 商代史 and 新疆维吾尔自治区第三次全国文物普查成果集成. The former is a 10-volume multidisciplinary series on the Shang dynasty incorporating contemporary archaeological discoveries. The latter is the 22-volume product of the third national archaeological census of Xinjiang. A comprehensive compendium of archaeological sites in this large and culturally diverse region, it also includes a number of smaller autonomous regions, such as Hotan, Aksu, Altay, and Ili Kazakh. It also contains special thematic volumes on topics such as ancient cities, rock paintings, deer stones, and karez water systems (descendants of the Persian qanāts).

These acquisitions will be cataloged and available in the stacks by the end of August 2015. ISAW provides monthly lists of new titles online and in a Zotero library, with complete bibliographic information. For more information about our new titles, please follow us on the ISAW Library Blog, Facebook, or Twitter.