China’s 2025 ‘Top 10 Archaeological Discoveries’

Although China has a long tradition of historical writing, antiquarian scholarship and collecting, archaeology as a modern discipline is comparatively young, and yet the scale and volume of modern fieldwork in China probably now outstrip those in any other country.Every year for more than 30 years, the archaeology sector in China has selected 10 archaeological sites as its 'Top 10 Archaeological Discoveries in China', popularly known as the 'Oscars of Chinese Archaeology'.Founded in 1990 as an initiative between the Chinese Archaeological Society and the bi-weekly newspaper China Cultural Relics News (中国文物报), the selection process was upgraded in 2009 to be supervised by the National Cultural Heritage Administration (an administrative agency affiliated with the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the People's Republic of China), establishing it as a highly authoritative industry benchmark.In 2019, the selection regulations were revised, and the approval process was further standardised.Projects can be either archaeological research programmes or excavations conducted during infrastructure construction, and they are nominated by the organisations themselves.Decisions are announced annually in April, covering the previous calendar year.Our aim here is to bring this internationally important competition to a wider audience through a description of the selection process and a summary of this year's 10 sites, rather than to provide comments on the final selection.A panel of more than 100 council members of the Chinese Archaeological Society assess the applications and create a short list of 20 projects, which are then evaluated by a committee of around 21 senior archaeologists.This process requires excavation team leaders to deliver a 15-minute presentation followed by a Q&A session; these are now livestreamed across multiple national and social-media platforms, allowing the public to follow professional archaeological debate in real time.The scale of this engagement can be considerable: when the final-selection process moved entirely online in 2020, the livestream attracted 22.78 million cumulative views by the morning of the second day, after a full day and a half of project presentations, subsequently exceeding 40 million views following the final announcement.This openness not only strengthens professional scrutiny and accountability, but also turns the selection into a major annual event for public engagement, stimulating wider interest in archaeological research and heritage protection in China.Importantly, the nomination process often precedes the publication in formal or traditional channels for major excavations, so it is an extremely useful way of keeping abreast of the most recent finds for both Chinese and international scholars.