bead-welding welding is the process of joining two pieces of metal together by heating and softening them. Forge welding was the earliest method, which involves heating the metal and then hammering the separate pieces together. A bead weld uses a filler material between the pieces of metal to create a joint, called a bead.
bronze an alloy of copper and either arsenic or tin, which produces a material that is harder and more durable than copper alone. Since ores of tin and copper rarely occur in close geographical proximity, bronze working stimulated trade between different cultures in the ancient world, so that the raw materials could be brought together. Bronze can be cast into various shapes or hammered into flat sheets from ingots.
Central Plains region on the lower reaches of the Yellow river, roughly corresponding to modern-day Henan, the southern part of Hebei, the southern part of Shanxi and the western part of Shandong provinces, regarded as the centre of the world in the Chinese Bronze Age.
dynasty a line of rulers deriving from the same family or clan. Historians usually divide Chinese history into periods that take their names from the dynasty that was in power during the period under discussion.
Eurasian steppe an extensive area of grassland stretching from what is now Ukraine eastwards to Mongolia. During the Bronze Age the steppe supported the grazing herds of nomadic tribespeople, whose mobility was based on their domestication of the horse and probably sheep, goats and cattle. Their horsemanship was a great advantage in military terms, while the mobility of these tribes was significant in disseminating language and culture over a wide area. The Great Wall of China was built in part to protect the Central Plains from attack by the Eurasian nomads.
inlay a decorative technique involving the insertion of contrasting materials into depressions in the surface of the object being decorated. Inlays are frequently precious materials such as gold, silver, turquoise or jade.
lacquer a hard, shiny decorative material used to give a glossy surface to wooden objects. In China it is derived from the poisonous resin of Toxicodendron vernicifluum, the Chinese lacquer tree, and Chinese lacquerware has been found that dates back to the Neolithic period.
lei a type of ritual vessel for alcohol.
loess sediment formed by the accumulation of wind-borne silt, which can form layers several hundred metres thick.
mausoleum a monumental building containing the tomb of one or more people.
proto-porcelain an early form of fired and glazed ceramic ware, but without the translucency of true porcelain. Proto-porcelain has been found dating from the Shang dynasty, around 1600 BCE.
rammed earth a building technique whereby walls are built by compacting layers of earth into an externally supported wooden frame.
ramped tomb a burial chamber which is accessed via one or more ramped causeways; the number of ramps was an indicator of status in the Chinese Bronze Age.
skew chamber type of burial chamber in which the entrance passageway or ante-chamber is at an angle to the main chamber.
slag by-product of metal smelting, the material that is left after the metal has been extracted from the ore. It has a glassy surface and was used in ancient times to make items of jewellery or glassware.
turquoise a blue-green mineral that has been prized as a gemstone for thousands of years and was one of the first gems to be mined. It is often associated with copper deposits.
After a test excavation in 1959 at Erlitou in present-day Henan province, the archaeologist Xu Xusheng was thrilled to discover the ruins of what he believed to be the first Shang capital, Bo, established by King Tang. He did not foresee that this discovery would initiate half a century of excavations and debate on the identity of the founder of the city. It is only recently that most Chinese archaeologists have agreed that Erlitou was most likely established and occupied by the Xia, an idea first proposed by Zou Heng that was vigorously challenged in the 1970s. Of the four occupational phases, the second reached 3 sq km (1.2 square miles). It consists of a rectangular enclosed palace area surrounded by elite tombs, a ceremonial area, a bronze foundry, a turquoise workshop and various functional areas. The whole city was divided by two roads, crisscrossing next to the northeast corner of the palace area. The roads and palaces were the most significant landmark in the city, an unprecedented phenomenon predating the similar design of the Forbidden City by four millennia. Controlling the production and consumption of luxury goods was a vital strategy for the Erlitou elite to consolidate their power. Goods such as bronze plates with turquoise inlay were distributed to areas as far away as northwest China. In return, they received exotic items, such as proto-porcelain from south China.
The idea of ‘China’ was fostered at Erlitou, a village in central China where successive excavations have revealed one of the largest and earliest urban centres in Chinese history.
Next to palace No. 3 a rich elite tomb with a wooden coffin was unearthed. It contained bronzes, jade, lacquers, proto-porcelain, white ceramics, numerous other types of objects and, most amazingly, a dragon-shaped turquoise object. The consumption of these luxury goods served to display the occupant’s social status, which is further strengthened by the inclusion of this turquoise object with a dragon shape, a unique design appearing only in very few special contexts.
XUSHENG XU
1888–1976
Archaeologist and historian. Organized and directed one of the earliest excavations in China at Doujitai in 1933.
ZOU HENG
1927–2005
One of the most prominent Bronze Age archaeologists in China. First person to systematically study pottery discovered at many important Bronze Age sites.
Yijie Zhuang
The significance of Yinxu was first established when the origin of some ancient oracle bones inscribed with the names of the Shang kings was traced to the site in the early 20th century. This metropolis of the late Shang is located in Anyang, a city in north Henan province, on the banks of the Huan river. The palace area is in the middle of the site to the south of the river. More than 80 large-scale building foundations have been found, encircled by a deep moat connecting to the river. These buildings might have been used for ancestor worship, for hosting political activities by the royal families or as living quarters. Millions of oracle bones have been found on the site, offering a key to the understanding of the divination activities that once took place here. Dozens of other residential areas were scattered around the palace area, with many handicraft workshops among them. Across the Huan river to the north, 13 ramped tombs were found in the royal cemetery along with more than 2,500 sacrificial pits in the eastern section. Most of the sacrifice pits were filled with human skeletons. Although the royal tombs had been badly looted, many fine artefacts were discovered, like the ‘Mother Wu’ Ding-quadripod, the largest bronze artefact ever discovered from Bronze Age China.
The authenticity of early Chinese documented history was confirmed by the discovery of Yinxu, the last capital of the Shang dynasty, which was one of the earliest excavation sites in the history of Chinese archaeology.
Two recently excavated workshops give an insight into craft production in Yinxu. In the Xiaomintun bronze foundry, thousands of pieces of mould debris and slag, together with bronze-casting areas, mould preparing and drying pits, give us an idea of how piece-mould casting worked. Tiesanlu was a huge bone-working workshop. Cattle, pig and deer bones were made into pins, awls and arrowheads. The remains provide us with information about the technology as well as the organization of production.
Sai Ma
At almost a tonne in weight, the ‘Mother Wu’ quadripod is the largest Bronze Age artefact discovered in China.
Over 1,700 bronze, gold and jade artefacts and many ivory tusks were uncovered from two rectangular vertical pits in Guanghan, Sichuan province, in southwestern China in 1986. Following years of subsequent excavations, archaeologists have unveiled a walled city with large building foundations, tombs and pottery kilns. Considered one of the most significant archaeological discoveries of the 20th century in China, the Sanxingdui site has revealed glimpses of a unique Bronze Age civilization that had lain forgotten for over 3,000 years. The majority of the bronze objects recovered from the two pits remain mysterious in terms of their design and function. Sculpture forms the main category of bronzes and some gigantic masks (one 66 cm [26 in.] tall and 138 cm [54 in.] wide) are obviously too large to wear. Indeed, no parallel for them is known anywhere else in China. Furthermore, the large quantities of jade were mainly in the form of discs and blades of various designs, not the ornaments that are abundant at Yinxu. More surprisingly, most of the objects had been deliberately damaged and burned before being carefully placed layer by layer in the pits. Unfortunately, no written evidence has been found at Sanxingdui and our understanding of the site is rather limited. Viewed in conjunction with the ash and bones of animals in the pits, the objects were possibly ritual sacrificial offerings.
The Sanxingdui site is located thousands of miles away from the Central Plains, the traditional dynastic centre, and its peak is contemporary with the late Shang at Yinxu, c. 1200 BCE.
The village of Sanxingdui, which literally means ‘three star mounds’, is named after its earthen landscape features, which are the remains of artificial rammed earth walls. This particular construction method suggests Sanxingdui’s contact with Erlitou or Zhengzhou, together with some similarities in ceramics and jade blades found there. However, many of the mysteries of Sanxingdui remain to be unlocked.
RITUAL VESSELS & THEIR DISTRIBUTION
Qin Cao
The function of the enormous masks and sculptures discovered in deep pits at Sanxingdui remains a mystery.
Local farmers ploughing their fields in 1989 uncovered this Early Bronze Age (Shang period) tomb, surpassed in richness only by the tomb of the famous Lady Fu Hao at Yinxu. The area where the occupant must have been placed was covered with jade ornaments. He was likely a military leader, as suggested by the 232 bronze weapons unearthed. Some bronze arrowheads, often preserved as complete sets, were still partially covered by lacquer and leather pieces. At the time of his death, this warrior had at hand a huge range of vessels of various types and from diverse sources. These were probably inherited from his ancestors who would have received bronze vessels from the Shang court and other regional powers. He also had more than 700 luxurious jade ornaments and precious jewels. The local contribution to this rich inventory was over 100 items of high-temperature hard ceramics and proto-porcelains. Some were decorated with distinctive geometric motifs of local styles; others had carved symbols on the surface, possibly the name of the potter. How did the occupant become so rich? This region has many copper-mining sites that were in use for thousands of years. The occupant and his group controlled and exported this resource, receiving valuable goods in return. The region’s own luxury items, proto-porcelain, appeared in central China as early as the Erlitou period.
Located in a strategically important position near the Yangtze river, the occupant of this tomb enjoyed long-term trading relationships with the Shang and other regional powers.
Situated on the floodplain of the Ganjiang river, a major tributary of the Yangtze river, the survival of the Dayangzhou tomb from erosion is a pure miracle. Because of the sandy deposits into which it was dug, archaeologists could hardly recognize the shape of the chamber. They failed to identify traces of a complete coffin, apart from some pieces of decayed wood and organic materials.
STATE MANAGEMENT & BUREAUCRACY
Yijie Zhuang
The bronze and jade objects in the tomb are testament to the power and status of those who controlled the region’s natural resources.
Li Ji (1896–1979), regarded as the ‘Father of Chinese Archaeology’, is one of the most important anthropologists and archaeologists in 20th-century China. In 1918, as a graduate of the Tsinghua College, he joined the Boxer Indemnity Scholarship Program to study in the United States, and gained China’s first doctorate in anthropology at Harvard University in 1923. After a short stay at Nankai University, Li came back to Tsinghua and joined the newly established Academy of Chinese Learning in 1925. He started his career in archaeology by leading the Xiyincun excavation in 1926, the very first archaeological excavation carried out by Chinese scholars. Xiyincun’s success, as well as his dedication to fieldwork, led to Li later becoming director of the Division of Archaeology of the Academia Sinica, and also led him to ‘the cause of his life’ – Anyang.
As the Shang capital before the first millennium BCE, Anyang remained unknown to the world until the late 1920s, when Li and his team excavated the Shang palace, and found archaeological evidence of oracle bones, ritual bronzes, pottery and so on. In 1937, the outbreak of war forced Li to stop the fieldwork, and escort all the archaeological records from one place to another, and eventually to Taiwan in 1948.
Afterwards, as the founder of the Department of Anthropology at the National Taiwan University, and the head of the Institute of History and Philology, Li dedicated the last 30 years of his life to the study of Anyang materials. Using scientific approaches, he standardized terminology, and introduced typology into his archaeological work. He also devoted himself to co-operating with museums, protecting archaeological resources and providing a training ground for new generations of archaeologists.
Li Ji’s final book, Anyang, published in 1977, is a portrait of his life of archaeology.
Beichen Chen & Chao Tang
Li Ji is considered the ‘Father of Chinese Archaeology’ and discovered the ancient Shang capital at Anyang. His systematic approach to the study of archaeology has been influential throughout China.
In the hope of exploring the capitals of the Zhou dynasty and guided by ancient texts, the archaeologist Chang-ju Shih investigated Zhouyuan for the first time in the 1940s. Over the following decades, bronze hoards, tombs, building foundations and workshops were discovered, and the site came to be regarded as the pre-dynastic capital from which the Zhou people later conquered the Shang. It is a huge site with a maximum area of 30 sq km (11.5 square miles). Reservoirs and water channels, together with natural gullies and man-made wells, give us a picture of its water supply system. Large building foundations have been found, usually made of rammed earth. These are believed to be either palaces or the ancestral temples of the elites. Thousands of inscribed turtle shell fragments were unearthed in foundations near the modern village of Fengchu. The characters carved on them are so small that they could be regarded as miniatures. Bronze foundries, Jue-earring workshops and bone workshops indicate a high degree of standardization and specialization, demonstrating Zhouyuan’s status as an economic centre. However, its role as the pre-dynastic capital has been challenged, mainly because of the lack of prestige remains and goods from the proto-Zhou period. Zhouyuan is certainly important, but its historical position needs further exploration.
Located on the south margin of the loess plateau area in northwest China, Zhouyuan, the ‘Plain of Zhou’, is one of the most important capitals of the proto-Zhou period and a capital-like city of the Western Zhou dynasty.
In ancient texts, Zhouyuan was described as fertile land where bitter edible plants like Viola verecunda magically became sweet. Danfu, one of the Zhou ancestors, led his clansmen there, after which the Zhou conquered the Shang. After the establishment of the Zhou dynasty, Zhouyuan was given to Zhou Gong as his fiefdom. Zhouyuan remained prosperous throughout the Western Zhou dynasty, but after the attack of the Quanrong barbarians, the survivors moved to the east and the city quickly collapsed.
KING WU
reigned c. 1046–1043 BCE
First king of the Zhou dynasty.
ZHOU GONG (DUKE OF ZHOU)
fl. c. 1100 BCE
The younger brother of King Wu.
CHANG-JU SHIH
1902–2004
Archaeologist and historian. A pioneer of early archaeology.
Sai Ma
An inscription on this vessel describes a previous Shang family surrendered to Zhou people and settled down at Zhouyuan.
From 2011 to 2013, two seasons of excavation at Yejiashan near the present-day city of Suizhou, north Hubei province, revealed the site of a large-scale Western Zhou state cemetery with 147 burials. Over 2,000 grave goods were uncovered, ranging from bronzes and ceramics to lacquer, jade and stoneware, reflecting a wealthy community that flourished here 3,000 years ago. This collection of luxury artefacts derives from multiple disparate sources. Some ideas were borrowed from provincial traditions from hundreds of miles away, such as a flamboyant lei vessel from southwestern China, and the tiger-shaped flanges on a bell from further south. The majority of the bronzes indicated that the ancient Hubei people had adopted a very similar ritual sequence to the Zhou metropolitan areas in the north. Some of them were inscribed with ancient Chinese characters, for example, ‘Marquis of Zeng’, implying that the owner saw himself as the ruler of a Zhou regional power, the state of Zeng. Although ignored in most of the historical texts known to us, previous discoveries indicated that the Zeng controlled the area from the end of the 9th century to the mid-4th century BCE. By pushing back this timeline another 200 years, the newly excavated Yejiashan makes the Zeng one of the longest-lived regional powers in the whole Zhou period.
At least two generations of state rulers were buried in the Zeng Marquis cemetery, and one of their tombs is by far the largest found in the archaeology of the Western Zhou.
Like other ruling classes in the Zhou period, the most powerful occupants at Yejiashan cemetery arranged their tombs on the high visibility mound, surrounded by middlesized and smaller burials. The locations of all the important burials were carefully arranged, starting in the north with the tomb of a possible ruler, and then going south in orderly pairs of later generations. Each one has a possible ruler and his consort(s) side by side.
Beichen Chen
The range of goods indicates that this community was widely connected with other Bronze Age regions.
Following clues from ancient texts, archaeologists had begun to look for the legendary Yong City in the 1930s, and at Fengxiang county in Shaanxi province a site covering 51 sq km (19.5 square miles) was discovered. Within the city is a palace district, workshops, a marketplace and residential areas for commoners. One of the large foundations found near the modern village of Majiazhuang comprises a rectangular wall with one big building located in the middle and two small ones to the south. Its layout is exactly the same as the descriptions from ancient texts of an ancestral shrine. Hundreds of sacrificial pits in the middle yard confirm this assumption. Yong City was so important in the history of the Qin that important ceremonies, like the coronation of Emperor Qinshihuang, were held there even after the capital had been moved elsewhere. Fourteen huge mausoleums were located in the southwest suburb of the city. Triple trenches respectively encircle the mausoleum area, each mausoleum (some include two or more tombs) and some of the tombs. Qin tombs have always been noted for their scale. Of these, Qin Duke Tomb No. 1 is the largest ever to have been excavated in China. It is 300 m (328 yards) long and 24 m (26 yards) deep, with 186 human sacrifices, and is believed to be the tomb of Duke Jing.
Yong City was the capital city of Qin for nearly 300 years from 677 to 383 BCE, which made it the most enduring capital city in the history of Qin state.
The layout of the cemetery could be regarded as a transitional form between the previous ‘centralized royal cemetery system’ and the subsequent ‘independent mausoleum system’. In the Shang and Western Zhou periods, multiple generations of state rulers were buried in the same cemetery, with their own tomb but without an independent mausoleum. However, from the period of Yong City, the independent mausoleum system became much more popular, and later on, in the Qin and Han dynasties, it was fully established.
DUKE JING OF QIN
reigned 576–537 BCE
The 18th ruler of Qin state.
EMPEROR QINSHIHUANG
reigned 246–221 BCE
as king of Qin state
reigned 221–210 BCE
as emperor of Qin dynasty
He conquered all the other warring states, united China, established the Qin dynasty and became the first emperor in Chinese history.
Sai Ma
This model shows the tomb of Duke Jing, one of the most significant finds at the ancient Qin capital city.
Since the crackdown on tomb robbery at Majiayuan in northwest China in 2006, archaeological work has uncovered more than 20 tombs of the late Warring States period from the total of 59 tombs and sacrificial pits in the cemetery. The structure of the tombs is extremely unusual compared with those found previously in this area. Most of the tombs have a vertical earth-pit with a skew chamber and a stepped tomb tunnel. The steps are usually made up of odd numbers like 9, 7, 5, 3 and 1, which probably represents a social hierarchy. Animal sacrifices were popular, as indicated by the large number of horse, cattle and sheep skulls and forelegs found. Objects unearthed from the tombs show multicultural factors. The tiger-shaped and bighorn sheep-shaped ornaments on the chariots may be influenced by the Eurasian steppe culture, while the widespread use of gold and silver, the appearance of glass and gold bead-welding technology could be related to western cultures, such as the Mediterranean, Pazyryk and Scythian. The cocoon-shaped Hu-jar is a typical Qin cultural object and the spade-shaped foot Li-tripod derives from the indigenous Xirong culture. It is obvious that the Xirong culture played a very important role in cultural exchange between the west and the east.
Majiayuan is a recently excavated cemetery in Gansu province in northwest China, which is believed to be the cemetery of the so-called Xirong (barbarians in the west) tribe.
Among the remarkable discoveries at Majiayuan cemetery are the luxurious chariots in the tomb tunnel and the chamber. Most of the chariots are decorated with lacquer and glittering bronze, silver and gold ornaments, usually of hollow geometric and animal motifs. These decorations are found on nearly all parts of the chariots. They are so over-decorated that scholars believe they were meant only for ritual and funeral purposes rather than everyday use.
Sai Ma
