From Nanyang to the Yinxu excavations
Born in Nanyang, Henan, Dong worked in teaching, publishing and bookselling before developing his studies of early writing. He audited classes at Peking University from 1922 and participated in research on songs, folklore and language, as well as the preparation of oracle-bone rubbings.
In 1928 the emerging Institute of History and Philology employed him to investigate finds around Xiaotun at Anyang. He proposed excavation and directed the first trial campaign that October. Further field seasons connected inscriptional study with recorded findspots and associated remains.
Diviners and the dating of inscriptions
His 1931 study of four large turtle plastrons advanced the use of named diviners to group inscriptions and investigate their dates. Dong developed ten dating criteria and a five-period framework, comparing writing, personal relationships and archaeological information.
He also examined days, months and sacrificial sequences in the inscriptions, completing Yinli pu, his reconstruction of the Shang calendar, in 1945. Grouping texts and reconstructing exact calendar dates raised related but distinct evidential problems. Later discoveries and joins of fragments supplied additional material against which chronological proposals could be tested.
Publication, exhibition and later work
Evacuated with the institute during the war, Dong continued organizing inscriptions in Kunming and Lizhuang. For a national art exhibition in Chongqing in 1942, he selected fifty Yinxu pieces and explained their chronological grouping. He also adapted oracle-bone characters for calligraphy, couplets and poems.
Dong lectured at the University of Chicago in 1947, became an Academia Sinica academician in 1948 and later continued research in Taiwan. He directed the institute in 1951–1955 and subsequently worked in Hong Kong. A 2013 memorial exhibition revisited his wartime selection, distinguishing original pieces from fragments joined through later research.