The term paleography usually designates the study of ancient writing in all its aspects (decipherment, dating, hand identification, provenience identification…). The term gǔwénzìxué 古文字學 in Chinese, on the other hand, means the ‘study of ancient characters’. "Ancient characters" (gǔwén 古文) here refers to Chinese writing before the Qín unification (221 BCE), as it is usually held that the form of the Chinese scrip…