On February 19th, all undergraduate students and archaeology graduate students from the School of History in 2022 gathered and, under the guidance of teachers from the School of History, went to the Bairencheng Archaeological Base of RUC, where they will have a direct dialogue with history.
The Bairencheng Ruins are located in Hebei Province. Existing data show that the construction of Bairencheng was no later than the middle of the Warring States Period. After more than 2,000 years, the Ruins have been well preserved and were listed as a national key cultural relic protection site in 2013. In 2022, the Bairencheng Archaeological Base of RUC was put into use and officially unveiled in 2023. Bairencheng has become the "new classroom" for the "Field Archaeological Practice" course of RUC students.
Since the establishment of the archaeology discipline, "field archaeology internship" has been one of the core courses of undergraduate education in the School of History. It adopts the model of "1/3 theory teaching" + "2/3 practical operation", which matches theoretical content with practical content one by one, allowing students to deepen their understanding of archaeology through the interaction of knowledge and practice. Students fully experience the process of an archaeological project "from a piece of soil to a research paper". The entire archaeological process constantly sharpens students' observation, critical thinking, practical skills and logical reasoning abilities, and the cultivation of these comprehensive qualities is the goal and value of the course.
In order to cultivate integrated historical talents and better promote discipline construction, the School of History deepened curriculum reform and became the only university in the country to offer a "field archaeology" course for all undergraduate history students. The university hopes to break the boundaries of traditional classrooms, strengthen the integrated teaching of archaeology, Chinese history, and World history, strengthen the comprehensive research of interdisciplinary categories such as scientific archaeology, animal archaeology, and plant archaeology, and rely on the Bairencheng archaeological internship base to gradually advance field investigations and historical research.
"Archaeological internship base + top talents", "Archaeological internship base + labor education", "Archaeological internship base + industry talents"... RUC’s archaeology has moved from the classroom to the field, and from the field to society. It has not only allowed generations of students to complete their academic experience in the field, but also continuously broadened the scope of the discipline of archaeology, added rich practical experience to the development of Chinese archaeology, and opened up a new path for historical education in the "RUC path".
