国立情報学研究所 - ディジタル・シルクロード・プロジェクト
『東洋文庫所蔵』貴重書デジタルアーカイブ

I t is the aim of this volume to describe the archaeological collections that have been
made in the province of Sinkiang by the Swedish participants in the Sino-
Swedish Expedition of Dr. Sven Hedin. This expedition touched Sinkiang during
the years 1928—31. My own visit to the province was limited to 1928, but in 1934
I re-visited it as a member of Sven Hedin's highway expedition. Besides the
Swedish members Hedin, Hörner, Norin, Ambolt and myself, our Chinese
colleague, Mr. Parker C. Chen, was an active contributor to the collections. The
respective responsibility for the various sections will emerge from the text.
The collections are to be found in the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities in
Stockholm. The finds from Lop-nor that were made during the motor-car expedi-
tion of 1934 are loans and will, according to contract, be returned to the Chinese
authorities. These latter finds bear the numbers 1—44 in the descriptive lists.
It was at first planned that the prehistoric material of the expedition should be
published separately in series with Palaeontologia Sinica. This is, moreover, what
will be done with the main part of it. There are several reasons why the prehistoric
finds from Sinkiang are included in this volume, the chief being their small num-
ber. As the content of this book was already very heterogeneous it was thought suit-
able to include also the prehistoric material to form a kind of background to the
historical finds. The arrangement has thus become consistently topographical in-
stead of chronological.
I have made practically no mention of the circumstances and the general course
of the various journeys during which these collections have been brought together.
I have restricted myself to a description of finds and ancient remains. The reason
for this is that Dr. Hedin plans a comprehensive chronicle of all the members'
journeys for our Report Series.
The present volume is for the most part descriptive. It makes no pretensions to
completeness in what I may call the 'synthetic' parts.
I am fully aware of the many defects in this publication, above all the dispropor-
tion between the amount of the finds and the bulk of the book. This will certainly
meet with criticism, but in adopting Sir Aurel Stein's method with complete de-
scriptive lists accompanying the text I was convinced of the great facilities his

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