:
William
Watson
litor
VNIEL
CHINA
«7-5L>
CHINA Until the last few years, the archaeology of China has been a matter of fragmentary knowledge, speculation, and uncertainty. Since the war, however, much new information has come to light and, above all, the results of research have been organized so as to be available to scholars in a field where previous books have become out of date more rapidly than in any other. A new picture is being built up of early China, which is now presented to the English
reader for the
first
time.
There are two reasons for
this spectacular
excavation in China had lagged far behind the West in the techniques of digging and recording, so that many of the finds valuable and often very beautiful were unlocated and undated in themselves and so of limited value to the archaeological historian. Now, however, controlled excavations are conducted there with standards of precision comparable to those expected in the West. Secondly, the results of this research have, especially since 1949, been more and more fully documented in learned periodicals. The task of assembling the evidence and comparing material relics from all over the vast territory of China is now much easier than hitherto. Sites previously excavated inadequately and objects already forming parts of museum collections are being reinterpreted and are gradually falling into place in the general pattern.
progress.
—
Firstly,
—
Mr. Watson's expert knowledge of Chinese him to keep pace with this advance.
enables
Much
of the information contained here has never before been published in English. To the new material, moreover, he has been able to apply the critical standards current
European and American archaeology, and book which the specialist will find an important addition to knowledge, and which will be a source of pleasure
in
so to produce a
to every reader interested in Chinese history
and
its
background.
See back flap for information on the author
Ancient Peoples and Places
CHINA
General Editor
DR.GLYN DANIEL
Ancient Peoples and Places
CHINA BEFOKE THE
HAN DYNASTY
William Watson
PHOTOGRAPHS LINE DRAWINGS AND 3 MAPS
77 65
FREDERICK
A.
PRAEGER
Publishers
New
York
•
Washington
THIS
IS
VOLUME TWENTY/THREE
IN
THE SERIES
Ancient Peoples and Places
GENERAL EDITOR: DRGLYN DANIEL
BOOKS THAT MATTER Published in
in the
United States of America
1961 by Frederick A. Praeger, Inc., Publishers
111 Fourth Avenue,
New
Second Printing [with All
York, N.Y. 10003
corrections)
1966
rights reserved
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 61-14103
©
William Watson 1961
Printed in Great Britain
CONTENTS LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
INTRODUCTION I
Palaeolithic sites
Microlithic Cultures in the
II
ii
THE PALAEOLITHIC AND NEOLITHIC PERIODS The
22 28
Gobi
Desert, Mongolia and Manchuria
31
The Yang Shao Neolithic Culture The Kansu Neolithic Culture The Lung Shan Culture Neolithic Cultures in the Southeast
37 41
THE EARLIER BRONZE AGE: THE SHANG DYNASTY
48
54
Storage Pits
57 58 67
The Chronology of Shang
Sites
The Great Shang Tombs
69
Ritual Bronze Vessels
75
Bronze Casting
79 82
Arms Pottery
Augury The Shang II
7
94 99 State
THE LATER BRONZE AGE: THE CHOU DYNASTY
103
109
Tombs
114 120 122 126
Arms
131
Religion and Feudal Ceremonial Fortified Cities
Architecture
Iron
and the Chariot
I4O
IV
THE ART OF THE BRONZE AGE Motifs of the Sbang Period Innovations of the Early Cbou Period
The Middle Cbou Period Interlacery and local
Northern Styles
Bronzes of the Cb'u State Some Unorthodox Funeral Art
An
Independent Bronze
Art
I48
150 157 160 162 168 178
in
Yunnan Sculpture and fade Carving
180
184
TEXT REFERENCES
187
BIBLIOGRAPHY
192
SOURCES OF ILLUSTRATIONS
204
THE PLATES
20$
NOTES ON THE PLATES
253
INDEX
261
1
ILLUSTRATIONS plates
2
i,
3
4 5
6
Earth impressions, Hsi Pei
8
Royal Shang tomb, Hsi Pei Musical stone,
ii
Chariot burial,
12
Stepped
13
15
Shang Bronze Shang Bronze Shang Bronze
16
Limestone
17
Shang Shang Shang Shang Shang
18 19, 20, 21
22 23
Kang Kang
Wu Kuan Ts'un Wu Kuan Ts'un
Shang tomb,
io
14
Ta
pit burial,
Ssu
Ta
Kung Kung
Ssu
ritual vessel, tsun ritual axe, yueh ritual vessel, tsun
figure
of seated
man
Bronze
ritual vessel, bo
bronze
ritual goblet,
bronze
ritual vessels, yu, chia,
ku
bronze
ritual goblet, chiieh
24
Oracle bones Early
26
Shang bone handle
27
Horse's head as bronze pole
Chou
bronze harness mounts
finial
vessels, ting,
30
Shang bronze ritual Shang carved white
3
Bronze
yu
ritual vessel,
kwng
clay vase
34
Shang bronze
35
Inscription from kuei
36
Bronze harness mount, and pole Bronze statuette of serving/man
37
li
ceremonial halberd, ko
25
28, 29
3 3,
at
7 9
32,
Pan P'o Ts'un, Shensi Flexed burial grave, Pai Tao P'ing, Kansu Storage pits, Pan P'o Ts'un, Shensi Pottery bowl, Pan P'o Ts'un, Shensi Funeral urns, Kansu Yang Shao culture
Excavations
ritual vessels, ting, kuei
finial
PLATES
38
Bronze bridle cheek'piece
39
Bronze axlccap and linclvpin from chariot
40
Bronze
41
Bronze openwork plaque
42
Bronze axe^head
43
Winged
44
Bronze plaque of tiger and deer
45
Bronze plaque of tiger
46
ko, Shou Hsien and inlaid bronze spearhead Bronze sword with Scythian^type hilt Bronze sword of Classical Chinese type Bronze sword and scabbard Iron bivalve axe mould, Hsing Lung Hsien Earth impressions of chariots, Liu Li Ko
47 48
49 50 5i
52
68,
ritual vessel, ting
tiger as
bronze handle
Bronze halberd,
Inscribed
53
Bronze
bell
54
Bronze mirror
55
Bronze
56
Gilt
57
Bronze
58
Bronze inlaid table-leg
59
Silver/gilt inlaid belt'hook
coffin
handle
openwork dagger handle tiger
man
60
Bronze
statuette
61
Bronze
flask, pien
62
Inlaid base,
63
64
Jade cup, Late Chou jade dragon
65
Late
66
Late
67
Late
69
Inlaid gilded'bronze belthooks
70
Inlaid bronze belthook
71
Carved wooden head, Ch'ang Sha Carved wooden monster, Hsin Yang Bronze spearhead, Shih Chai Shan
72 73
of serving hu
Chin Ts'un Chin Ts'un
Chou jade sword guard Chou ritual jade pi Chou jade slide
8
plates
74
Bronze ornament, Shih Chai Shan
75
Painting on
76
Lacquered
77
Painted design,
figures
1
Map
Ch'ang Sha Ch'ang Sha Hsin Yang
silk,
shield,
of modern
China showing
2
Palaeolithic stone tools, p.
3
Mesolithic tools, p. 31
sites,
p.
20
27
4
Neolithic stone axes and knives, p.
5
Pottery Kilns,
6 8
Yang Shao pottery, p. 43 Painted pottery, Kansu Yang Shao culture, p. 43 Pottery head, Kansu Yang Shao culture, p. 47
9
Map
7
10 11
12 13
14 15
16 17 1
19 20 21
22 23
24
Cheng Chou,
showing find' spots oj
34
p. 40
neolithic sickles, p.
Lung Shan pottery, p. 53 Sector C, Hsiao T'un Anyang, p. 65 Plan and section oj storage pit, Hui Hsien, Plan of great tombs, Hsi Pei Kang, p. 70 Great tomb, Wu Kuan Tsun,p. 73
68
Ritual bronze vessels of the Shang period, p. 77 bolts, pp. 82, 83 Emblematic characters, Shang period, pp. 84, 8$
Arrowheads and cross-bow
Bronze Bronze Bronze
Shang period, p. 86 of the Shang period, p. 86
halberds of the sacrificial knife
socketed axes, p. 87
Knife and spearheads, Late Shang, pp. 88, 89 Key to chariot burial, Ta Ssii K'ung, p. 91
Jade animal amulets, Ta Ssii K'ung, p. 93 Development of pottery, bronzes, stone axes and
26
oracle bones, pp. 96, 97 Bone pins of the Shang period, pp. 98, 99 Table of earliest form of Chinese writing,
27
Pottery of the Western
2$
p.
49
p. 101
Chou period, p. 112
28
Map
29
30
Plan of Chao Wang Ch'eng, p. Engraved decoration, Hui Hsien,
31
Plan of tombs, Pan
of Feudal States, p- 115
(
Po
1
23
p. 12$
Tsun,p. 128
FIGURES
32 33 34 35
36 37
38 39
Bronze
trigger
mechanism of cross-bow, p. 134
Li Ko, p. 13J Bronze swords, p. 138 Bronze sword with hand' and' serpent mark, p. 138 Bronze halberds, p. 140 Bronze spearheads, Chung Chou Lu, p. 141 Reconstruction of chariot, Liu
40
Iron edges for axe and spade, p.
41
Pottery of 6th' 4th centuries B.C., p. 146
42
Designs from Late Shang bronze
43
44
Jade amulets of Later Shang period, p. 155 Bronze pole finial of Later Shang period, p. i$6
45
Decorative motifs from bronzes, p. 160
46 4j
48 49
50 51
$2 53 57 $5
56 57
$8 $9
10
Plan of great tomb, Ku Wei Tsun,p. 130 Plan of shaft grave, Ch'ang Sha, p. 133
1
43 vessels, p. 151
Harness cheek'piece of bronze, p. 161 vessel, Hsin Cheng, p. 162 Dragon motifs, Hsin Cheng, pp. 162, 163
Design from bronze
Dragon diaper motif, Hsin Cheng, p. 164 Bronze hu, Chao Ku,p. 166 Bronze tau, Chia Ko Chuang, p. 167 Design from bronze vase, p. 168 Decoration from bronze hu,p. 169 Dragon and tiger designs, p. ijo Bronze vessels and bells, Sbou Hsien, p. 171 Bronze openwork ornament, p. 172 Bronze belt'hooks, pp. 172, 173 Decoration from lacquered box, p. 173 Decoration from lacquered toilet box, p. 174
60
Silver inlaid design, p. 174
61
62
Painted pottery, Shao Kou, p. 175 Design from lid of bronze tou, p. 176
63
Bronze
64 6$
Figures from musical instrument, p. 179 Decorated socketed bronze axe, p. 181
66
Decoration from bronze drum, p. 183
67
Limestone owl, p. 185
68
Ritual jades of the Shang period, p. 186
inlaid belt'hook, p.
177
1
Introduction
Unlike
some nations
described in the books of
the present series, the Chinese people
is
not difficult to
Yellow river from time immemorial. Even the Palaeolithic race, whose bones have been found there, shares some physical peculiarities define historically. It has occupied the valley of the
with the present inhabitants. While the archaeologist may point out culture'traits which connect with other regions, he discovers
no evidence of
movements from without of a size and coherence likely to determine thenceforth the racial and cultural constitution of the land. The manner and the time of the tribal
colonisation of the great Central Plain of north China, sup'
posing such a thing were ever a definable historical event,
is
beyond knowledge and conjecture alike. Within the larger sphere of eastern Asia the Chinese people as we know it today is better defined by language and culture than in anthropological terms. In general a distinction of the physical type may be observed north and south of the Yangtze river,
a boundary
tural division
which corresponded
between the
relatively
in early times to a cul'
advanced
civilisation
of
and the more primitive south. The popular and brown^eyed, is com/ paratively taller and much of it has the Mongol characteristics of yellow skin, slanting eyes and prominent cheek-bones. But other individuals are lighter of skin, with rounder eyes and flatter cheek/bones. In the south the average height is less, the skin is browner and the Mongol characteristics are rarer. We may assume that the periodic infiltration of tribes from the Central Plain
tion north of this line, black'haired
the north into the settled region of the river valley, a constant
theme in the rulers for
early histories
thousands of
which caused anxiety to Chinese had begun long before these
years,
1
China barbarians appeared as a threat to the half of the second millennium B.C.
Shang
The
state
result
in the second
of this contact
is
some groups of the north Chinese them to the Turkish, Tibetan and
reflected in physical traits in
population which
Tungusic
races.
relate
In the south anthropologists speak of a similar
admixture of elements belonging characteristically to the peoples of south-east Asia. In both areas
it is
assumed
that these extran/
eous racial elements fused with an autochthonous Chinese stock,
though the definition of a pure Chinese
strain
seems to
elude anthropologists, and, fortunately for the theme of this
book, has no bearing on cultural noticeable today are
no
is
The
distinctions
greater than those existing in
and
race of multiple origins, local differences. It
history.
clear,
similarities
any great
preponderate over
however, that the expansion of the
Chinese southwards in the past (culturally the process may be observed from Neolithic times) displaced as well as absorbed peoples of somewhat different ethnic character.
Lolo of south-west China surviving
at
The Miao and
the present day as
'national minorities' are unsinicised remainders of a population
which once covered
whole of the southern region. History records that peoples allied to these, no longer distinguishable from the Chinese population, once occupied territory farther east than their present home. Neolithic and Bronze Age civilisation first arose in China in the region extending westwards from the coast approximately between the 35th and 40th parallels of latitude, comprising the lower and middle course of the Yell ow river as far as its abrupt northward turn on the boundary ofShensi province, the
thence extending westwards along the the river basins of central
zone
is
well defined.
The
Kansu. a lluvial
To
Wei
river valley into
and south this plain of Hopei is bounded the north
by quasi/steppe land on the north, while the northern tracts of Shansi, Shensi and Kansu pass into desert. Kansu is mountain^locked to west, and south, and the succession of east-
12
Introduction
west mountain ranges (Pei Ling Shan, Ch'in Ling Shan, Huai Ling Shan) continuing eastwards through Shensi and
Honan marks
the southern limit of this primary cultural area.
In the south-east, where the mountain line ceases, the land drained into the river Huai, and here the lowlying
around the lower Yangtze, rich in lakes and marsh,
is
tracts
are easily
from the Central Plain. The region we have defined coincides approximately with the distribution of the loess, a fine, compact and permeable soil, fertile and easily worked, which is believed to have been carried accessible
by wind from hither Asia during the Pleistocene period
as a
concomitant of the climatic changes which produced the
Age. In Kansu it lies in great depth, often exceeding 200 feet, and in places is eroded into fantastic narrow ravines. The regime of erosion and the sudden heavy rains which cause it, cease as we pass eastwards through Shensi pro' vince, and from the junctions of the Wei with the Yellow river begins the Central Plain proper. Here the loess has been redeposited by soil/sated rivers which ever tend to raise their beds above the level of the plain and spread their fertilising floods. Th is^ is the regio n where uncontrollable flooding has caused periodic disasters" throughout Chine se history aird where the greater possibilities of irrigationhave helped the farmer with the problem of watering the porous loess. On the
glaciations of the Ice
—
loess ter ritory
of both kinds
nortFT^hjna, though we
flouri shed the Neolithic cultures
shall note differences
remains found in the area of primary Plain.
The
loess
of _
between the
and in the Central
natural route of expansion lay in the south/east
towards the mouth of the Yangtze.
The T'ai
western edge of the Central Plain follows the line of the
Hang
divides
range,
off the
province of Shansi. rain
which descends from
the far north
high parallel valleys which
The same
grassed
continues westwards into Shensi.
constitute
and the
and welWatered To judge from the ter/
13
China occurrence of sites, this upland area was Neolithic farmers; although no ley, it
less
frequented by the
and bar/
less suitable for millet
was more favourable than the plain
was the home of the Chou people,
for grazing horses.
It
the ultimate conquerors of
the Shang.
South of the Shensi plateau the line of the Ch'in Ling Shan beyond the Wei river begins the succession of high mountain chains which bar the
way
of Szechwan, whose
rivers
lithic culture
mountain/locked,
to the
area
flatter
The Neo'
drain into the Yangtze.
of Szechwan connects with a tradition extending
along the Yangtze valley, and borders with the Neolithic tradition
of the Central Plain only
at its
To
province and the Huai river basin. impenetrable separate
mountains
of
a region of frequent
north,
and in
low
early times
inimical to agriculture
the west rise the
Anhui all
but
Yunnan and Sikang which
China from Burma and
The s outh angLiOji th/east is
extension into
the Tibetan plateau.
China beyond the Yangtze wooded than the
oi
hills, still better
probably covered with dense
and l ong
r esistant
forest
to the penetration
of
from the north Civilisation spread slowly there from the middle of the first millennium B.C. Only in the last century B.C. were Chinese armies moving freely on the
cultural influences
.
southern seaboard.
The purpose of
this
book is to give a brief account of the China as revealed by archaeological
material culture of ancient study.
It is
well to recognise at the
cession of Stone, Bronze
start that
and Iron Ages and
are less clearly definable in
China than
their subdivisions
in Europe,
where
system of archaeological classification was evolved. often have occasion to point this contrast with the
We
this
shall
West. If
as a
farming economy pra ctised
exclusively with stone tools, then
we may say that large tracts Age long after the discovery
Neolithic ^culture
is sit fined,
of China remained in a Neolithic
H
sue
the familiar
Introduction
of bronze and even survived for some time
become the normal material of the country.
parts
the early
economic
What
is
for tools in the
after
had
iron
most advanced
more mysterious in the light of West, iron itself was slow to
history of the
replace bronze in the manufacture of weapons. Bronzccasting first
appears in a form which would correspond in the West to a
advanced stage of the technique, having many points comparable to the 'Late Bronze Age' of Europe; and iron was relatively
cast some centuries before it was forged, thus confounding our Western preconception of the natural development of this technique. The period here designated the Later Bronze Age
Age
comprises also a stage equivalent to the Early Iron
of
Europe.
Western archaeologists were surprised
of these
learn
to
departures from the cultural sequence established by long study
They were sometimes inclined by supposing that China had been subjected
in the West.
to
account
to the
for
it
same kind
of acculturation from without that so often determined the course of events in Central and Northern Europe. Here in^
from the higher civilisations of Near East and the Mediterranean, at particular times and by determinable routes, created fairly well defined and intelli'
fluences spreading ultimately
the
gible
cultural
successions.
The development of
China did not depend on such
To
Chinese archaeologists
it
culture in
parcels of external influence.
appears unnecessary to
stress
the
evidence against diffusionist views which brought civilisation to
China from Egypt, Mesopotamia
We
should also note
China
that
is
of early
confined to information which the archaeologist
can provide, and disregards the
much
or the Caucasus.
at the outset that a description
literary tradition, necessarily
can contribute to cultural history. For example, we get a jejune picture of the lives of the Nee lithic and Bronze Age farmers unless we take into account
forgoes
peasants'
that the latter
songs
which were anthologised
in
literary
and
15
China
Ching, the 'Book of Odes' present form betwe^ n_jbe-4iirath and
usually moralised dress in the Shih
w ork
This fifth
reached
The
rpnmnVs R.r
must in period,
its
part reflect
material
.
is
basically traditional an<
much earlier The harvest and
customs descending from a
some possibly from Neolithic times. village festivals which it celebrates conjure
mating customs and
up pictures of colourful life in well'organised rural communities. But the archaeologist and historian is naturally shy of drawing on facts recorded at so comparatively late a time, to illustrate the background of cultures which his excavated evidence places in a much earlier period. But in the interest of strict history there is a compensating advantage. If the archaeologist the theory that the spiral patterns
on
is
silent before
certain Neolithic pottery
represent the movements of a fertility dance, he can on the other hand point out that archaeological research lends no support to the tradition of a highly civilised Hsia dynasty which begins
die dynastic succession of traditiona Tjii&tpry. for
He
can question,
example, the statement sometimes ma3e that the
dynasts by their conquest of Central
China
Chou
in the eleventh
century B.C. were responsible for introducing the use of the
plough, or the practice of burying the great under high mounds, or,
on more general grounds,
that the peoples of the
Chou
con/
federacy were mere barbarians before their conquest of the
Shang brought them
into contact with a higher civilisation.
The mention of the Hsia
dynasty, the very existence of which
some modern Chinese historians have questioned, introduces us to an aspect of Chinese historical writing which is at once the delight and the despair of any who attempt to reconstruct the beginnings of Chinese civilisation. In the last few centuries
of the
Chou
from the
fifth
period and under the earlier to the
first
centuries B.C.,
Han
dynasty,
i.e.
Chinese historians were
dominated by a view of the past consecrated in the philosophy of Confucius and his followers. From the beginning, it was held, all
16
China had been
ruled by emperors.
The
list is
headed
Introduction
by a group of rulers of impossible longevity, credited with the seems drily logics.
mundane
and
which Western mytho/ turned into Emperors and ministers
heroic feats of culturcheroes,
rationalised in a spirit
in comparison with
Persons of myth are
engaged in practical administration. Thereafter follow the 'Three Dynasties' of Chinese historians, the houses of Hsia,
Shang and Chou. The exact
dates attributed to all the emperors
when
were not questioned before the second century B.C.,
the
Ssu^ma Ch'ien recorded that his sources did not vouch for their accuracy before a date corresponding to 841 B.C., which remains the earliest year of the exact chronology. The political theory of Confucian historians required that historian
China should have
at all
times been subject to a single ruler.
which so much doubt attaches, was contemporary with that of Shang rather than its predecessor, though the excavated inscriptions by which the historicity of the Shang state was fully corroborated, give no hint of Hsia. The differing accounts of the legendary period It is
possible that the Hsia dynasty, to
reflect theories current in the last
dox
list
few centuries B.C. The ortho'
beginning with T'ai Hao, from 2852 B.C. They are correspond in various ways with a group of Three
names nine prcHsia
rulers,
said to have occupied the throne
made
to
Sovereigns and a group of Five Rulers, the names of these
from the dynastic ones, and regarded appellations. The Three Sovereigns were mostly differing
Fu
as
personal
identified as
Hsi, inventor of writing and cooking and patron of hunt/
Shen Nung, the farmer^god; Sui Jen, inventor of fire. Huang Ti, the Yellow Emperor, may figure among them. All or some of these, and other legendary personages, are found variously combined in different texts. ing;
LOne may
surmise that tribes inhabiting different parts of the
country contributed the
stories
of
their
ancestral
gods and
animistic lore to the general stock of Chinese legend, although
small traces remain of local connexions^Huang Ti and
Yen Ti 17
China (the latter identified
Nung)
with the farmeivgod Shen
connected in legend with
rivers in the
Shensi, where they are said to have spent their youth.
Ti had a
fight
with a
'rebel'
Yu
Ch'ih
are
western province of
Huang
in the neighbouring
province of Shansi. Slight hints are traced of connexions of others of the legendary rulers with east
of the Yellow
river
and the Huai
correspond
allegiances
China, the lower basin
river valley.
These local
approximately to the two cultural
found in north China in the Neolithic period. Indications of geography preserved in Chinese flood legends not unnaturally point to the region around the mouth
traditions
of the Yellow
river.
The emperor
Yii, regarded as founder
of
is credited with mastering a flood which whole country with destruction and with the invention of systems of river control. The same feat is credited
the Hsia dynasty,
threatened the
to the founder of the following dynasty of references to another flood/hero called
Shang. Scattered
Kung Kung are confused,
leaving us uncertain whether he started the flood, stopped
it
or
it. Kung Kung is remembered best Chuan Hsiu for control of the empire. In ran his head against Pu Chou, the mountain
unintentionally aggravated for his fight
with
the struggle he
which
in Chinese
myth corresponds
to the
heaven/supporting
central pillar of the Shamanistic cosmologies east
of east and south/
Asia. This pillar was bent, and consequently the heavens
were
tilted
from
east to
lower in the north-west, causing the
move
stars to
north-west and the rivers to flow in the opposite
direction.
The
conventional history generally takes no account of
creation myths, but part of one such
myth was adopted and
assigned a place at the beginning of the story. This
emperor
Kao Hsin who
tells
of the
accepted the services of P'an
Ku,
described as a 'dog of five colours', in overcoming the bar/ barians of the south. P'an
Kao 18
Ku
was rewarded with
the gift of
Hsin's wife, and their descendants peopled the southern
Introduction
region.
The
accounts of P'an
Ku vary like all the other stories.
He is also said to have emerged from chaos and in dying to have given birth to the universe. Part of his history
Hunan, once eventually
the
localised in
is
tribes
who
south-west.
The
home of the non/Chinese Miao
were displaced
farther
the
to
admission of this alien myth into the Chinese pseudo/history
was probably a counterpart to the expansion of Chinese power and civilisation at a relatively late date into the 'unopened* region south of the Yangtze river. (in the pseudchistorical
schemes the legendary
rulers
might
be assigned a remote place in space as well as time, being described as celestial emperors controlling the four quarters of
They were sometimes
heaven.
paired with four spirits
who
Han art symbolised by the White Tiger of the west, Green Dragon of the east, the Red Bird of the south and the Dark Warrior of the north, this last being oddly reprc appear in
the
sented as a serpent in copulation with a tortoiseTVWhen the
Five Rulers are associated with the Five Elements of earth, fire,
water,
wood and
metal they appear annexed to a natural
philosophy which marks the beginning of Chinese science.
The were
at
bureaucratic character with
pains to
endow
which
legendary figures
attitude to the past taught
is
official
historians
in keeping with the
by Confucius
After his death
.
in 479 B.C. his followers continued to interpret selected passages interest of their own moral and political teaclv Confucius himself had taken the early dyn asts of the house
of myth in the ing.
of
Chou
as
hi s exemplars,
and trom
the earlier legendary
Shim (two of the five Rulers LJqjl Shunts simple peasant virtue had caused him to be adoptedby ao as his success or and he thus fitly sy mbolised
je mperors
chose !^ao and
special prais e.
Y
the promotion by merit in the public service sg-arojentlv advocated. It
making
that
Yao was
ancestor of potters,
is
which Conlucius
characteristic ol
regarded
among
Chinese myth/
other things as the
and Shun of foresters.
19
-MAS-
tS
Fig.
1
The
modern
provinces
and
location
MONGOLIA 1
(north-east
CHINA, PROVINCES OF HEILUNG' CHIANG, KIRIN, LIAONING, JEHOL) 2 DJALAI
20
NOR
chief
sites
named
in
text
4
ANG ANG HSI KU HSIANG TS'UN
5
LIN HSI
3
SHARABAKH'USU
MANCHURIA
of
6 HSING
LUNG HSIEN
SUIYUAN 7 shui t'ung 8
kou
sjara osso gol
Introduction
Soon an and
arose,
interest in material relics set
persisted in
of the great days of
the pattern for the antiquarianism
China
to the present time.
This
Chou
which has
interest attached
almost exclusively to the bronzes and jades associated with the
which Confucianists advocated as a guarantee of political stability. The volume of Chinese antiquarian writing on such objects, and usages connected with them, exceeds official ritual
anything of the kind in other
literatures.
Yet
it
seems that
nothing approaching a historical classification of antiquities
was attempted before the twelfth century. The methods of archaeological research developed in Europe in the nineteenth century reached
which overthrew
China
as part
of the
the old order in
intellectual revolution
China only
half a century
ago.
HOPEI
11
KO CHUANG)
HAN TAN (CHAO WANG Ch'eNG)
KANSU TA0 KOU PTNG MA CHIA YAO
12 PAI 1 3
UN
25 HSIN TS
9 T'ANG SHAN (CHIA 10 CHOU K*0U TIEN
26 HUI HSIEN
27 CHENG CHOU 28 SHENG CH*IH HSIEN 29 LOYANG 30 HSIN CHENG 31 HSIN YANG
SHANTUNG
14 HSIN TIEN 15
PAN SHAN
32
ch'eng tzu yai
16
MA Ch'aNG
3 3
LIN TZU
34 ch'u
SHENSI 17
PAN
fu
KIANGSU
P*0 TS'UN
YEN TUN SHAN
TU TS'UN 19 CH'ANG AN 20 TOU CHI T*AI
ANHWEI
SHANSI
HUNAN
18 P'U
21
LI
35
36
YU
37
22 TING TS'UN 23 SHANG TS'UN LING
anyang (hsiao kang, wu kuan k'ung)
38
t*un, hsi pei ts'un,
ch'ang sha
YUNNAN
HONAN 24
SHOU HSIEN
ta ssu
SHIH CHAI SHAN
FUKIEN 39 T'AN SHIH
40
SHAN
HONG KONG 21
— Chapter
The
Palaeolithic
CHOU K'OU tien
I
r"T HE f
JL
to
and Neolithic Periods
CHINESE ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITE best known the western world is Chou K'ou Tie n, where the first
skull of Pithecanthropus pekinensis ,
222&.
1
It is
situated
PeJoag_Man, was found in
26 miles south-west of Peking, where the
easternmost extension of the Western Hills sinks into the
Hopei
plain.
Immediately west of the village
60 metres high,
much of which
has
now
a
rises
hill,
about
been destroyed by
quarrying. In the earlier Pleistocene period the general level
of the plain was some 60-70 metres above the modern surface,
Chou K'ou Tien
and the
hill is the
remains of one of the
pockets of limestone which were scattered over sures in the rock
filled
it.
Large
fiV
with stony rubble and
was excavation in these deposits that brought to animal and human bones, together with the signs of
red clay. light
were gradually
human
It
roughly fashioned stone tools burnt bones
habitation
,
and the ashes of hearths. The connexion of the human fossils with the products of man immediately gave the site a unique interest, for previously the finds of human bones of comparable age (for example, the Swanscombe skull from the middle
Thames estuary) had not been so directly related and other evidence of human activity. It is now generally agreed that the Chou K'ou Tien deposits from which
gravels of the to artifacts
the
human
date, as
therefore
h alf a
bones were recovered are not of lower Pleistocene believed, but of the middle pleistocene, and
was once
of approximately the same age
million year — as the s
earliest
—estimated
human
bones and
at
about
artifacts
discovered in England, Europe and Africa. Pithecanthropus pekinensis, or Sinanthropus, had much the same primitive physiognomy as his near/contemporaries in Europe and Africa. His head differed from a modern skull
22
The
by
low forehead and small
its
capacity,
Palaeolithic and Neolithic Periods
which was about two'
of the modern brain/box. His jaw chin fleeting. heavy eyebrow ridge
thirds of the average size
was prominent but
his
A
depressed the upper edge of the eye sockets into an irregular
He
line.
stood upright, with a stature of about 1-56 metres,
different from the average of the modern population of same region. Some of his minor physical characteristics have persisted in the same region through a period of time equal to an appreciable fraction of the whole duration of the human race. He shares his broad nos e, high cheek/bone s and a shovel'shaped depression on the inner face of his incisors with the modern population of Mongolia and northern China. In the Chou K'ou Tien remains no variation of the physical
little
the
type
noticeable throughout the 50/metres depth of deposits
is
known
as Locality 1,
which
are
thought to represent a period
of some hundreds of thousands of years.
of the skull
it
From the conformation
has been surmised that Sinanthroput was capable
of articulate speech.
He
evidently enjoyed corporate
life.
In the
of fortyfive individuals represented by the bones found
total
thus far at the
site
both males and females are present. Fifteen
of them were children.
The
materials
which
Sinanthropus used for
making
were chiefly a hard ^reen sandstone, limestone quartzite, flint
Tnd
all
chert,
less
suited
to
shaping
by
,
his tools
quartz and
percussion
than
of which only small quantities were present in
The forms of the flint and chert tools are, however, enough to those made from the less tractable stones to
the deposits. close
show tools
that the differences
difficulty
of working a
15,
of which the
arise
merely from the greater
less suitable material,
different cultural tradition.
and
between them and the Palaeolithic
of Europe and Africa do not
first is
but spring from a
Tools were found in Localities 13,1 and the last the latest, both
the oldest
corresponding to the middle Pleistocene. Locality 13, which seems not to have been regularly occupied, produced a single
23
China piece, a small chopping'tool earliest sign
made from
a pebble,
which
of man unearthed so far in China. The animal
which accompanied
is
the
fossils
was inhabited at a time following the establishment of the modern river system in the Yellow river basin. Near the tool lay some it
indicate that Locality
broken stones foreign to the deposits
and Fig. 2a
1 3
the rock fissures,
filling
few burnt bones.
a
stone topjs found at Chou K'ou Tien came where they lay n earthe human bones. Many of them are so roughly shaped that only the foreignness of their material and the frequency of their characteristic shapes demon'
The bulk of the
from Locality
1,
that they
strate
The commonest
not natural products.
are
up to six or seven inches in round or oval, on which a crude cutting edge has been contrived by striking off irregular stumpy flakes. One side is generally left smooth it is often the pebble sur^ face to give a good grip for the hand. The flaking may extend to as much as two thirds of the perimeter of the tool, and flakes may have been struck from both sides of the edge, though this last is rare. An occasional specimen is more carefully shaped form
is
length,
a heavy, flatfish stone,
more or
less
—
—
by the removal of regularly spaced, smaller (but biting) flakes
from both
consequently has a zigzag
sides
deep'
of the working edge, which
line.
In addition to these 'core'tools* Locality
Fig 2b
still
1
produced nunv
erous smaller pieces, scrapers and points measuring an inch or
two in
which
length, in
struck from a larger generally received
the tool
lump of
further
stone.
trimming
is
formed from a
Such at
'flake/tools'
the edge,
flake
have
which
is
thereby strengthened, the fractu resurface of the original flake
being
left
smooth.
Some of
show signs of use. The climatic environment
these
in
more
refined
implements
which Peking man
lived
may
be judged from the kinds of animal bones found lying close to the
24
human
relics in
Locality
1.
They included
those of the
The
Palaeolithic and Neolithic Periods
water-buffalo, grazing animals such as buffalo, deer
and a and sheep;
and wild pig and rhinoceros which could only be
at
sabre-toothed tiger, water/loving species such as an otter
home
in
thick vegetation, though the species of camel suggests that more arid terrain
was not
far distant. It
seems that a north temperate
climate prevailed, with fairly long winters,
Peking
man
Pleistocene
it is
probable that
lived at the time of one of the interglacials o f the
period,
possibly
the
earliest
Giinz'Minde]
or
which corresponds in Europe to the early phase of Acheulian culture of skilfully fashioned flint 'hand/axes'. But the Acheulian tradition of stone^working, which is found as far eastwards as southern India, is distinct from the tradition represented at Chou K'ou Tien. The latter is more closely related to a stone industry found in north-western India, in which a 'choppeMool' of less regular design takes the place of the hand^axe. This broad division of techniques may reflect a racial division of ancient humanity inhabiting opposite ends of Asia. As far as the level of intelligence inv plied by the two techniques is concerned there is no reason to set one above the other, particularly if we compare the Chou K'ou Tien tools with the early Acheulian (Abbevillian) of France, and make allowance for the difference of materials used. Locality 15 is a fissure about 70 metres from Locality 1. Its filling of earth and rock debris contained traces of ash, many animal bones and a number of tools of a new kind. The tools are made of a smootlvtextured flint, 'sinian chert', of which interglacial,
the
only some rare pieces occurred
Locality
at
1.
Both the forms
of the tools and the species of animals represented by the bones suggest that Locality 15
is
the later
site,
though
it is still
dated
geologically to the middle Pleistocene.
Many
tools
made from
small
flakes
were recovered
at
Fig. 2c
Locality 15. Their skilful retouching and more purposeful
shapes are a sure sign of technical progress. Roughly synv metrical points are
trimmed
at the
edge by minute decp'biting
25
China flakes ('step/flaking'), or
by narrow and shallow
flakes re/
Europe in the more evolved stage of the Acheulian culture. Sometimes the trimming is carried over both sides of the point. few tri' angular flakes have been struck from cores of flint on which the back of the piece destined to be struck off received some preliminary shaping there is no sign of this degree of fore/ sembling the 'pressure/flaking'
practised in
first
A
—
thought
among
the tools of Locality
i.
No human
bones were
found, but since the stone technique appears to be a further
development of the technique practised makers may have belonged inhabited by
men
cated by the
fossils
at
a time
to the
when
from Locality
serruvarid conditions
with desert
at
same
Locality
race.
The
i,
their
site
was
the temperate climate indi' i
still
had given way
to cooler,
close.
Throughout his long o ccupation o£jh^jiatural caves at Tien Sinantbropus was a hunter anaaTe mainly venison The great number of split boneThe left*in his midden show nis liking for marrow and some split human limb bones and skulls treated in the same way suggest that he was not averse from cannibalism. He was capable of killing the swift gazelle and wild horse, a hunt which presupposes a capacity for group organisation. His social life was of a brutish kind. He has left no relics which hint that he practised any art or
Chou K'ou .
magic, or even
The
from Locality Fig. 2d
show
that he buried his dead.
signs of technical advance perceptible in the stone tools 15
are repeated at a site in Shansi province, near
Ting Ts'un. The geological stratum from which chert tools and three human teeth were recovered is a gravel bed belonging to a series widely distributed in northern China. It lies below the red and yellow soils of the loess, of which the great central plain of China is composed, and is held to be equivalent to the period in which the filling of the Chou K'ou Tien fissures was accumulated.
The
suggest a time rather later
26
found in the gravel than the occupation of Locality 1
species of animal bones
The
Fig. 2 Palaeolithic stone tools: a, b,
K'ou Tien,
at
locality
15; d,
Chou K'ou Tien and
e,
Chou K'ou
Palaeolithic and Neolithic Periods
Tien, locality 1;
c,
Chou
Ting Ts'un. Scale 1:3
closer to the date
of Locality 15, and
same direction. The human teeth from Ting Ts'un (one incisor and two molars) are intermediate between those of Sinanthropus and modern man. The incisor has the shovel/shaped depression on its inner face. The most fully formed stone tools are some thick the forms of the stone tools point in the
2.7
China points of triangular section
and about 6 inches long. They have
a superficial resemblance to the hanoVaxes of the West, but the
working of the stone is less well controlled than in the best Acheulian specimens. The remaining tools are smaller, neatly struck flakes with one trimmed edge. In some cases there
is
a suggestion, as at Locality 15, of preliminary
executed on the core before the flake was struck
The chance which a
has preserved for us at
deposit of animal
stratified
fossils,
human
accumulated over long periods in the
munity
is
life
work
off.
Chou K'ou Tien bones and
artifacts
of a distinct conv
not encountered again in the archaeological record
before the Neolithic period.
Between the
Chou K'ou Tien and
thropus at
latest relics
of Sinan'
the earliest trace of food'
producers along the course of the Yellow river some hundreds
of thousands of years must have passed. In contrast to the corresponding period in Europe, which
man and
ian
lithic,
in
Here the
the
China latest
famous
cave/artists
is
the age of Mouster/
of the Upper Palaeo'
the later Palaeolithic cultures are
little
known.
division of the Pleistocene period, equivalent to
the great series of
Wurm
glaciations elsewhere,
is
marked by
the deposition of the loess over the northern half of the country.
One
can imagine nothing more discouraging
for
human
life
than the regime of powerful dry and cold winds which geo^ logists believe to
have carried the blanket of
glacial regions lying far to the north/west.
animal
them OTHER
life
the
must have
little
all
but vanished
its
some human handiwork
LITHIC
the vital technique of stone
general trend in eastern
At
Shui
from
peri'
Vegetation and
long ages, and with
groups of men.
This severe climate had
PALAEO' SITES
for
loess
Tun^jCou
milder intervals however, and
shows that working was taking the same Asia as is to be observed in the West. attributable to this period
in the Ordos, the tract of desert lying
within the greatnorthward loop of the upper Yellow River, flint
28
implements were excavated together with animal bones
— The
and the
c narcoal of camp-fires
the surface are
and near
Palaeolithic and Neolithic Periods
from a point 12 metres below of the loessic soil. The tools
to the base
made of simply chip£ed_£ebbles, more
refined than the
flakes.
«a little
These
are the relicTbf hunters
or, more rarely, of long handiwork of S inanthropus.
of small game, notably wild
ass,
At Sjara Osso Gol on the southern borOrdos region, signs of habitation were discovered some 50 metres below the present grassland, in a geological environment which points to a terrain of small lakes and jand d unes. Here the yield of an imal bones was specially rich. Species of ostrich, elephant, rhinoceros, deer, horse and goat all witness to a relatively damp climate and to well/forested land antelope and ostrich.
Fig.
3a
der of the
as well as prairie.
The
majority of the sto ne tools , flake points
and scrapers trimmed on a single face, are smaller than those found at Shui Tung Kou and are more skilfully made. Among them were found small, roughly conical cores of chert from which narrow parallel-sided blades about an inch long had been skilfully struck in succession. No examples of the small blades themselves were found, but they are sufficiently attested
by the parent
microliths
—
first
cores.
They
are similar to the tiny tools
manufactured in Europe in the Magdalenian
Upper
Palaeolithic period and thereafter in which preceded the rise of the Neolithic. In the West these blades were mounted in rows in handles of bone and wood, and we may suppose that the same idea was
culture of the late
the Mesolithic cultures
followed in China.
A
stone industry comparable to that of Sjara
Osso Gol,
though without the microliths, was practised by the inhabitants of a cave situated near the summit of the hill of Chou K'ou
Upper Cave Man* is represented by the skeletons of individuals all of the modern type, Homo sapiens. Bone and
Tien. ten
*
horn implements accompanied the flints, and some ground and drilled stone beads painted red with haematite, bone pendants, perforated and polished shell ornaments
show an 29
China
advance of
The
sensibility over his Sinanthropus predecessors.
of haematite around one of the skeletons indicates a deliberate burial, indeed is the e arliest instan ce of a funeral rite scattering
which was to persist in China through the Neolithic period and into the Bronze Age. There is proof too of trade over considerable distances. The h aematite must have come trom Lu ng Kuan, beyond the mountains a h undred mile s to the north. The marine shells must have travelled at least 120 miles/ from the nearest part of the coast, and one large freslvwaler species is thought to have been brought from beyond theYellow river, over 200 miles away. The skulls have mixed features, some Mongoloid and others declared to be akin to modern Esquimaux and Melanesians. This latest material recov ere d at Chou K'ou Tien is taken to mark the end of the Palaeolithic p eriod. Its date can only be roughly estimated, lying perhaps between lo^ooo^ndjsitQQO
jears^BX. Thereafter, and before the civilisation
human at
rise
of the bronzcusing
of central China in the second millennium B.C.,
activity is recorded in finds
small surface
sites scattered
of stone tools and potsherds
through the vast region of desert
and grassland of Mongolia, Manchuria and the Ordos. The archaeologist's great problem is to determine whether such traces
of habitation in
this
northern region are
with the Neolithic cultures of China tribes
who
—the
all
contemporary
relics
of hunting
copied the pottery of their farming neighbours
in part are older than any of the farming communities.
—or It is
tempting, perhaps rational, to assume that these surface finds are the traces
of long/enduring hunting communities
ultimately affected by the farmers of the
Yellow
who
were
river, possibly
some of them themselves providing the farming population. So far however archaeologists have found no predecessors for the farmers of the Yellow river valley, jiojgj t es on the Central Plain to bridge jh e gap between Upper Cave Man an cTthe 5koli thic
30
villages.
We
cannot even arhrm that the
sites
on
the
The
Palaeolithic and Neolithic Periods
3 Mesolithic tools: a, stone flakes and core, Sjara Osso Gol; b, stone flakes, Ta Li Sha Yuan Region, Ordos; c, bone harpoon, stone knife, gravers and arrowhead, AngAng
Fig.
Hsi. Scale 1:2
Gobi there
desert precede the Neolithic villages in time, is
not a similar gap
The Gobi hal fof
desert
Mong olia
is
all
that
over Mongolia and Manchuria.
which now for the
and
stretches across the sout hern
MICROLITHIC
most part an uninhabitable region
CULTURES IN THE GOBI
of sniiting sand. But numerous depressions on
its
surface are
surrounded by ancient consolidated dunes which show that
many more
lakes existed there formerly than survive at the
present time. Rain was more abundant and the desiccation which has now driven out plants and animals had not reached
so
far.
The
sto ne
impl ements of prehistoric
man
DESERT,
MONGOLIA AND MANCHURIA
are generally
found on or near the ancient dunes, marking habitation or
31
China
camping
places once located near water.
The Sino'Swedish
327 sites between Man^ churia and Sinkiang. Even allowing for the long period of expedition of 1927-35 discovered
time which the
sites
may
cover, the density of population
was considerable by
they reflect
hunting peoples.
On
which
the standards of primitive
many of the
sites flint
microlithic tools
were found mixed with polished or partly polished stone tools and often fragments of pottery, which all the world over are the hallmarks of Neolithic culture, or
at least
denote close contact
with farming communities. But the apparent contemporaneity
of Mesolithic and Neolithic techniques may in some instances
The
wind of the sandy terrain probably tended to gather the material in pockets on the surface this phenomenon has been noted elsewhere and mixed together relics of different ages which in other geological circumstances would have been preserved stratified at different levels. Only at Shabarakh Usu, one of the 180 sites discovered by the American Central Asiatic Expedition of 1922-30, could it be be illusory.
erosion by
—
affirmed that
Neolithic
r emains
were
at
—
a h igh er level than
the.
'
Mesolith ic~
Fig.
3b
The most ch aracteristic of the Gobi stone to ols are the micr oliths made from small flakes struck serially from thej^re^ ""Besides flint and chert they were made of jasper and other coloured finegrained stone. The flakes were neatly trimmed to make points and blades of irregular shapes. They are a little finer than the microliths of much earlier date found at Sjara Osso Gol and like them were probably intended to be set in rows t o edge cutting tools or to barb spears. The cores remain^ mgtrom the flaking of the tiny blades were mostly cylindrical or and Mongolia and Manchuria.
conical, the cylindrical ones spread throughout the region
the conical predominating in east
Such cores are characteristic of the Mesolithic cultures of Europe and North Africa, but whereas in the West the flakes obtained from them were often trimmed into neat geometrical
32
The shapes
—
crescents, triangles
and
trapezes
Palaeolithic and Neolithic Periods
—those of eastern Asia
have no such regular outlines.
The
southern limit of the distribution of the microlithic
lie along the IsTan Sha n, Alas han and Yin Shan which s eparate the Gobi desert tro ni the drainage ruountains, basin of the Yellow river and its tributaries The sites are found, however, beyond the mountains and the river in the Ordos region and eastwards in Manchuria beyond the con'
sites
appears to
.
siderable barrier presented
An
Hsing
have checked
'human
by the north/south range of the
mountains. More than geographical obstacles must their spread to the south.
rather than natural', as
was
If the barrier
Cheng Tck'un
suggests,
we
must suppose that it was raised by the farming communities of the Yellow river valley, and that the Mesoli thic hunters of the jGobi were their contemporaries. Once settled farming was established in the Central Plain c ultural separation of peoples
north and south of the mountain line
is
understandable.
The
boundar y which emerges in history as the conflict of the Bronze Ape states of northern China with the turFulen? n omadic tribesmen ot the Mongolian grasslands was already cultural
cjr
awn
in Neolithic times.
The
material of Neolithic type found together with the
flaked implements
and
microliths in
Mongolia and Man'
churia consists of polished or partly polished stone axes and pottery .
The polished
fincjs parallels
some
pieces
Fig. 4
which and north-west, though
axes are chiefly of the rounded type
in Siberia to the north
resembling the axes of northern
China with
squared cross'section have also been collected. Apart from rare perforated stones
which some
weights for digging
interpret rather dubiously as
sticks, there is
no evidence
polished rectangular or c rescentic stone kni ves
pany
neolithic remains everywhere in
China are u nknown beyond river basin.
This
for tillage.
w hich
The
acconv
northern and central
the northern margin of t he
fact alone suggests that settled
Yellow
tarming was
33
China
LZD
?3
Ff£. 4 Stone axes and knives of the Neolithic period: a,
Kiangsi;
b,
Cb'ing Lien Kang, Kiangsu;
g,Jih Chao, Shantung;
Honan;
j,
Liaoning;
h,
Ch'eng
Tzu
Sbang Lu Ts'un, Honan; I,
Ch'ih Feng
c, d,
k,
Ch'ing Chiang,
Pan P'o Ts'un
Yai, Shantung;
i,
Shensi; t,f,
Yang Shao,
Lu Shun Yang
Hung Shan, Jebol.
Scale
1
T'ou Wa,
:6
never practised in th enorthern region^ and tends to disp rove the theory thatthe nornlio^stoclc/nusing Torical times descends
from a
full
found there in h is^
farming, economy which
degenerated int ono madism as the grasslands
The
pottery
found on the Mongolian
became desert. hand/m ade
sites is all
and differs somewhat in the northern and southern zones. In Outer Mongolia is found a reddish or grey ware plain for the most part but sometimes bearing incised or stamped geometric designs Southwards in Inn er Mongol ia similar r ough sher3s appear along wi th others of more refTned make, which add ,
.
34
The
Palaeolithic and Neolithic Periods
pigment^ and applied bands o f pie/crust orna/ oFdecoration.^A few specimens of the methods ment to the l egs of tripod bowls have been collected. This superio r pottery burnishing,
and
r ed
particularly the tripods,
which
parallel the ubiquitous ting
of the Neolithic of northern China, undoubtedly i
reflect the
nfluence of the farming culture of the Yellow river valley.
The rougher ware
is
generically similar to pottery
found in
Siberia.
At
end of the northern region the few sites so far of mesolithic and neo/ lithic elements. At Djalainor, close to the Hsing An range on its Manchurian side7 were found flint and q uartzite tool s of the the eastern
investigated reveal a similar mixture
Gobi
type
and a
single squared piece
polished ax es were absent .
Two
pieces
of polished stone , but
of deer
antler,
one with
an annular groove and another bored with two holes
at right
angles have been tentatively regarded as hafting attachments for stone axes in the
The
lake villages.
manner
the
mountain
West
in the Swiss
remains of some interwoven willow sticks
have been thought to be a fishing villag e.
practised in the
fish trap,
and indication of a lakeside
At Ku Hsiang T'un on the Manchurian side of
there
were iurther signs of l akeside ha bitation in
the geological strata.
At Ang Ang Hsi
in Heilungchiang,
?ig>3 c
northern Manchuria, some barbe d harpoon/heads were ex/ cavated, quite similar to those used in the latest Palaeolithic
and the Mesolithic of western Europe. They furnish even better evidence for the imp ortance of fishing. Here a small polished axe resembles those^made in the West for hafting by means of a socket of deer antler. No specimen of such a socket was re/ covered but the existence of other handles of bone makes it likely that such a device was in use. In some other fundamental respects the material from Man/ churia and eastern Mongolia differs from the characteristic equipment of the Gobi sites, and points to a connexion with the north/east. At Ang Ang Hsi tria ngular a nd leaf/shaped
35
China arrowheads^ were found in quantity, some with hafting tangs,
trimmed by neat pressure flaking of a kind not en^ countered farther west in Mongolia. There was an abundance of coarse grey an d reddish pottery among it some intact vessels. ThTvUiagersburied theirde ad under heaps of earth near their in cluding in the graves pottery vessels, bo ne and settl ement s tone tools and in one instanc e a dog. Both the cultural remains and the geological strata which contained them point to a later date than that at Djalainor, and suggest that the Ang Ang Hsi settlement belongs to the Neolithic period. Farther south, at_Lin-HsLin Jehol province a similar though more advanced ppjtcry_was found, some of it wheelturned, and here cropping is attested by spatulate stone hoes and part of a stone and
all
,
,
"
reaping knife.
Over sign of there
is
this
whole
s ettled
no
trace
area
wjiere
agricultural
microlith s are found there
life.
is
no
In the Yellow river valley
o t a population slowly evolving an agricul tural the far ming
economy/ tor between^^UppwX^ye__Man' and
villages of the iuiTNeolithic the archaeological recoroLis blank.
The germ of the
Neolithic_revolution the knowledge of crojv ,
ping and cattle^raising may, indeed must, have c ojne thro ugh
from some other part of Asia It is asking that such a fundamental revolution as had already occurred in the Fertile Crescent of the Near East should have happened independently a second time in China. The passage of ideas, whether the form of a tool the northern region
too
.
much of coincidenceto assume
method of making
knowledge of the advantages of food production need not leave cultural remains on its path. There can be no question of the migration in t o China of large numbers of farming tri bes bringing with them a_complete cultural complex Had this happened it would be difficult to explain how the Neolithic culture of the Yellow River valley and the Central Plain came to be divided into distinct tradi/ tions, one reaching to the nortlvwest and the other to the north/ or the
.
36
it,
or
The east.
Palaeolithic and Neolithic Periods
This regional difference corresponds in a general way we have noted between the Gobi and Man/
with the division churia,
which may mean
Neolithic period altogether.
that
roots
its
The two
go back beyond the
neolithic traditions over/
China, and the north-eastern is there demon/ But they both are possessed of a fully developed
lap in central strably later.
agricultural
economy. Neither
yields to the other in the excel/
lence of pottery, the large size of villages or skill in polishing
does either appear to be the parent of the other. 2
Nor
stone tools.
The Neolithic culture of central and north/ western China is named Yang Shao after a village in Sheng Ch'ih Hsien, Honan province, where Andersson first identified it in 1922. ,
Its
remains are characterised by grey and reddish potter y; a
rectangular
LITHIC
CULTURE
with p ainted decoratio n; th ick polished stone o blong with a r ectangular or rounded/
fin er^ pottery
jixes which
THE YANG SHAO NEO'
are generally
section ;
o blong reaping knives made of thin
plaques of stone polished a nd pierced fui liafting; stone and clay spindle whorls;
The
and t anged arrowheads
of polished stone.
is confined to the loess area and main a broad east-west line along th e^ middle Yellow river in onan an d southern Shansi,
distribution of the sites
follows in the
course of the
H
and the valley of the^ Wei river leading across the middle of Shensi into the upper basin ol the Yellow river and its tri/ butaries in Kansu. From central Honan, where the sites are most frequent, the Yang Shao area extends south into the
Honan
plain towards the upper waters of the river Huai,
northwards either side
Shansi. jarrpers
sites
occur in the
flat
and well/watered
and
tract lying
of the boundary between the provinces of Hopei and
In choosing places for settlement the a voided^
keeping to the
mountainous and even
w ell/drained
and
Yang Shao
upland
territory,
rich agricultural soil of the
plain near rivers.
In Shensi and" Kansu the erosion of the thick loess deposit has formed at intervals deep,
mazy
ravines with vertical walls
37
—
a
China
sometimes to heights of hundreds of
rising
have been found on streams.
impossible to be certain that the apparent eleva'
It is
tion above the valley is
feet. Here sites above the flood plain of the
terraces well
today, though
it
bottom was is
as great in ancient times as
it
probable that the peculiarity of loess
was much the same then as it is at the present time. Both the primary and the redeposited loess are equally fertile, erosion
but the difficulty of watering
fields in the ravined region of must have been a serious handicap to the and the dissected terrain an obstacle to com/
the primary loess agriculturalist,
munication.
We shall note divergencies in the neolithic material
from the two
areas
which
reflect this difference
of environment
and suggest that the western branch of the Ya ng Shao culture distinction was comparatively isolated and conservative which to some implies a cult ural division within a broader
—
tradition.
The
picture of neolithic
the remains
is
life
lived in settled
sometimes choosing
in the plain this could only
—
the study of
communities in undefended or hgh dydefe nded
villa^ejjie^rjivejs,
level
which emerges from
one familiar to archaeologists. Groups of farmers
mean
to escap e the seasonal flooding.
millet (Setaria
italica
slightly rising
ground
a few feet above the general
Their chief grain_ was
(L) Beauv), traces of which have been
Wang Yung Ching Ts'un in Shansi and Pan P'o Ts'un in Shensi. How far rice cultivation entered into the Yang Shao economy we cannot say at present, but sojne-ikfci, grain impressions on a potsherd unearthed by Andersson at Yang Shao Ts'un prove that it was not unknown We must recovered at
.
suppose the organisation
Yang Shao which
villagers
the planting
and
capable of the^r ar efnl irrigation ofrice^ fields
call s for.
"These lithic
villages differed
from comparable ones in the
late
Bronze and Iron Ages of southern England chiefly by
38
Neo'
period of southern Russia or even those of the Late their
The
Palaeolithic and Neolithic Periods
must some have equalledt hat of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia In
greater size: the populousness
of the Yellow
river valley .
cases the neolithic village seems to
have been even greater in
modern villages standing near their sites. The remains found at Hua Yin Hsi Kua n P u in Shensi w ere spread over an area of more than 9 00,000 square metr es, representing presumably an a^lomeration'oN^lages. The neolithic strata at some sites reaches a depth of JTnetres. But only one village site,jit Pan P'o Ts'un near Si^an in Shensi province, has been excavated so far wit h the thorou ghness which affords a toler/ extent than the
c
ably comnlrt e pictureoi the village scene.
At Pan
P'o Ts'un r ound a nd o blong hut foundations were
uncovered,
set
c lose together
ancient land surface.
one place
and lying a lew
Some" of
feet
Plate 1
below the
the foundations overlapped,
superimposed one over the other were evidence of long occupation, new buildings having been
at
five floors
erected over the ruins of the earlier.
had
The
timbers of the huts
naturally all perished, but traces of the post holes preserved
in the soil told something of their structure.
measured about
The round
huts
around the edge of the sunken floor a wall about a foot high made of clay mixed with grass, and the floor had been sealed with a coat of limy earth. Outside the wall a circle of post holes indicated 5 metres in diameter;
one
still
retained
Plate 2
supports for the eaves of the roof. Posts had stood inside the
house in rows of three on either side of a central clay^built Stove^ These provided the
main support
for the roof,
which
is
wood on the underside, and together with the circle of slenderer posts set around the wall suggest an over/all conical shape, the steeply sloping sides reaching almost to the ground at the eaves. Two rows of
thought to have been planked with
slender posts at the entrance the door to be set
house.
The
showed how
this
shape required
some distance inside the perimeter of the which strewed the floors of most of the
clay debris
huts seems to have been the outer covering of the roof. Storage
39
China
and oven s were fo rmed inside the houses by excavating int he soil and lining the reces s with fine clay. They can be seen against both walls of the larger rectanguhrEuilding shown on Plate 4. Near t he h ouse s were found a number of s torage, pits, some roundecTat the bottom and with narrow mouths, "others, which appear to belong to the later period of the site, were some 6 metres deep and lined with a layer of burnt clay. The gitsjwere filled with grey habitation earth in which were mixed fragments of p ottery. stone__tools, ashes and animals' bones. In one part ofthe village were found the remains of six claybuilt kilns, five of them consisting of cylindrical chambers about a yard wide and three yards long, provided with flues to conduct the flame from the fire in the forward end ofthe kiln to the firing chamber at the back. In one of the kilns stood s paces
Plate 4
FfrS
several unfired coarse pots.
The
pottery
found
at
Pan P*o Ts'un
is
are
deep
jars
with slightly everted rim
rounded^ bottoms, tripod bowls
Fig.
5 Pottery
Shan Pi;
b,
kilns approx.
40
kilns at
Cheng Chou:
(ting)
a,
characteristic
The
wares ofthe centre ofthe Yang~5hao area.
bowls with_flat_px and amphorae wit h
,
Yang Shao
culture at Lien
Late Shang period, at Pi Sha Kang. Diameters of pottery 1
m.
ofthe
principal shapes
—
— The
narrow nec k and pointed
The
base.
fi
Palaeolithic and Neolithic Periods
ware
nest
is
red, well
which must have required, a a heat te mperature of iooo degrees centigrade or more levigated, ot a hardness
firing^
—
attainable in the kilns described.
almost eq ually fine in texture,
t
The
hough
softer.
easily
pottery
light^g rey
is
In the cgarse r
reddish arid grey potteries the cl ay is mixed with coarse sand . The h ard red pottery is often b urnished and p ainted with fteo/
Plate 5
metric patterns in black res em bling those found farther east,
thoug h the schemati cje^igns_ofjLfishj n ^
l
JL^anPo head
Ts'u n areexceptional.
hnm.in
fi nn
E lsewhere only a timid
introducedTThe r ougher pots
occasionally
is
fl
f
i
T tmi4-
bird's
are plain
or incised with s imple geometr ic pattern, or i mpressed by cords or matting .
The
analysis
of local divergencies in Yang Shao pottery has
not yet been taken very
shapes and ornament
looked it is
may
for in its earliest
Fig.
6
but since the variation of pottery
far,
indicate
where the culture
form and in which directions
it
is
to be
spread,
important to note what local jljffgrences are already appar/
ent. It
is
clear that
judged by
its
pottery the
Yang Shao
does not present the same unified character as
is
of the migrating cultures which spread through the of Europe
at the
culture
found in some forest
zone
The local Yang Shao culture
beginning of the Neolithic period.
variation in the pottery suggests that the
developed in northern China and argues against any pro/
found influence from outside.
The most
branch
that of the western extremity of
THE KANSU
where sites are distinguished as belonging to a 'Kansu Yang/shao* culture, or the Pan Shan culture. It is best known from the painted fu nerary urns from four ancient cemeteries
NEOLITHIC
distinct
is
the area,
on hills—the Pan Shan in the Ning Ting district of Kansu. They were first collected by Andersson in 1923. After his discovery, the sites were exploited by the local inhabitants and yielded the splendid funerary urns which began to reach Western museums a generation ago. The large urns are nearly
CULTURE
Fig. 7
41
China flat base, with an ouMurned low lip or and generally furnished with lug handles
globular in shape, on a a short tubular neck, Plate 6
neck or on the
at the finest
described from
their shapes,
pigment tion,
Their red_ fabric
Pan Po Ts'un; but On them
is
similar to the
their decoration, like
quite distinct.
and manganese in combina/
iron
brown
used to produce black, red and
applied on the burnished surface in a rich variety of
spiral,
terns
is
is
sides.
wave/shaped, rhomboid and
of great beauty.
The ornament
the lighter colour often outlined
many is set
other geometric pat/ in zones
by a darker
and
panels,
with dog/
line
—
serrations on the inner side the 'death pattern!, as Andersson named it in recognition of the funerary character of the vessels. The urns, like all the Yang Shao ware, are hand made, though trued at the mouth on some turning device
tooth
snnpler than a fast/revolving potter's wheel.
The
excellence
of the pottery and the splendour of the decoration makes these urns the most attractive product of the Chinese Neolithic.
Andersson's researches established a chronological painted pottery cultures in Kansu. After the
he places another termed
Ma
series
of
Pan Shan group
Ch'ang, from a
site
in the T'ao
which seems to derive from it, its pot shapes and painted patterns marking a degeneration of the tradition which produced the great funerary urns. The Ma Ch'ang vessels were also made for burial, but at Ma Chia Yao, a short distance away, a habitation site was discovered. few potsherds of the Ma Ch'ang type were unearthed here, showing that the two
river valley,
A
sites
were roughly contemporary. The great bulk of the pottery, shapes and decoration are
much
Yang Shao ware of the Central reproduce it exactly. The latest stage
Plain,
however, was different and closer to the painted
its
though they do not is that of the Hsin Tien graves, whose painted pottery shows a further decline. few bronze orname nts from these graves prove that
A
the painted pottery tradition survived at least into the beginning
of the Bronze Age.
4*
The
Palaeolithic and Neolithic Periods
20 cm.
Fig.
6 Yang Shao
Pottery.
the Central Plain.
The
painted howls a, c are characteristic of
The amphora d
is
found mainly
in
Shansi. Scale
approx. 1:6
A
problem which
relationship of the
Plain.
The
the pottery.
still
Kansu
awaits satisfactory solution
is
the
painted ware to that of the Central
contrast between the
The Kansu tombs
two
regions goes further than
contained small chisels of jade
43
— China
and cylindrical marble beads which are not found elsewhere, though the jade rings and crescentic pendants can be paralleled by stone and clay versions of neolithic date in central China. These objects are in fact an intimate link with the culture of the Central Plain, for they survive there into the Bronze Age and are then
made of jade:
and buang'crescmttcosmic symbols, and
they are the paring
ritual forms which are later interpreted as which were made and buried with the dead down
to
Han
times. Plate
3
Kansu
body was laid on the right side with the legs bent, and jfacing a row of pots in which meat and grain were placed; or the body was laid prone, or the bones were gathered after the "body had de/ cayed, and reburied. The burial customs of the eastern Yang Shao province are known best from Pan P'o Ts'un. Here the adults were buried lying extended on the back in rectangular pits which were sometimes lined with wooden planks, and There
is
also a difference in the burial
rite.
In
the
children were buried in large clay urns. This difference in the
was to survive into the Bronze Age. Yang Shao sites of the eastern type extend westwards along the valley of the Wei river, and on the upper reachej of the river in Kansu they are situated only about two score miles east from the site of Ma Chia Yao. Between the two areas that of Ma Chia Yao which links with the Pan Shan/Ma Ch'ang complex, and the sites of Li Hsien and Tien Shui Hsien marking the penetration of the eastern tradition into Kansu passes the watershed dividing the T'ao river from the upper waters of the Wei. Although thirty years have passed since Andersson made his survey, still not enough is known of the exact chronology and distribution of the two variants of Yang Shao culture to assess the importance of this boundary. Apart from the unique funeral urns of Pan Shan and Ma Ch'ang the domestic pot'
funeral
rite
—
teries, for all their
44
broad
similarity, reveal tantalising differences
The
Palaeolithic and Neolithic Periods
fflS&M
Fig 7 Painted pottery of the Kansu Yang Shao
Shan
type; e,f, i,j,
Ma
Ch'ang
culture: a, \>,g, h,
type. Scale approx.
Pan
1:16
45
China they are compared closely. The ware of the eastern Yang Shao is red while that of Ma Chia Yao is buff. The former combines black and red paint in the ornament, and the latter uses them apart. Only the eastern pottery makes use of a white slip. The Ma Chia Yao bowls are painted inside and on the outer lip, and those of the east only on the outer sides. The geo/ metric motifs of the decoration, mainly lines and concave
when
Fig. 6a, c
sided triangles in both areas, are distinct in &1- 7b
spirals
are not
and summary
known
and animals of the
birds
in the Central Plain, nor the
narrow mouth which were found
The
style.
similarity
at
Ma
The running Kansu ware
tall
urns with
Chia Yao.
of some of the decoration of the Chinese
painted ware to that of some Far Western potteries
is
equally
puzzling. For example, burial urns of the southern Russian
Tripolye culture with their ornament of elaborate black
spirals,
urns with black and red spirals excavated at the Bronze site
Age
of Trialeti in the Caucasus, and similar pots from the
Bronze
Age
city
of
Anau
in Turkestan,
all are
surprisingly
Pan Shan and Ma Ch'ang urns. But the theory of a great migration which introduced these urns and with them Neolithic culture into China from the Far West has been very like the
by Andersson himself. Andersson points out that such parallels of decorative motifs between the Chinese and the Western pottery are closest in the Ma Ch'ang stage and not in the Pan Shan stage, although it is sceptically received, not least
the earlier: 'In the Ma Ch'ang time, when the decorative style was already in decline, there developed strong parallels on the one hand to Anau, and on the other to Tripolye. With our present limited knowledge it is premature to discuss where these cultural impulses first arose and how they migrated across Central Asia.fWe are left to conclude that the small beginnings
of the painted pottery tradition of China may have been in/ spired from the West, but its flourishing period, that of Ma
Ch'ang and 46
the
Yang Shao
sites
of the Central Plain, was an
The
8 Painted pottery
Fig.
Shao
culture.
Ht. 6\
bead. ins.
Palaeolithic
and Neolithic Periods
Kansu Yang
Scale 1:3
independent growth, the work of Chinese and not of imrruV grants
from
The
the
WestrJ
dates estimatea
by Andersson
remain uncontested, and
for the painted potteries
are not likely to
be
made more
precise
until much more has been excavated and perhaps the techni/ que of Carbon 14 measurement can be applied. He placed the
Pan Shan stage between 2200 and 1700 B.C., and the Ma Ch'ang stage from 1700 to 1300 B.C. The YangJShao of the Central Plain, since it overlaps in time with Ma Ch'ang, would occupy the
first
half of the second millennium B.C.; but
it
must
Then it was supplanted by the Shang Bronze Age, when painted pottery was
have ended by about 1500 B.C. culture of the
abandoned. 3
The
earliest
known.
If the
date of the eastern painted pottery
Pan Shan
inclined to think,
we must assume
earlier in the river valleys
This
is
intrinsically
and Ch'ang
stage preceded
a local
isolated
Ma
stage
it,
as
is
still
un^
Andersson
is
that Neolithic culture arose
of Kansu than in the Central Plain.
The Pan Shan urns may be development, not much earlier than the
improbable.
and no more than contemporary with the
47
China
Yang Shao
beginning of the the
THE LUNG SHAN CULTURE
Yellow
on
culture
From Honan
to the east
and
north/east stretches the
of a different Neolithic tradition, the
Honan
the middle course of
river.
Lung Shan
domain
culture. In
can be shown to be later than that of Yang number of sites in this densely inhabited part of Shao, for at a the Central Plain Lung Shan pottery has been found strati' fied above Yang Shao remains and below the Bronze Age level. The Yang Shao and the Lung Shan cultures and a more primitive tradTtioh in south-east China comprise the main divisions of Neolithic China. These are based primarily on differences in the potteries found on their sites. If stone tools, at least it
methods of burial or types of habitation the cultural
map
is
are taken as criteria,
considerably changed.
The
distribution of
variants of these features does not coincide with the geographical
of the most characteristic
limits
potteries. Before
we
proceed
with the description of Neolithic culture lying outside the
Yang
Shao sphere we may glance at the geographical distribution of one important implement which disregards pottery frontiers: Fig.g
stone reaping'knives. fossil
These might be regarded
as the type
of the Chinese Neolithic.
In the only considerable study of this kind which has been
An
undertaken knives:
wide.
4
all
Chilvmin
distinguishes three types of such
of which are about 6 inches long and 2 or
The roughest kind, approximately
a notch for hafting at each narrow end. the line of the painted pottery river valley
as
F&4
Honan.
and
sites
3
inches
oblong, has generally
Its
distribution follows
from Kansu, along the
the middle course of the
Yellow
Wei
river as far
A thinner, better polished knife of crescentic shape,
pierced with a hafting hole or
two
holes set close together in the
middle and generally nearer to one edge, covers the north/east, from southern Manchuria, through Hopei and Shantung and
Honan
as far as the
upper waters of the Huai
southern part of this province.
48
A
river in the
few have been found in
The
Oblong with notched ends
:
Fig.
9
100 l.mhn.l
(10°
100 I
200 I
300 I
400 I
500 I
Scale of Miles
^
Crescentic perforated: 105'
o
a
Oblong perforated
Palaeolithic and Neolithic Periods
I15
c
120°
I25
c
Distribution of neolithic sickles
49
China Shansi and northern Kansu, but
it is
only in
Honan that the first. The t hirds
area of the second type coincides with that of the
type of reaping'knife
is
oblong, but thinner, more regular and
and
two
better
ground than the
holes.
This type occurs over an area which embraces the whole
first
distribution of the other
it is
two with
pierced with one or
the exception of
Shantung
and the extreme north-west.
While
the crescentic knife
culture of the north/east
is
characteristic
and the
finer
of the
Lung Shan
oblong type of the Yang
Shao culture, their geographical distribution takes them well beyond the areas in which the most characteristic potteries of these cultures are found.
The
crescentic knife occurs with pot/
tery of the south/east Neolithic in Kiangsu province and the
oblong type spread
as far south as the
oblong knife survived into the Bronze
Yangtze.
Age
The
pierced
in the hands of
way of life, and was
farmers following their unaltered neolithic eventually copied in iron.
The lies
distribution of sites attributed to the
Lung Shan
culture
through the coastal region from Hopei to Chekiang and
extends inland into
Honan. Some of the
villages
were of sizes
comparable to those of the Yang Shao communities, but generally they seem to have been smaller, ranging from a few
hundred to a hundred thousand square metres, and occupying low knolls or river terraces. Their houses were little different from those we have described from Pan P^o Ts'un, sunk in the earth, the floors often coated with lime, and both round and rectangular in plan. They Jburied their dead in earth pits, ex' tended supine or prone and accompanied by pots, axes and arrows. Their ajiimals were the pig, c ow and goat. The abundance of stone reaping'knives found on the sites is evi' dence for their agriculture, but the species of grain which they Fig. 4
cultivated
is
not
known. Their
stone axes are generally of
oblong shape, thinner and broader than those of Yang Shao and are often pierced near the centre of the upper half. Much
50
The use
was made of shell
and
for knives
Palaeolithic and Neolithic Periods
At many sites, Lung Shan region,
scrapers.
particularly in the southern area of the
mounds of shells of freslvwater molluscs show of food was of greater importance here than
that this source
was
it
to the
Nee
lithic communities farther inland.
The most
of the
distinctive
Lung Shan
potteries
a ware
is
Fig. 10
of black fabric with a well smoothed, often lustrous surface obtained by burnishing. For fineness and finish well with the black Athenian pottery of the centuries B.C. If any external dressing gloss,
not detectable
is
it
was used
The
after firing.
it
compares
fifth
to fourth
to
vessels are
turned and sometimes reduced to a thickness of
The handled
eighth of an inch.
produce the
cups, bowls
less
wheel/
than an
and deep goblets an
generally liave straight sides, sloping or vertical, giving
angular outline unusual in pottery which
copying metal
fine
ware
vessels.
is left
No
metal has ever been found, however,
Lung Shan
with
associated
not deliberately
is
remains.
The
surface- of this
undecojated, but the grey. ware and the coarse^
sandy pottery which makes up the bulk of the fragments
Lung Shan
sites
often bears incised
simple ^geometric kind. types
is
The regional Yang Shao
greater than in the
at
and stamped ornament of a variation of the pottery
culture of central
China
and demonstrates even more convincingly the difficulty of finding simple typological definitions for two neolithic tradi' tions.
To
the south,
sites
classed as
creasing quantity of the rough
Lung Shan brown _ware
contain an in/ characteristic
of
number of shell increasingly on food
the south-east Neolithic, just as the increasing
mounds show gathering,
and
that the population relied less
Honan
towards
on corn and
there
is
pottery indistinguishable
Shao
sites;
brown
cattle.
found a
Inland from Shantung
greater proportion of grey
from the coarse ware of the Yang
the fine black pottery
becomes
rarer.
Grey and
pottery decorated all over with impressions of twisted
51
China
which is less prominent in Shantung and Hopei, is commonest ware. When a site contains only this
cords,
here the
may be uncertain whether it should be classi/ Yang Shao, Lung Shan, or even whether it belongs to
rough
pottery,
fied as
it
Age, for the grey pottery tradition survives in Shang period. central Deposits of the Lung Shan culture have been found at Anyang, the site of the future Bronze Age capital, stratified above the Yang Shao level and below the Bronze Age level; and Lung Shan pottery has been found beneath the earliest the earlier Bronze
China
into the
Age remains in central Honan at the Bronze Age Cheng Chou. The connexion between the Bronze Agejculture of the Shang kings and the Lung Shan Neolithic Bronze
city
Fig. ioa }
f
is
of
evidently very close.
of the
earliest
bronze
It is
and the tvxpo^cbia goblet by the
flat
in use in
bone with
heat,
— notably the threclobed
Lung Shan pottery Lung Shan kind which
to the
stone axes of the
Shang
borne out by the similarity of some
vessels
which was
crucial in
Ch'eng Tzu Yai
The Shan
types,
Age
and
continued
religion,
Lung Shan
type
was of
site
in Shantung.
distribution of the most individual traits of the
culture
Bronze
Shang
tripod
by cracking
times. Moreover, oraclctaking
practised in a cruder fashion at the
//
show
that important influences bearing
civilisation
Lung on
the
of the central provinces originated in
Shan^ which is the most striking technical achievement of the Lung Shang Neolithic, is commonest in Hopei and western Shantung, and by com/ parison very rare in Honan. The strange vessel called ]{uei a tall jug with the lower part expanded into three large legs like the north-east, in the area comprising the provinces of
tung and Hopei. The
fine
black
jpottery,
t
Fig. toe
goat's dugs, has a similar distribution.
much commoner of the
total
in
Honan. There
is
Conversely the /Lis
no suggestion in
this
replacement of one social group by another in
the Central Plain, or of the violent interruption of cultural
52
Fig. 10 d, j,
Lung Shan pottery:
a, b, c,
burnished black ware;
grey ware. Scale 1:5
e,
g,
20 cm.
53
China
when
traditions established first
NEOLITHIC
CULTURES IN SOUTH'
EAST CHINA
Yang Shao
the
farmers formed their
settlements.
As we
Lung Shan sites southwards from Shan^ Anhui province and the coastal provinces of
pursue the
tung through
Kiangsu and Chekiang, the same attenuation of the most
Lung Shan features occurs. Coarse corded predominates. Along the valley of the Yangtze, from
characteristic
pottery
Szechwan
to the sea,
eminences near to
it is
rivers
associated with
and
lakes.
sites
on
established
Although much
neolithic
from this region, where the pre/ and the stone reaping'knife connect the origin
material has been collected
sence of the
//
of agricultural Plain,
little
can
life
with the Neolithic cultures of the Central
yet
be said of the stages of cultural development
and in the vast hilly region of southern China. The thick forest which must have covered the south in pre historic times would be a serious obstacle to the spread of in this area
farming.
groups of
Isolated
much depending on
themselves
agriculturalists,
must have been
scattered
of hunters whose methods had advanced
tribes
that
the hunt,
of
their
palaeolithic forebears.
It
must
note that the neolithic communities of southern heirs to traditions
of stonecraft quite
distinct
little
suffice
still
among beyond here to
China were
from those of the
north. Just as stone industries of mesolithic type practised in
Kuangsi province
are related to the
Hoabinhian culture of
Indochina, owing nothing to the northern microlithic tradi'
some of
tion, so the quest for parallels to
tools
axe
the polished stone
— notably a tanged or double^shouldered
of neolithic type
—leads
south/westwards
into
Burma and
the
Malay
peninsula.
The
dating of the Neolithic
obscure,
and many must come
haps those of the Huai
sites
of southern China
far into the
river basin are as old as the
Neolithic period in the Central Plain, where the culture
54
was superseded by
the
is
Bronze Age. Per'
Shang bronze
end of the
Lung Shan
culture in the
The seventeenth or sixteenth century B.C. sites
One
Palaeolithic and Neolithic Periods
regional group of
spread around the south-east coast from
Kuantung
demonstrably
is
later
Chekiang
than the southern
outliers
to
of
Lung Shan culture with which it overlaps in the river valleys around Hangchou Bay on the Chekiang coast. The
the
uniformity of pottery and stone tools found on more than a hundred of these sites justifies the recognition of a distinct Southeast Neolithic culture. Like their contemporaries in the Yangtze valley, the Neolithic population of the south-eastern provinces are mound'dwellers. Their habitations occupied hillocks
on
river terraces or
low
by the sea shore, often in groups.
Their remains are specially abundant on the lower courses of rivers
flowing to the coast in Fukien province, and scores of
their habitation sites
adjacent islands.
have been traced
The
largest
of the
at
sites
Hongkong and on recently excavated
the
is at
T'an Shih Shan near Foochow. The mound is some 500 metres long, 10 metres wide and raised between 10 and 20 metres above the general ground level. Much of the mound consists
of sea
reduced to
shells
gathered for food
—
as in the
northern
of the European Neolithic, hunting had been
fringe^areas
its
lowest form.
The
axes, adzes
and arrowheads
of polished stone resemble the Yangtze types, but the pottery distinct and much superior. Much of it is of a thin brownish ware baked to a hardness which argues the possession of a is
kiln capable of temperatures of at least 1000 degrees centigrade. It
decorated with repeated stamped patterns of squared
is
spirals, shells.
hachuring, and impressions of cords, matting and
Some
fragments are covered with a red clay slip and
others painted in black with simple geometric motifs. potter's
The
wheels and moulds were used, though the majority of
the ware
hand^made. Stone spindlcwhorls are proof of is attested here only by large polished stones which can only have served as hoes, but at other related is
weaving. Agriculture
sites
the crescentic stone reaping/knife has been found.
55
China In Chekiang deposits the hard stamped ware has been dis/ covered
Lung Shan
overlying
Eastern Neolithic
is
culture of the Central Plain. into the last
It is
millennium B.C.
acteristic pottery
pottery.
Here the South/
evidently contemporary with the Bronze
At
suspected of surviving well a
Hongkong
site its
char/
occurred together with a bronze halberd of a
Such peri/ had no contribution to make advance of Chinese civilisation. Cultural progress was
type current in the eighth-seventh centuries B.C.
pheral and belated communities to the
inseparably linked with the destinies of the Central Plain, to an
account of whose Bronze
56
Age
lords
we now
turn.
Chapter
The
Bronze Age:
Earlier
Incomparisonwith
the
II
Skang Dynasty
the slower development seen in
the Near East and Europe, the transition in central China from a Neolithic to an advanced Bronze Age cultur e is ysteriously abrupt In the course of aiew centuries the villages
m
.
of the plain
fell
under the domination of walled
rulers the possession
cities
on whose
of b ronze weapon s, chariots and slaves
which no Neolithic com/ however populous and well fed. The
conferred a measure of superiority to
munity could
aspire,
event took place about the middle of the second millennium
bx. Not much
earlier the
Neolithic tribesmen of Europe,
and Scandinavia had become acquainted with bronze and come under civilising influences which can be traced ultimately to the Mediterranean and the Middle East. At about the same time Bronze Age culture spread eastwards through Asia and beyond the Urals. It was tempting to connect the rise of the Shang civilisation of China with similar influences of Western origin. But if it is to be a cultural migration com/ parable to those which radiated in the West from the Near which Loehr has tried East, there remains an awkward gap to fill by postulating the existence of a Northern Cultu re', as yet undefined, which might supply the missing link in the chain of events in central China. One reason for suggesting that a fully formed b ronze/using culujie_ migrated t hence from the West lies in the absence in China °f a trn 1y p rimitive stage of bronze metallurgy In the Britain
—
'
.
Early Bronze
Age
of Western Asia and Europe, open moulds
were used to cast simple
flat
axes and daggers
mental pins and plaques. In China the so far unearthed attest a casting.
One
earliest
and a few orna/ bronze products
much more advanced
technique of
purpose for which the Chinese seem to have
57
— China
employ ed the met al from the merited
vessels
ritual
the manufacture of orna<
start
—indicates
a
accumulation_jpj[
greater
wealth in the hands of a few tha n does the more limited enter/ prise
of the
earliest
bronze/users in the West.
that evidence for a truly primitive level central
forms of bronze
vessels
Shang and Chou
improbable
of bronze metallurgy in
China can have been overlooked
research of the last thirty years.
It is
in the archaeological
On the other
hand, neither the
and weapons nor the written record of
history supports the theory of a large trans/
ference of people or culture
from the
far
West.
In these circumstances we must conclude that little beyond a knowledge of tUr tr^pllm-giVa,] fpr hnique reached China from outside, a nd that this borrowing was npt accompanied by social a nd artistic influences w hich would justify us in speaking
of a
transfer
of culture.
The
technique in Shang times and
its
rapid mastery of the bronze application to the manufacture
of objects and ornament of purely Chinese invention
is no more surprising than the rapid adoption of bronze by more primitive communities as the civilisation of central China ex/ panded southwards. There too bronze was used from the start to produce weapons and vessels of advanced design and
sophisticated ornament.
The continuity between the Shang Bronze Age and the chronology Lung Shan Neolithic tradition in the Central Plain has of shang b een demonstrated on a score of sites. In almost every con/ siderable e xcavation, in Honan the grey pottery of Shang lies directJbLpyer layers containing the blackj ""g ^Mn w 3rp This was true of the most important Shang site which has been investigated, the r oyal capital at Hsiao T'un near Anyang 1
the
"
in the north of
Ho nan.
Large/scale excavations were carried
out here from 1929 to 19 37. Attention had been attracted to 1902,
when
'
a search forlhe source of the dragon/bones'
were being ground up by apothecaries fields
58
outside Hsiao T'un. Earlier
as a
it
in
which
medicine led to the
Lo Chen/yu had
recog/
The
Earlier
nised that the in scriptio ns present qn_
Bronze Age:
many of
Shang Dynasty
the
the 'dragoru.
bones' were oracle texts of great antiquity , and in the vicinity
of Hsiao T'un, site
it
was noted, an ancient
tradition located the
of Yin Hsu, the Waste of Yin' mentioned in the *
histories.
J&u was an al ternative name for the house of Shang apparently used by their Chou successors, and the waste remained when the latter conquered the Shang and transferred the capital elsewhere. The discoveries made at Hsiao T'un were dramatic. The inscribed bones, which proved to r ecord oracular texts established beyond doubt that this was the capital of the later ,
king s of the Shang. These r emains ar e not however, the ,
earliest
Shang period. 2 Since 1953 numerous Shang sites have been investigated close to the city of Cheng Cho u, in Hona n province, about 160 km. south of Anyang. They have thrown light on Shang which
are attributed to the
culture as
it
existed before the foundation of the capital at
Hsiao T'un and provide the
first
chronological sequence within the
satisfactory evidence for a
Shang
period.
The follow
ing scheme summarises conclusions reached by a comparison
of the two main Shang
C.
I5OO to C.
C.
1300 B.C.
1300 C.
1
to
sites
excavated thus
far:
SHANG
I
SHANG
IV (Late Period, Early Hsiao T'un)
cf. Cheng Chou, Lo Ta Miao, Tung Chai I SHANG II (Early Middle Period) cf. Cheng Chou, Erh Li Kang I shang in (Late Middle Period) cf. Cheng Chou, Erh Li Kang II
150 B.C.
(Early Period)
cf.
Cheng Chou
\
People's Park;
Hsiao T'un below rammed/earth foundations C.
II50tO C.
1027 B.C.
SHANG
V
(Late Period, Late Hsiao T'un)
cf.
Hsiao T'un, period of rammed/ earth foundations. 3
59
China
The
scale
of the
fortifications
found
at
attributed to the second earliest phase of the
even larger
size
than Great Shang
at
Cheng Chou,
a nd
imply a city of Hsiao T'un. This may site,
have been Hsiao, 4 whither history reports the tenth Shang king
(Chung Ting)
have moved his capital from a location
to
T he district comprised within a radius of 1 5 km. around Cheng Chou appears to have been no less densely inhabited from the Neolithic period onwards than was the territory surrounding the capital at Hsiao T'un. ear Cheng tart her east.
N
Chou many ha bitation
sites
type have b een discovered, mostly occupying
which
raised
them
plain of the river.
low
The
held to be the
site
e arliest
l
ground some 15 km.
to the west of
Shang Bronze o n a piece of
is
Cheng Chou The
habitation layer connected with a vertical-sided pit deep.
hillocks
a few feet above the general level of the flood
A ^e settlement, near the vi lage of Lo Ta Miao, rising
Lung Shan
of Yang Shao and
.
3
metres
Nearby a child was buried with a stone axe, and another
grave contained a pottery tripod vessel. at Lo Ta Miao are a variant of the Neolithic known from Pan P'o TVun. A roughly circular pit,
The jgottery kilns ty pe
about a yard in diameter
v
is
provided with a stoking-hole
at the
and capped by a clay cover pierced by four or five flues. grey pottery baked in these kilns is, however, distinct from that of the Yang Shao tradition, in the fabric r esembling more cl osely the pottery of later Shang times and a mong its shapes including some which connect with the*Lung Shang tra dition. si milar potter y was found at the site of Tung Chai Tunder a layer corresponding to the lower level at the larger site of Erh ~Li Kang, another hillock settlement lying 1 km. south of Cheng Chou. At Erh Li Kang two suc cessive levels, design nated here Shang II and IIl7we r^leariydehned; and at the People's Park site^ at the n orth-west corner of the city a layer correspon ding by its contents to the upper level of Erh Li Kang was obtruded on by pits and house floors which justify the side
The
,
A
60
;
The recognition of a further stage, limited
and
Bronze Age:
Earlier
the
Shang Dynasty
Shang IV. This admittedly
scattered stratigraphical evidence
is
reinforced by
the logical development of pottery shapes through the series of
Fig. 24
by the changing forms of decorated bone pins and the i ncreasing refinemen t of thff tfr^niqur nf nrarle/talring (see sites,
~
p-99).
At Hsiao T'un the
*"""
most striking stratigraphical
appearance of large building foundations of rammed earth , or
WALLS AND
by a large and d isciplined
BUILDINGS
J^se, such as could only be built
The
labour force.
feature
Cheng Chou
V in the table. The are claimed
occurring at Hsiao foundations.
the
foundations are taken as the criterion for
dividing the duration of the city into earlier and
Shang IV and
is
latest pottery
later
phases,
forms found
by the excavators to resemble thos e
T'un beneath
the level of the building
The latest phase identified
at
Cheng Chou would
thus co rrespon d to the earlier occupation of the northern
Unfortunately the success of the excavations in defining the earlier
at
Shang
at
city.
Cheng Chou
deposits has not been repeated at
Hsiao T'un. While recognising the
level
of
rammed earth Chi and
foundations as an important stratigraphical feature, Li his collaborators in the
prewar excavations in general despaired pits, graves and channels of the
of reducing the complicated site
to a simple stratigraphical order. 5
Whether
around Hsiao T'un
made it their
capital (as
gest) is
uncertain.
city at
still
economy of Lung Shan until the Shang^EngT the stratigraphy at some sites might sug' Conversely, the history of the Shang
a metaUess Neolithic
tradition persisted
ChengnChotrafter the establishment oTthe
capital jat
Hsiao T^un remains quire obscure. Possibly the material which would clarify thiTq uestion Res buried under the modern city. The wide scatter of the earlier sites around heng Chou
C
reflects
a village economy.
An
the ur banisation characteristic of the polity
of a Bronze
Age
city/state,
mark of and e conomic life
earthen city wall, the
seems to have been built as early as
61
China
Shang
probably in the
II, i.e.
fifteenth
century B.C.
The
trace
of the foundation of the wall, 19-20 metres wide and built of layers
of rammed earth 7-10 cm. thick, has been followed
for
1720 metres west from the site of Paio Chia Chuang. At either end of this line its south/running extensions soon connect with
Cheng Chou, with
the existing ancient city wall of
2000 and 1725 metres in west and
east respectively.
of the ancient wall fragments of pottery were found, burials attributed to
lengths of
In the fabric
Lung Shan and Shang
I
and on top of it habitation material and Shang III. Beneath the southern line of the
wall ancient rammed/earth foundations were also
existing
found, but their attribution to Shang II or III remains doubtful. Evidently the Shang wall was intended to be a square of some
1920 metres'
square plan and
be followed by Chinese
to far,
at
The
side.
strange as
its
its
orientation were
Thus
city walls in later times.
absence appears, no city wall has been t raced
Hsiao T'un. 6
The same method of construction
as used for the wall, the
soil by ramming with marks of 5 cm. diameter were distinguish/
co mpacting of successive thin layers of
narrow
staves ( ram
able in the wall),
The
was followed
to prepare the
inundations o£
at Paio Chia Chuang. It was cut into by another house floor dated to Shang III, and is therefore assigned to Shang II, the period which saw
buildings.
earliest
house floor was excavated
The earth platform destined to carry the 255 by 8-8 metres. Foundations of this arera reat Cheng Chou perhaps because they were re/
the city wall raised.
building measured type
seTved for
.
important buildings or the hojJSjs__pf^he_^ahhy, as
the e xpense, of labour
it
required might suggest.
When
two or
Hsiao T'un more commonly, sometimes on a grand scale and pre/
three centuries later they appear at these foundations are serve features
which give an idea of the form of building they C, a complex of rectangular
supported. In the important sector
foundations
62
is
related to
surrounding
ritual burials in a
way
The
which
Earlier
Bronze Age:
the
Shang Dynasty
suggests that the buildings they supported existed con/
temporaneously and were built to a general plan.
and the
which accompanied
scale
their
con/ plat/
rites
Fig. 11
of
seem appropriate to palaces or temples. The
the foundations struction
The
forms are of rammed earth, averaging 2 metres in depth, partly
sunk beneath the contemporary ground level. The largest is that lying to the north, which was 25 metres wide, and of greater though uncertain length. In the south of the sector narrower buildings formed three sides of a hollow square open to the
had been placed on the sur/ face of the platforms as footings of pillars, which were of wood. At another part of the Hsiao T'un site a rectangular foundation east.
Here and
there river boulders
30 metres long preserved regular alignments of such boulders. apart.
The
space of about 7 metres across the width of the building
The
was
pillars
on
the perimeter stood about
divided by a central
4 metres
row of pillars.
In these dimensions
we
detect the
appearance of the
first
wooden architectur e of the Chinese typ e as it has sur/ vived to modern times in China, JCorea and Japan. The
trabeate
spaces are those
which could be
easily
bridged by timbers, and
the approximately equal spacing of the bays in both axes of the
foundations foreshadows a lasting feature of the tecture.
A
single bronze pillar/footing
was
wooden
archi/
recovered, in the
form of a disc measuring 35 cm. in diameter and made convex on the underside so as to rest on a boulder, but the use of bronze for
(and
still
this
purpose was exceptional. Large boulder s were
are) the usual
preventing
its
of these buildings. so
means of firming the
foot of a pillar
and
decay ._ Little can be said of the roofing and walls
No trace ol
we may assume
tiles is
reported by the excavators,
that the covering
was of wood, thatch
or
daub, and the absence of any form of bricks suggests that
Shang times builders closed the spaces between with the same light partitions as have been used in
already in
the
pillars
the
traditional architecture until the present day.
63
China
Chines e archaeologists acceptthe rammedearth (g ise) method pfjRjlfiipg as rU^rnrtrrUtir of t he Bronze A^eT ordinary 3welling'houses of the Shang period were, however, raised on
compacted foundation, and often on a floor lowered below the level of the surrounding ground in the same way as in Neolithic times. From Hsiao Tun round 'pit/ dwellings' are described, most of which are about 2 metres earth floors without the
deep and
with traces of an earth But the sunken houses of Shang II at Cheng Chou a century or two earlier, are less primitive. An irregular row of rectangular foundations was u n covered atj l^ 3
to 5 metres in diameter, often
wall around the
site
of
lip.
Ming Kung Lu
in the nor th-west, pt the city, roughly
alignedwithriieir longeraxesjiarallel. This arrangement hints at the
cEecker^board patternTalready implied in the square wall
city, which was to be the bas is of later Ch inese town planning. The houses measured on average 3 by 1-5 metres anH were mostly sunk half a metre below the old ground surface. Their doors were on a long side and fireplaces were made at the wall near them. Some had round or square niches
of the Shang
KEY TO OPPOSITE PAGE i
Dog
14 Find of ko halberd
2 Caprid 3
Pig
4 Bovid 5 Horse
15 Find of a
chiieh etc.
16 Find of a
ting etc.
17 Bird 1
8 Burial
19 Kneeling victim holding shield
7 Child
Woman
9 Kneeling
and halberd
man
berd (ko)
11 Find of n tual vessels
12 Grave of beheaded
64
Find of a
21 sacrificial
Rammed
lei
earth foundation
22 Stone pillar'footing a
victims
(ko)
20 Kneeling victim holding hal'
10 Stone pillar^footing
13
of a person upside-down
(on head)
6 Chariot
8
etc.
mound
resting
of rammed earth
on
Fig.
n
tions at
Sector
C
of the excava'
Hsiao Tun, Anyang
D :0: D,
D,
a
I?.
A- ±2.
b«rf-
itdDoaQ ,U] .
«
.
.
•/
•
1.2
4.
2
CjAS^
.
}
PDODODa
So Do
0-
f. 2.
(
20
f
!!-!
t-
2
China
hollowed in the wall, which had possibly served recall the internal
arrangements of the huts
as stoves,
and
theHeblithic
of Pan Po. In the Shang HI stage the houses were
village
often treated in the original
Lung Shan
in the
at
and hygie n ic fashion a lready known
Neolithic, the Hoorsjind the internal footings
of the walls being thickly coated with lime wash
.
The phns
and laid either sunk below it only a little. One such house at Ming Kung Lu which overlay the foundations of some of those just described, was considerably bigger than its are r^cian^ulai, generally nnrjivirlpdTas before,
on
ground
the
level or
f
predecessors, measuring 16 by pits inside
and lower
we re
had received
At
Walls.
the
75
metres. Five small storage
same coating of lime
TV(] (^.hipo-
a
nnmher
m etres,
aligned at intervals of about ten
as the floor
ot similar
houses
each measuring
by 7 metres. One floor consisted of two layers of thick lime separated by a layer of soil. The walls were of compacted aBout
3
earth,
up
to a metre in thickness,
and one house was divided
by a ce ntral wall The doors were on the long .
fi
replace near-by. There
we have
Han
C
is
no sign in
side,
with the
Shang house^plans which existed in the
the
described of the courtyard hous e
period and remained the trad itional domestic design in
TTina ever after.
Tteyond the arrangement implied in the rectangular plan and in some cases the alignment of the houses, the information
we have Shang
at present helps little in visualising the
city.
adopted,
we
But
if the rectangular city
perhaps
the later practice.
may
appearance of a
plan had already been
surmise something of the layout from
According
to the
Chou
Li, a ritual
work of
the third or second century B.C., the proper design for a city in
the
Chou
pe riod was held to be the square or rectang le, with
the sid es orientated to the four cardinal "dir ections. 1 his
was
the
plan of the T'ang capital of Ch'anqAri,. and of th e Japanes e i
mperial capital s which copied
it,
and
it is
repeated in the exist/
ing palace precincts of Peking. In this scheme the palace or an
66
The
Earlier
Bronze Age:
equivalent la rge buildin g stands n ear the centre a long a broad
nucleus
street leading; to
streets
and
the south gate .
the
Shang Dynasty
faces south^
Around
were laid in checker/board pattern
.
this
For a
had a ritual significan ce, the souths feeing as pect of t he palace, and hence of the ruler enthroned, being essential to the proper exercise of imperial power We capital city this design later
.
need not suppose that in early times the area enclosed by the wall was fully occupied by buildings. city as
dominating an
The
ill/defined region
political role
beyond
its
walls
of the
would
on occasion as a refuge for the peasants who l ooked to it for prote ction. Within its wall s great buildings, might still stand a mid fields and plantations. rectangular pattern of broad streets leading to a central citadel would be as fitting a design for military purposes as was the somewhat similar plan of a Roman camp. The deep p its found in and near Shang habitations are similar to t hose of Neolithic times a nd like them are presumed
require
it
to serve
A
to
have served
shaped.
tor
st oring grain
.
Often they were
1 1
metres deep.
pits
carefully
One excavated at Liu Li Ko near Hui Hsien in Honan
province was
storage
Fig. 12
Its vertical profile is characteristic
of the Shang pits. From an oval mouth, me asuring some 2 by 3 metres, it narrows about plkway down to a neat r ectangular I
by 2 metres. Pits 4-5 metres in depth were found at Erh Li Kang where two pits c ontained human skeletons in
plan of
1
,
crouched and prone positions,
These examples tjs iao
T'u n went
Shang
cas ual burial s. III period.
At
work 127 Narrow rectangular but many were shallower,
the pits were ubiquito us ;j n a season's
of them were excavated in two shafts
apparently
are attributed to the
to depths
sectors.
of 4-5 metres,
and provided with earth/cut steps From onesuchjMt were recovered the s even tortoise carapace s, intact and inscribed, from which the methods of the augurs were first deduced The contents of
several metres in diameter,
descending along the wall.
.
the inscribed sentences indicate oracles taken in the time of the
67
China
^=^
twenty/sixth Shang king^ towards the middle of the Shang occupation of the
site.
A U^seven
shells bore, the
njjne of the
same augur and they appeared to have been filed as .archives and deliberately stored below ground. Another shaft4ike pit, i-8 metres wide and some 6 metres deep, produced 17,906 pieces of oracular bone and tortoise-shell, including more than 300 intact carapaces. The majority of them had been used in augury and a large proportion of them were inscribed. This material lay in a compact mass in the middle region of the pit, occupying a depth of 1 -6 metres, and sloping from one side as if it had been tipped in from the mouth. Relny/ the Knn^ were some 3 metres of the greenish filling which the excavators believed to represent decayedj^eiahle^jaiatter, while above ,
-*- + -1-
lay the grey soil
Here we seem
to
common
to all the habitation levels
have a refuse
dump
of the
site.
rather than a subterranean
library.
A
problem not
surface, Fig. 12 Plan and vertical section of a storage pit at
Hui
Hsien:
period
Shang
is
that
of the
latest
the Hsiao T'un site. The found only a metre or two below the modern which in the opinion of the excavators shows signs of
date of the
Shang
yet satisfactorily solved
Shang occupation of
floors are
having been scoured by the flooding of the
may have destroyed
Huan
River. This
signs of habitation extending into the
Chou
But since no Chou material has been identified in the tombs on the site (which being deeper buried would escape the effects of flooding), it seems i mprobable that the life of the city contin ued for long after the fall of the Shang dynasty. History recounts that a brother of the last Shang king received back the capital as his fief, to be held under Chou suzerainty. The archaeological evidence shows that the importance of the period.
city declined
suddenly upon the advent of Chou
rule,
even
if it
was not totally abandoned until some generations had passed. Apart from the oracle texts, and the traces of potters' shops and bone and bronz e w orkshops,, the finds made in Shang storage pits and house foundations have not been spectacular. 68
The
Bronze Age:
Earlier
the
Shang Dynasty
more impressive Some vast pit' tombs in the vicinity of Hsiao Tu n which are attributed to the later period oflhe.site ( Shang V) can be none other than the burials o f Shang kings. Their excavation r evealed not only some striking examples of Shang art but some of the grimmest
The
c ontents of the graves arc
.
,
Age despots Kang a piece of low
holocausts ever perpetrated by Bronze
The
H
.
the great tombs shang ground near the village of Hou Chia Chuang, lies beyond the Fig. 15 Huan River 3 km. north-west of Hsiao T'un. The tombs are not marked by any overground structures, and only barely per' royal cemeter y at
depressions
ceptible
si
Pei
indicated
T
their position.
seven of cruciform pla n and o ne square , are
with occasional overlapping of
E ight
rising
tombs,
set close together,
their outer edges.
The
cruci'
form tomb s consist of a deepc entral shaft with almost vertical sides, from the four sides of which ramps ascendjo the surface. In each case the so uthern r amp is the pr incipal appro ach to the burial chamber,
ramp pointing
and the
or ientation
set
squared timbers
sions)
is
period.
(now
which were
The
built ot closer
perished but traceable in soil impress
that followed in great
An
unifo rm, the northern
is
in a direction 14-15 degrees east of north.
structure of the burial chambers,
Plate 8
tombs
until the
outer c hamber en closed a
end of the_Chon
much
smaller coffin
and rnvp rpd a small rect/ ang ular sacrificial pit. In the earth filling which intervened between the coffin and the outer wooden walls, on the surface of the pit bottom which continued the level of the roof of the outer burial chamber, and on the floors of the ramps, were laid the gravcgifts of pottery and bronze vessels, bronze weapon s, o rnaments, stone figures, carved bone and ivory jades and the r emains of victims, human and animal, slaughte red
which
lay
on
its
floor at the centre
T
to
make a king's funeral. The funeral procession
for the southern itself,
ramps led
entered the to the floor
tomb from
the south,
of the burial chamber
while the other three, mostly stepped, led to the broad
69
China shelflevel with
form,
its
its
roof.
In
Tomb
iooi the chamber
top 6 metres underground and
Allowing
for the step,
is
cruci'
depth 4 metres. each arm of the cruciform bottom of the its
measured about 20 metres. The ramps extended some 15 metres east and west and some 20 metres north and south.
pit
The
other
tombs vary
slightly in their dimensions, the largest
of them having a surface plan totalling 1200 square metres,
and
their burial
chambers were square. The northward turn Tomb 12 17 and the steps
of the end of the western ramp of
Fig. 13 Plan of group of great tombs at
Late Sbang period
70
Hsi Pet Kang,
near Anyang.
The
Bronze Age:
Earlier
leading from the side to the bottom of the northern
Tomb 1500 were traced i n three of the tomb s. Twice a are exceptional features. Burials
bunecl with a dog in the basal
the
Shang Dynasty
ramp of
of human victims
man was found
sacrificial pit
underneath the
(1001 and 1550), and in the same tombs human victims were buried at the four corners of the burial chamber, in the coffin
A
former in a kneeling posture and with mouths wide open.
heap of human skulls was found on one of the ramps of Tomb
on
1500, and
human
skulls
the steps of the northern ramp of Tomb 1550 were neatly arranged in rows often. The tomb
with approximately square surface plan (1567) is described as a false tomb, for it descended to a depth of only 43 metres. Nevertheless
it
contained traces of a central
wooden
burial
chamber, and some carved stone and bone objects and bronze vessels. I nsid e the burial
was found,
chambers o f the royal tombs hardly anythin g
had
for they
all
been plundered, in ancient and
From them came no doubt many of the splendid which dealers purveyed to museums and private col'
r ecenftim es.
b ronzes
lections in the finds
made
b urial
Shang
first
decades of the present century. But the
approach ramps and on the step near the ch ambers inclu ded some of the finest examples of
art.
7
in tY\e
In
Tomb
1004,
at the
juncture of the southern
with the burial chamber lay two fouMegged bronze the jing typ e, measuring 74
and 63 cm.
decoration of the sides of the
first is
to the rim.
a bull
ramp
vessels
The
of
chief
mask, and of the
and they are inscribed respectively as 'bull and 'deer ting, perhaps in allusi on to the sac rifici al animals which they were appropriatedTTSfear^by lay a set of three
other a deer mask, 9
ting
to
musical stones.
The
carved limestone figures which had been
placed on the ramps introduce us to a branch of Shang
which had not been habitation
sites.
revealed
In nearly
all
among
the finds
made on
art
the
of the royal tombs the upperjurface_
of the roof of the burial chamber preserved the remains of some
71
China
kind of canop y which had covered Plate 7
The fa bric was woo d, retaining the paint
it
time of the funeral.
at the
surviving in the form of earth impressions
and
which decorated
inlay s
it.
The
chief
colour was red, with y ellow, black and whi te. Limestone, other^of/pearl, ivory and turquoise contributed to the inl ay,
m
and
nne_jjnsta, nre
in
drag ons,
tiger s,_ birgls, the l
to be called t
g n|d
t
aot
(
ieh .
hunder pattern from
fojl.
subjects depicted were
and the continuous its
re semblance to
The west ramp of Tomb 1217 fugitive fashion, the trace
'snake'skin'.
The
con ventionalised animal mask
of a
a
Shang ideograph.
revealed, preserved in the
lar ge
A unique bronze in
late r
spiraj^design c alled
same
wooden drum covered with the Sumitomo collection in
Kyoto, Japan, is a metal version of a similar drum. The solemn burial of kings attested by the rich grave^goods
and the dedication of human and animal victims in the cruci' form tombs did not exhaust the sumptuous rites which acconv panied a Shang royal funeral. smaller
Some
tombs grouped apart a short distance filled
some
contained only h eadless
pits
sto ne axes
among
the 411
to the east
must
in the course of the royal inhumations. Here
have been with
at least
human
skeletons, buried
and bronze knives, while
others held only
rows ofsej£erxdJbea4s, ten at a time. One pit was filled with the dismantled parts of a rharin t. Horses with head rope and bronze ornaments were buried apart, in one instance four together; in eight other pits in pairs.
Monkeys, dogs and deer were among was buried an^ejey
the slaughtered animals. In a pit to itself
phant Plate 11
.
Another tomb of royal dimensions may
yet
remain to be
dis'
covered near the village of Ta Ssu K'ung, on the north side of Fig. 22
the
Huan
river,
chariot buria l,
for here in
1952 was excavated an intact
which we have reason
to believe
Plate 9
72
was a
satellite
Hsiao T'un, on the same side of the river, the fo*yal tomb excavated at Kuan Ts'un in 1950 is of the same form as those at Hsi Pei Kang, but has ramps of a king's grave. Still nearer to
Wu
The
Earlier
Fig. 14 Plan and vertical section of the great tomb at
Bronze Age:
Wu
Kuan Tsun,
only to north and south, orientated as before.
chamber, however, had suffered
we may
Shang Dynasty
Shang period
near Anyang. Late
contents
the
see
what
less
The
burial
depredation, and from
Fig. 14
its
objects were placed nearest to the
principal occupant of a great tomb.
The
outer
chamber had
been covered by the usual painted and inlaid wooden canopy. Inside,
between the wall of the chamber and the space where
the inner coffin
had
stood, were
found a scatter of shell and and a jade pi ring, stone
turquoise ornaments, a jade knife vessels
of pan and
yii
forms, white pottery vessels comprising
lei*p an and tsun, a vase of the thin, hard variety of pottery, and bronze vessels of the forms ting chia chiieh, kuei,fangyi and lei; and bone pins, bronze halberds and arrowheads. On the
hu,
9
step lay a musical stone carved
four
by
human
sentinels,
Three horses,
victims
with the design of a
tiger,
twenty •
Plate 10
and eleven dogs. The ramps were guarded
one buried crouched, the other holding a halberd.
pits in the
and
9
north
ramp
together held sixteen slaughtered
and
horses were buried in the south
further dogs
73
China
ramp. In the rammed/earth
filling
of the
pit over the
burial
chamber were included the bodies of deer, monkeys and dogs, and in an upper layer thirty/four human skull* ^-"gr ight in rows and looking towards the centre In small pits to the south of the main tomb were found headless human skeletons buried .
in groups often.
The tomb
Wu Kuan Ts'un village has been ascribed, on
at
Hsiao T'un period, Shang IV. The overlapping of the ramps of tombs in the Hsi Pei Kang group and their large number suggests that the
stylistic
evidence of its contents, to the
earlier
they cover a longer period than the century and a half or so represented by one of the chronological divisions, as a
group
comparable
The
both S hang
to
size
smaller
t
have
yet
and belong
IV and Shang V. No tombs _o f
been dated to
ombs know n
earlier times^
in Snancr TJJ^nrl later are^simple
rectangular earth pits without entrance ramps, 2-3 metres long Plate 12
and 1-2 metres wide, sometimes with a wooden burial chanv ber sunk to the level of a step in the side of the pit. Victims in the shape of dogs, pigs and even human beings occur even in these humbler graves, and pottery and bronze v essels are placed inside the burial chamber or on the step outs73e7~Whether or not there is a wooden burial chamber and an inner coffin, a
tomb of any sacrificial pit
pretensions will be furnished with the basal
holding an animal victim.
occupant, like those of the
human
The body of the
victims in the great tombs,
may be laid prone or supine. The sa crifice of human and a nimal vi ctims was no t to the occasion of royal funerals The excavations in .
Fig. 11
which
chief
revealed the building foundations of palaces
confi ned sector
C
and temples
produced evidence of a vast slaughter clearly connected with the consecration and the spiritual guardianship of the buildings,
much of
it,
S acrifi cial
pits
one must assume, performed in a single rite. were dug around the edge of the foundatio nsof
the principal buildings. In front of the east-west building in the'
74
The
Earlier
north the pits held c ows, goats, and dogs
Bronze Age:
On the
.
the
east sid e
Sbang Dynasty
of
the long north-south building were buried chiefly groups of
head less
human
skeletpmr--Qujsi de and either jide of gate/
ways, (fhe position of these being inferred from alignments of the boulders serving as pillar footings) were burie d kneeli ng
men and women
,
the former
armed with halberds and some
holding shields alHaci ng sout h. Below the pise foundations"! ,
cows and goats were buried, and within the pise, dogs, singly and in groups of five. In the space which must have formed a court enclosed by the buildings, besides men holding weapons and bronze vessels, five chariots had been buried. Four of these burials had been disturbed, but one intact pit contained the dis/ cernible remains of the chariot's complement of four horses and three armed men. Soon after the fall of the Shang dynasts their pract ice o f human sacrifice seems to have been forgotte n. Rare instances only^ are recorded from the early Chou period. Even Coiv fucius seems to have been ignorant of it, for he surely, had he known, would have cited the abolition of human sacrifice
upon
the advent of the
Chou
morality he claims for them.
rulers as a sign
According
to a
by Mencius, he de plored the practice of burying
I
of the superior
remark quoted
human
effigies
of wood with the^clead, b ut s aid nothing of the les s humane custom which this replaced No trace has survived ol such .
before the third century B.C., perhaps only because
effigies
wood wards
so rarely survives in dry soil. t
omb
figurines
From
the
of clay, are not only
Han perio d on'
common
b ut con/
onej£jhe most interesting bran ches of Chinese art; and in the Ilaag period their variety arm aesthetic qual ity make them comparabl e to the terr a cottas of ancient Gre ece. In the bhang as in the Neolithic period the commonest form of grave^goods are vessels, n ow made of bronze as well as pot' stitute
tery.
The
bronzes
and
their
grouping
show
the greater variety of types, their shapes
as libation or
the ritual bronze vessels
drinking vessels Uhtieh a nd
75
China ku) or vessels for preparing sacrificial meats
wine jars
(tsun,
ting, bsien) and which food and
(//,
yu) reflect an elaborate ritual in
spirits. Only a^few bro nze vessels, such from ErhJLLXang, can be reliably assigned to the S hang I— III While these are comparatively simple in design and decora tion, they already e xploit the potentialities of m etal/
drink were offered to as those
.
c asting with a skill
which foreshadows
the superb craft o f the
Hsiao T'un bronze^smit hs. The simpler form s, t he tripod ve s^ sels ting and // and the kuei bow l, have a general li keness o J ',
ne olithic pottery typ es. Ceramic parallels whether neolithic
Shang period do not, however, explain the evolu' more elaborate and peculiar types. Once established
or of the early tion of the
continued in use for a varying
as ritually c orrec t the vessels
length of t ime in the
Chou
T heir
jomecTpy^ther forms.
b eing gr adually replaced
period,
Plate 21
The greatest variety of shapes is found in the Shang period. The sa crificial m eats were co ok eg n the ting and hsien. The
Li.
1
divi ded
in having the l ower part of the body by grooves into three lobes though unlike the neo^
lithic
the lo bes generally have short_soli d legs atta ched,
embles the pottery
/;',
//'
,
vertical handles
are attached
dec orated with the
t'ao
on
the rimT Often each Jobe_
mask. The
t'ieb
and the body
tenth century R.c .
the
is
has three solid,
l
ower
//'
The
bsien
from the
varieties
of
r?
a
ting is fo ur/leg ged
//'
n l^G k e
t'ao t'ieh\
sh aped upper pa rf ky
termed
seems to have served as a steamer,
part being shaped like a
invariably dec or ated with
76
ting^
is
A
Fig. 151
and
round and usually^smopt nT The true /£Jsjcmnparatively rare, probably because it was chiefly ma de in earlier Sh ang times, from which few er bron zes a re know n. form intermediate betwe en the and ting^ with the lobes less pronounced, is comm oner, a nd su rvives into .t he ullajvlikejegs,
Fig. i^e
//'.
i
first res
Plate 28
were eventually Li Chi and the Chou
uses in sacrifice
codified in such late'Chou texts as the Fig. is
or
grill
Shang p iec es almo st mask s_o f design d istinct (in_
and s eparated from the bow l Another cookingvyesseLalso
and has a rectangular_body with
flat
The v erticaljidfs, and the
Earlier
Bronze Age:
the
Shang Dynasty
ame nam e
is given to a rare form of haped into birds or dragons. The vessel used in the o ffering of the cooked meats is the kuei. Its s implest form (sometimes distinguished by the name yu) is a bowl on a ring foot with o utward^sloping side s and an ouMurneglJip. This shape is rarely foun d jifter t he close of the Shang period. T he commoner form of kuei, squat of body with slightly bulging sid es and furnished with t wo ring^handles s et w below tEe lip, appears to have been made at Hsiao T'un only s
hallow bowl
set
on
s
three le gs
s
Fig. 15 Ritual bronze vessels of the tsiin; d, ting; e, li;/, /,
kuei. Scale approx.
yu; 1
g
%
Shang period:
tsun; h, p'ou;
i,
a,
chiieh;
b,
chih;
Fig. 15k,
I
c.
hsien;;, p'an; k, kuei;
:8
77
^ China
owards t heen d of th e Sha ng period. Since with the advent of the Chou~7t beca me tEe commonest of the ritua l _food^ t
vesse ls,
is
it
possiEIethat
fluence from the
The gods were by cooked meats. Fig. 15c, g, b
At
dri cal for m, generally
least
by wine no
The
flaring lip T the tsun a vase
with a rounded bul ge
sagging in an ?vcurve
profile
less
to the cb ih.
The
than
four vessel forms seem to have held
.
lei is
a
tall ,
of more cy lin^
at the cent re, or
Jk>th forms of tsun are
related to libation goblets, the former to the slender kt^ l atter
Fig. i$b
farther west.
the 'black wine' mentioned in the ritual texts.
with a Plate 18
appearance there marks an in'
attracted to the sacrifice
shoulderecTvase with Plates 14, 15
its
Chou homeland
and the
constriction at the middle of the ku
coinci des with the bottom of the container . In profile
it is
in^
marked by a thickening whi ch together with the ex ^ panding upper and lower parts dividesthe ornamentinto thre e
variably
distinct panels
.
In
many
pieces
t
wo
or four cross^shaped holes
below the midd le, for what purpose known. Here there can be no question of a cerami c prototype, and it has been plausibly suggested that the shape ori ginated in a goblet made of two horn s jrn'ned tog ether. Two b ucket/'shap edvessels, thejw_with lid and swinging handle and the fc^with v ertical tubes near theTip intended for are pierced in the side just
it is
Plate 19
F&
1
Sf
a
not
rope^handk.
Plate 17
poured in
Plate 29
bo at with
are also wine^containexs.
The wine could be
the^spouted ho \ t hejtrange kuang , sha ped like a sauce^ lid
formed into an ox/} ike!mpnster and often
plastic decoration offantastic animals, i$ said to
ther
have been used
it. Somekuang have a vertical partition inside ancT accom panied by_a_lajjk«. essels ca st i n thej orm of entire animals (owl^jige^elephant and rhinoceros arefound) prob' ably also heloLlhje__ rituaT drink. TEe strange chiieb and cto, which also belong to the group of wine vessels, always have l ong tapering, splayed legs, shaxp^edged with triangular section ^
^for_mixing
V
are
Plates 2Q, 23
Fig. i$a
and, rising from the Plate
78
20
pillars carrying
Jig,
a pair of short rectangular^section ed
round caps atlHe
top. Pottery versions of these
The goblets are these s
pout
Earlier
Bronze Age:
found in considerable number s, but
copy the bronz e forms rather than the of the chueb
would be
than to drinking, 'but the suited to either
.
The
better l
the
Shang Dynasty
it is
clear that
reverse.
The long
adapted to pouring a libation
arger chia
s
eems surprisingly
little
pi llars beneath the caps are always
left
-
undecorated. If they were intended, as has been surmised, for 1
gripping by tongs
when
the
wine was heated over a
fire,
they
|
must have been devised for a metal vessel in the first place. The design of these uncompromising shapes shows a fine feeling for plastic form.
The
Shang bronzes was not equalled by like early date, and rarely suiv passed at any time since. Excavation has thrown some light on the technique which was employed, though many details quality of the best
any other bronze/founders of
of the process are covered
at
was
at
III,
still
obscure.
Bronze
factories
were
BRONZE CASTING
dis/
two sites near Cheng Chou. One, dated to Shang Tzu Hsing Shan and occupied part of a rectangular
building resembling other house foundations. Traces of cor'
roded bronze covered the
floor, in
which were sunk
a
dozen
small conical pits with smooth hardened sides. These prob/ ably held the casting moulds, for the lips of the pits were
blackened and surrounded by scraps of slag. Fragments of clay
moulds
for knives
tered about.
and halberds, some decorated, were
The crucibles were made of coarse red
clay,
scat/
bucket/
shaped and cased in a thick jacket of clay mixed with
soot.
A deep deposit of slag lying outside the building showed that the ore
the spot. The scale of the production may be judged from the site of Nan Kuan Cheng Chou, where over a thousand fragments of
was
refined
on
in the bronze factories
Wai clay
at
moulds
for
weapons,
//,
chia
The clay moulds intended number of separate parts fitted six to a
and
chueh were recovered.
for casting vessels
comprised a
together at the edges by dowels,
dozen of them being required
for a goblet or tripod
bowl. In his study of the moulds Karlbeck detected
particles
79
China
of metal adhering to the
clay,
which
is
usually blackened
and
hardened on the outside, and inferred that the process was one
of
molten bronze being poured into the
direct casting, the
argument appears
original clay form. This
surprising as
it is
of the bronze
Hsiao
Tun
that the perfect,
vessels
minute
of the ornament
could be produced by
this
Shang IV,
and
At
Here was found
the earlier phase of the capital.
monster mask in
model which was used
relief.
therefore dated
is
part of a block of burnt clay, one side of which t'ao t'ieh
means.
a bronze working'floor lay beneath one of the
large foundation platforms in sector B, to
to be conclusive,
detail
is
carved with a
This can only be a positive
to prepare a negative
mould
for re/
ceiving the metal. In spite of this evidence for direct casting
it is
Hsiao T'un period the Chinese should have been ignorant of another way of casting bronze the circperdue method. This required a model difficult to believe that
even in the
earlier
—
moulded first of all in wax. The wax was en' cased in fine clay and baked, whereby the wax was eliminated and a cavity left to receive the metal. Such a proceeding is little likely to be detectable from the rubbish left on the foundry floor since the mould would be destroyed on removing the finished casting, and it is not surprising that technologists arguing from the excavated material more readily find evidence for direct casting than for the use of wax. Nevertheless, a close examination of the Shang bronze vessels with the more ela/ borate ornament leaves little doubt that the wax method was employed to produce them. Their varied and often minute relief, elaborate handles and undercut projecting parts, all flaw/ to be carved or
lessly
rendered, are unthinkable as a task for direct casting, or
at least for
such casting in panvmoulds of the accuracy attain^
able in burnt clay. so long
known
It is
very likely that the
in the West,
was conveyed
wax to
techniqu e,
China along
with the knowledge of metallurgy itself" The crispness orthe reliet
80
ornament on bronze
vessels of the earlier
Shang period
The suggests that
wax was
Earlier
Bronze Age:
the
Shang Dynasty
used even before the development of
elaborate bronze ornament
at
Hsiao T'un.
In r ecent tim es c opper and tin ores have been mined chiefly
Kweichou and Yunnan, both of which lay outside the c on trol of the Shang st ate. It is questionable whether the Shang can have been content to depend for so essential a commodity on the minor trade prac ticable with primitive peoples, and we have seen that the in' in the so uth-western provinces of
scriptions concerning military forays
do not speak of the south/
Ores may however have been exploited near Hsiao T'un itself for tr adition locates them i n its vicinity and some place-names bear this out, although no trace of them
eastern region.
remains
at
the present day.
A
recent study identified four
and two of tin, within a radius of ioo km. from Hsiao T'un. By the standards found in other parts of the Bronze Age world the Chinese were quite potential sources of copper
eccentric in the composition of the alloy. c opper
same
and
class.
tin vary
The
The
proportions of
within wide limit s, even in goods of the
analysis of the metal
of a tinghas given one part
of tin to ten of copper which are the normal proportions in
A chueh contained wo parts of tin to A practice peculiar to Ch ina the addition of
other parts of the world. t
en of copper
.
2 considerable quantity
t
is
of l eaa to the alloy In Shang bronze .
may amount to six per cent, though generally it is less and may be lacking altogether. The presence o fjead in the alloy would somewhat r educe the meltin g point and by i mproving the flow of the meta l would tend t o, reduce flaws and bu bbles The lead therefore serves an intelligible purpose the lead
.
which the perfection of intricate ornament was a great desideratum. But even in a spearhead, a real weapon, and not a ceremonial piece made for burial, the proportion of
in casting vessels in
lead proved to be 15 per cent, while only a trace of tin
was
pre'
Perhaps the high cost of tin a nd the irregularity of the supply were the reasons for the variation of the constituents of
sent.
81
China bronze; or perhaps lead/ and tin-bearing ores were regarded as
But
equivalent ingredients.
vincing. In rftnn
tjrpps,
the political sphere so that the
ti
when
neither
explanation
the feudal settlement
and opened up new
con/
is
expanded
possibilities
of trade,
n resources of south-west China should have been
more easily available, still 10 per cent to 30 per cent of lead wa s com monly adcled to the alloy The chie f arms of Shang times were t he boj^ ^nd «•!>*» ha1 y J^ercLThe shape of theJiQw, which had no imperishable parts, canoe seen in some emblematic symbols cast on bronze vessels. The arc had a double curve and the upper tip is often .curved .
ARMS Fig. ij Fig.
16
qfrnn^ly nntwprds.
Euman less
figure in
Tts Jjpngffr,
than aboji tibur
fe et.
A
been built of a number of with horn.
It is
when
it
appears alongside a
some oFthe symbols, seems
bow
strips
of
this
to
have been not
shape can only have
of wood, possibly combined ,
Compound bow which eastern Asia as long as the bow
the ancestor of the
remained the standard type in
/
was employed. 8 Its double curve affords a p owerful thrust over a short pull, a nd in this respect it was ideajJoF shooting fro mjhe
^o n finH
<;
pqce,_of gL c hariot/b ox.
As far
as
we can tell,
the horse
was not ridden in the Shang period, though this type of bow was equally suitable for shooting from the saddle, and became in latex^-times-Uh e^principa l wnponjif the mounted srpppf nor mads. On Shang sites ot all periods b one arrowhe ads are cojnmon, and consist of a simple point of circular or triangular section with a short tang. But even at the lower level of the Erh Li Kang site (Shang II) bronze^mxwi£adi.ajg£ear, along with bone copies of them. These are triangular in outline with flat blades offset clearly from the central spine. From mid' Shang times onwards sop hi sticated forms were adopted with curvingedge s, long t railing barb s and sometimes giefeeeU^ b lades. Tne fact that the arrow heads are hafted by means of a spike/like tang, and were never made with a socket, suggests that the shafts were generally made of reed or bamboo. ,
82
The
16
Fig.
Shang
Arrowheads:
aAt:
period;
c,
a,
b,
d} bronze. Shang
From Liu Li Ko, Hui bronze. $th century
v
hone.
Earlier
Bronze Age:
the
Shang Dynasty
UN
period.
Hsien, Honan; e'g,
B.C. From Chia Ko
Chuang, T'ang Shan, Hopei; h'k, bronze tips
of cross-bow
bolts,
qth'jrd century
B.C.; from Ch'eng Tu, Yang
Tzu
Shan,
Szechwan. Scale 2:3
The arm
which in the west was never a principal times, was the c hief weapon of the Shan g in close
halberd,
in early
fighting. It
The Shang
remained in u se untj l th e end of the typ e
commonly had
Chou
Fig. 18
period.
a rib at the base of the blade
flat tang. The latter was inserted into a trom which the blade projected at right angles. Rarer examples have a tubular shaft'hole, above which rises a flange an otiose remnant of the earlier design. The appearance of the complete weapon can be surmised from the form of the character used in writing its name, ko, and from
from which projects a slot in
a
wooden
bait,
—
some of the emblematic to be about 3 feet, and
figures. it is
The
length of the shaft appears
turned up
at the
end beyond the
blade; a decorative tassel hangs from the part of the tang projects
through the
shaft,
a three/pointed ferrule.
and
Some
the lower
rare
end of the
examples of the
which
shaft carries
latter survive.
Another form of Shang halberd was a long narrow jj lade set parallel to
the shafnmcTgenerally curved a
little
overTts end.
Soldie rs armed with halberds of either type carried a small shield,
of which oval and rectangular forms are recorded in the
83
China
a
^
b Fig ij Emblematic characters
armed men;
c,
d
c cast on
bronze vessels of the Shang period: a }
g, halberds; d, h, bows;
victim; o, p, bronze ritual vessels;
e
b,
e,f
I,
halberd on a shield; j, building; k, sacrificial
i,
m, a
symbol of unknown meaning, possibly
ritual
indicating sacrifice to ancestors; n, horsebreeder.
Scale 3:4
had apparently no imperishable parts which could bro nze helmet might be worn though the small number of these excavated at Hsiao T'un suggests that they were no£xacam£m. The helmet is a r ounded cap
script. It
survive in the tombs.
A
,
c overing the head to belo
cut
away
w
the ears, a rectangular part being
The ornament consists of eyebrows and ears cast on the dome of the
in front to tree the eyes.
bulging nose,
eyes,
helmet.
The
script figures
show
the same length as the
also a
man
wielding a weapon of
kobut mounted with an axe blade with
a broad, slightly curved edge.
Many
such axes have been
re/
covered from the tombs. Most of them are decorated in low relief with
monster mask s— a mask with gaping fanged mouth
on the blade like that
shaft
itself
and a tigeMike mask on
of the halberd,
and
may have
is
the tang, which,
designed to pass through a
to project above.
Like some of the ko
y
slot in the
these axes
round hole in the blade, and, to facilitate binding to the shaft, slots at the top of the blade and a hole in the part of the tang which the shaft would cover. Some specimens have projecting wings at the base of the blade for the same purpose. The rich cast ornament of s ome of the axes is hardly inferior to that of the finest bronze vessels; the same ^THTmasks and
84
a
The
Bronze Age:
Earlier
the
Shang Dynasty
geometric motifs are use d. In some splendid pieces the designs are
formed of low
deep, holding rarely
i
cast cloisons,
Plates 13,
22
about one^eighth of an inch
nlay of fra gments of turquoise.
The
stones
measure more thanan eighth of an inch across, and their
edges are neatly
set
together
and shaped
to
fit
against the
re
taining walls.
In the emble matic figure s cast o n bronzes a n axe of the type
we have described is seen human victim. T he ornate mask
held over the severed neck of a axes with their terrifying monster
evidently served for the funeral
"
thereafter
s laughter,
and were
consigned to the tomb. Another ceremonial tool was
a chopping/knife resembling the elongated type of halberd
blad e, Jbut provided with a handle, and designed to be used"
without hafting. These too sometimes have appropriate oiaa^. jncnt, such as the flcial
anima l
row of rams' heads
—which
—an allusion
to a sacri'
decorates the upper edge of one such
Museum. The forms of weapons and
knife in the British
are
without
axes
parallels in other
we have d escribed
Bronze
Age
thus far
centr es of Asia.
But another group hints at contact, though noTcIoseor con/ tinued contact, with peoples living far to the west^ China adopted from abroad the bag/shaped axe or adze termed by Western archaeologists s ocketed axe, which was the type^fossil and an important tool of the LatelBronze Age in Europ e. The Bronze Age Karasuk culture of the Minusinsk region of
k
southern Siberia was an intermediary in the migration of this
ft
m
n
o
85
China tool.
Fig. 20
Characteristically,
the
Shang^ socketed axes have an
individual stamp, their neat rectangular form with sharply
squared section differing from the more roundecT shapes of the. Siberian product
Some
features"
that the socketed axe or adze
mould. The edge of the s ocket
Fig.
18 Bronze
Length
halberds,
ho,
(left) 20- $ cm. (right)
Shang
29-5 cm.
period.
Fig.
is
open on one
cast in a one-piece
generally decorated,
19 Bronze
sacrificial
From Liu Li Ko, Hui 41 -5 cm.
86
of the~lnetal surface suggest
was
knife.
Shang
period.
Hsien, Honan. Length
The
Fig. 20 c,
side only,
Bronze socketed axes:
loth'jth centuries
B.C.
Earlier
a,
Bronze Age:
Shang period;
the
Shang Dynasty
h,
Scale 5:11
with an animal mask in the usual low linear
One axe so decorated was found Kuan Ts'un, though on the whole
in the royal it
tomb
relief.
at
Wu
appears that the socketed
axes were seldom added to the grave/goods, any more than the chisels aricT
saws whose existence
specimens have come
down
Anoihgr form owed
we may
to us
W
surmise although no
from Shang times.
est is the spear head. It has an and a Tubular socket on which are help the hafting Here too the Shang
to the
Fig. 2 ib t c
elegant, leafcshaped blade set
two
ring^lugs to
.
armourers produced their eccentric variant of a universal
Bronze
Age
type: the edges
of the blade were continued
down
of the socket, to end with two hatting holes just above th e mouth of the socket. S pears seem not to have been made in the Karasuk period in southern Siberia, and we must imagine
the_sides
that the
form reached China from
different route.
At Tomsk,
and by a and west in Siberia, forms of socketed axe and spear farther afield
farther north
a mould was found associating which can be regarded as ancestors of the Chinese specimens. 9 The antiquity of both these type s in southern Rus sia and the
87
China
Kuban
district
of the Caucasus
is
sufficient to
allow their
borrowing in the Shang cultu re of the th irteent h to eleventh centuries B.C But some closer analogies link directly
arrival as a
.
with Minusinsk and
Karasuk
its
culture.
A few
Shang axes
have narrow parallel'sided blades, springing from a shafting tube,
which come close to a Karasuk form. more striking are a number of knives excavated
Still
T 'un
at
Hsiao
(where they seemed to be connected particularly with
which rep eat a Karasuk ide a. The finish and ornament of these knives fall out of the context of the other products of the Shang foundries. The headj^of horses and ibexes that decorate the ends^of the ha ndles are nearer tqjhe more naturalistic art of southern Siberia than to the usual chariot burials)
Chinese convention. In
instance
this
we cannot doubt
the
evidence of a direct contact of the Chinese and the inhabitants
of Minusinsk.
We
may
guess from the disappearance of these.
knives and the animal ornament associated with them
oi the Shang period that
Fig.
Bronze
21a
knife
with
ram's
end
was less effective in the Karasuk graves of southern Siberia show an increase of Mongoloid skulls in comparison with the earlier graves and so possibly indicate an ethnic move/ ment thither from northern China or Mongolia.Unfortunately, since the Karasuk graves are dated only broadly to the period from 1200 to 800 B.C., it is not possible to connect this evi/ dence of migration more closely with events in China, in spite
early
>/
at the
Chou
this contact
period. Conversely, the
of the temptation to
see in this
migration a result of the unrest
bead pommel. Late
caused by the war of Chou and Shang.
Shang
Scale 1:2
In the later part of their reign at least, the heavy arm of the Shang kings was the chariot. The excavators of Academia Sinica working in 1953 near the village of T a Ssu K'un g, a few miles to the south-east of Hsia T'un, were more fortunate
Plate 11
than the excavators of sector
period.
British
Museum.
C
(see p.
62 above) in finding
ndisturbed chariot/pit whose contents were as well pre/ served as any dating from Shang times. The photograph and
an
88
i
The
Earlier
Bronze Age:
the
Shang Dynasty
diagram show the remains lying in situ. The c hariot was buriedjintact, channels being lowered beneath the general of the pit to accommodate the wheels and the main members of the frame. The structure of the wooden parts was preserved in the traces of finer, compact earth which had re/ floor level
placed the
wood
as
it
decayed.
The
only bronze parts of the
carriage are the twojixle_ca£S and^the sh^ajSIng^oTtRe"two
A/
shaped members of the yoke which rested on the horses' heads
Lines
of convex bronze dis cs which were and the rein s, and such things as a small bronze bell, bronze cheek/pieces and ornaments from the horses' foreheads give some idea of the harness, but much is behind the ear s.
attached to the bridle
left
to conjecture.
The armament of the charioteer may be seen in the list which accompanies Fig. 22. The stock of arrojvvs, tipped with bone or bronze, vouches for the bow of which no trace survived. Near the charioteer's box lay a stone blade and a knife of the Siberian kind, and two strangely shaped ob/ jects which have defied satisfactory explanation. Chinese archaeologists first called them 'ornaments for the bow', but have now changed the name to 'bow/shaped ornaments'. fair number of such objects has reached collections. The pro/ jection of the terminals (these are hollow, and sometimes con/ tain stones to make rattles of them) below the curve of the centre portion makes the object quite unsuitable for mounting on a bow. Another suggestion is that these bronzes were attached to the edge of the driver's box as a rest for the reins: but the lack of any rivets or loops on the underside make it difficult to see how they could be attached firmly enough for this purpose. They may, to make another guess, have been mounted on shields, as an ornament and a jingle to sound when the shield was flourished. It is clear at least that these objects were not a part of the chariot itself, for one of them was found in Minusinsk, where there is no sign of chariots at all.
A
Fig.
21
Bronze j^ ate
\>,
c,
spearheads.
shang period.
Scale approx. 1:$
89
1 3
China
KEY TO FIGURE 22
I II, III
IV
Human
VII Trace of timber of the
skeleton
VIII Trench cut
Skeletons of horses
Trace of timber of the
V Trench
made
shaft
IX
to receive the
Bronze
Gold
3
Cowrie
XI
26
bell
Black ashy
Domed
soil
disk of mother^of'pearl
28 Bone tube
shells
Bowshaped
29 Tang of bronze arrowhead
object of bronze
30-31 Bronze axle/caps
6 Stone blade
32
Bone ornament
7 Bronze arrowheads
3 3
Eight
domed
disks of bronze
8-io Bone tubes
34 Seven
domed
disks of bronze
1
Bone arrowheads
35 Bronze ring with spur
12 Socket of a bronze axe 1
Bronze
36 Bronze arrowhead 37 Bone tube
chisel
domed
14-15 Bronze arrowheads
38 Bronze
16 Bronze knife
39-40 Bronze ornaments from the
17 Stone point 18
Bone tube
19
Domed
disk
disks (about 58)
yoke
41-42 Harness yokes of
mother^of'
pearl
20 Bone tube
43-44 Triangular plaques of bronze 45 Bronze
domed
disks
(17
46 Bronze domed disks (about 58)
22 Fragments of stone point
47-48 Bronze cheek'pieces
Bone ornament
24 Bone tube 25 Bow'shaped object of bronze
in
number)
21 Disk of mother'of'pearl
23
90
of red lacquer paint
27 Bone ornament
foil
4 Bronze plaque 5
box
X Traces
the wheels
2
Trace of lower timbers of the
Trenches made to receive
i
receive the
axle
shaft
VI
to
axle
49-50 Bronze domed
disks
51-52 Bronze ornaments from foreheads
horses'
The
Earlier
Bronze Age:
the
Shang Dynasty
»v«v»V»VV4v*
^it^wt ^
..TJ
30.
i
i
*•
=
li
...£'"7.:;.;:;:;.
£aii
21 I
>3
>^ A/ it*™
2j
!
era 37.
vr
j
/rch sir
*^-w
v\
^^>
<
F/^. 22 Burial of a chariot, with charioteer and horses, found near
Honaen
Province. Late
V-.
Anyang,
Shang Dynasty, i2th'iith century B.C. (Pi.
n)
91
— China
The bend able,
at the end of the chariot's main shaft is inexplio and probably accidental. Seen from the side the shaft
has a shallow double curve in the middle, designed to keep the
two ends
— beneath the box, and between the
in a horizontal position. the yoke,
main
The
shaft, axle
horses' heads
various timbers, the cross/bar of
and foundation of the
driver's
box,
can only have been lashed or pegged together with wood,
was no
for
no indi/ cation of the shape of the box or the dashboard beyond the trace of its oblong foundation. The wheels measured 1- 5 metres in diameter, their rims were about 7 cm. wide, and held without metal. Eighteen taperi ng spokes joined the rims to a hub about 22 cm/ in diameter and some 35 cm. long. The there
length of the the bearing
trace
hub
of metal
is
at these points.
understandable
when
There
it is
is
considered that
was of wood on wood, and can have been
cated only with animal grease or pitch.
The
lubri'
elongated
hub
caps, perforated to receive linch pins, are similar in design to
those used afterwards, throughout the
Chou
dynasty.
man h as been Yellow Sprin gs with the chariot he drove or conv manded. He is seen lying prone behind the box. In one of the chariot'pits at Hsiao T'un there were two human occupants and four horse s. The norma compleme nt, m judge fromfhe practice of the Near East and the Greeks, would be a driver and a bowman. Like the Greeks, the Shang charioteer probably used his vehicle to approach and surprise the enem y, and dis^ mounted for the main fight. The second pair of Horses must have been harnessed to traces o n either side of the pair on whose necks the yoke rested, in the manner of the Homeric paraseiroi. From these excavations we cannot, unfortunately, deduce a In the
Ta Ssu K'ung
chariot/grav e only one
sent to the
l
sure answer to a crucial question: whether the harness, like that of the ancient
Near
East, Greece
and Rome, took the
draught from bands passed around the horses' necks, or in^ eluded some device to enable the horses to exert
92
their effort
The
Earlier
Bronze Age:
the
Shang Dynasty
anno
Fig.
23 Jade animal amulets.
From Ta Ssu K'ung, Anyang, The
majority are carved from thin slices ofjade. Scale approx. 3:4
with the chest and shoulders. In the former case the Chinese
from the same disability as the Western chariot: h arder the horses pulled the more they tended to choke themselves and to raise their heads into an unsuitable position for their run From the first century B.C the Chinese possessed a f orm of harness whirh plared tjie strain on the chest and sfioulders a nd obtained a much more effective draugh t. This chariot suffered
the
.
.
was an invention which anticipated a vice, the it is
hard
collar,
similar
by almo^Ta'Thousand
years.
European de^
On the whole,
Shang used the choker harness, otherwise would hardly have been attached to a single light
likely that the
four horses chariot.
Of the Worses themselves,
pending the publication of a
93
China study of their bones, jhort_ of stature and Jated, as
we can l
as yet say
They appear
little.
to be
arge^headed, and therefore probably ig/
one would expect, to the steppe horse of Przewalski.
The brH1 p
AiA nnt i nclude a
bit:
the material, bone or rope ,
which passed throughjhe horse*s mouth to join the perforated che^i^Dieces which were found lying beside the jaws, had perished without trace.
The homeland of the Chou provinces
more_suitable
is
people in Shansi and Shensi M
tor horse/raising
than the Central
Plain,_a nd in rnstorical times has su pplied horses to the rest of
China.
It
is
proof of this
probable, although there
yet, that
the
Chou
is
no archaeological
were acquainted wit h chariotry
east to conquer the Shang kingdom in XQ?7 R.r. We may imagine that the chariot played some part in their campaign. The siting of the chariot/pits at Hsiao T'un
even before they moved
connects them with the
later
phase of the
city,
the twelfth to
when we may suppose that the Chou were already a power to be reckoned with. The xessnv blanc e^ of the Shang chariot to chariots made in the Near East towards the end o^theiecondjrullennitnn B.C. is t oo great eleventh centuries B.C., a time
to be dismissed as a coincidence.
If ideas of chariot design
China from the West they probably traversed the on their journey eastwards. It is cpjiceiYable that the Shang chariot was a borrowing from their western neighbours, on whom they may have relied besides for the reached
Chou
territory
~
supply of horse s^
pottery
The
Shang dynasty makes on the whole a poor showing compared with the finer wares of the Neolithic period. Painting was never practised and burnishing is rare. The purely ceramic forms the li and the ting must be includ ed with these, though they soon came to copy the tense lines of the „ bronze versions are often rough in technique and finish, and pottery of the
—
—
bag'shaped pots with rounded bottom are out the period.
94
The forms of
//
and
ting
common
through^
descend with
little
The
Earlier
Bronze Age:
the
Shang Dynasty
from the coarse grey pottery which is found in with the finer wares of both the Yang combined central China Shao and the Lung Shang Neolithic. While bronze ousted the finer neolithic pottery, the humbler tradition continued. S hang innovation in the coarse ware was the introduction of a ring foot. The p otter's wheel was used where it was ap pro/ priate, but even in rounded vessels the potter often resorted to the old method of beating out the sides with a patterned spatula, — or a stick bound with cord. -j / Through the three stages of the Cheng Chou sites we may observe g radual changes in the proportions of pottery ting U ( and hsien, the pedestal bowl called tou and the peculiar deep f vase with flat base or rounded bottom w hich the excavators \ change
at first
A
*
call the
l
arge^mouthed
tsun.
F ollowing
the results achieved at
Fig. 24
^
Cheng Chou a typological study of the pottery forms has begun, but a clearer picture of the stratigraphical sequence
T'un
at
Hsiao
will be necessary before a sequence can be established for
whole of the Shang period. It is still quite uncertain whether some differences noticeable between the potteries of the two
the
city sites are
and ting
contemporary local divergencies or
of development. The virtual a bsence of the
later stages
from Hsiao T'un
is
surprising, for this type
Cheng Chou. The large/mouthed northern
city.
reflect earlier
It is
tsun
is
is
common
at
also rarer at the
strange too that the pedestal
bowl should
continu e to bejnade in pottery throug hout jhe Shang period
whereas the few
known
bronze copies o f this vessel appear_aU_
Shangdate_and imitate the most primitive shapes^ series. The bronze tou in a sophisticated form and f urnish e d with a lid makes its ap pearance again some 500 years
to be of early
of the pottery
later,
in theTat e
vessels.
Chou
period,
when
it
figures
amon g
the ritua l
10
"ThTbanaJity^pX^an^pottery isjelieyed by £w_p remarkable made by Shang potters: the utilisation of pure white clay and the invention of a hard felspathic glaze The former is discoveries
.
95
LI and
HSIAO T UN
SHANG V
CHIA
HSIEN
TING
KUAN
TSUN
m
HSIAO T UN
SHANG
IV
CHENG CHOU SHANG III
CHENG CHOU SHANG II
CHENG CHOU SHANG I
cc
CHENG CHOU LUNG SHANG NEOLITHIC
Fig. 24 Pottery, bronzes, stone axes and oracle bones from
Cheng Cbou
'China clay * to which Chinese ceramic art owed its supremacy two thousand years later, from the Sung period onwards. Fragments of white ware have been found sporadic/ ally on neolithic sites from Shangtung to Kansu, but only in kaolin, th e
96
TOU
LEI
STONE TOOLS BRONZE WEAPONS ORACLE BONES
YU
KUEI
P OU
c^ D
w m ^x^
m
SV
md Anyang,
showing the development at these
sites.
Not
to scale.
After K'ao
Ku Hsueh
Pao (1956)
he Sh ang_geriod (and p^rhaj^or^atjrlsiao Tun) was this material deliberately exploited. It was sometimes fired to a
t
fctrdness needing a kiln capable
than 1000 degrees centigrade.
The
of a temperature of more
w hite
pot s are a superior
97
China ware, decorated by carving pottery
—with
—a
technique not found on other
or nament in part identical with motifs used
on_thf hronzrs. They do not copy the bro nze ornament introduce^ so me pattern peculiar to
howevei^and
slavishly,
themselves.
The
Hsien as well unglazed,
is
ft
bowls and
higlvshouldered
ware,
glazed
eq ually distinctive ,
has been found at
vases,
is
Cheng Cho u and Hui
Hsiao T'un. The body, which alsp_occurs mostly as hard as that of the white ware^ but as at
b uff or grey in colou r, and s ometimes contains ground quartz. It is wheel^turne d, i mpressed with small spirals or S ^ shaped or checkerboard figures. On many ^pieces the glaze
thinner,
appears in patches, an
merely scattering
wood
which might be achieved by
effect
ash
on
the pots as they were burnt in the
But other specimens have the thin greenislvyellow glaze on the inner and outer surfaces, and here the glaze must have been more carefully applied. strange light is cast on the nature of early technology by the kiln.
evenly spread
A
fact that neither
to the extent
of these outstanding discoveries was exploited
one might expect. The white ware ends with the
Shang while ,
the glazing of pottery ceases after about 800 B.C.,
to reappear in differen t iorms in the s titute f or
Han p eriod Asa
the white marble or Ivo ry vessels
siirv
which were bu ried
with .important persons th^^mductioF^ofnfhe' white pottery
mayjiave cease^asjthejashion p assed, but the advantages of a made water-tight with glaze migh t ,
strong, thin^walled vessel
ha ve been expected Potters
to
keep
and bronzes miths,
o rganised in the Shang
F&
*5
<*,
h,
Bone pins of Shang period: Ostasiatiska seet,
98
the a,
Mw
specjalkatiorT
is
technique alive
like carvers
citie s
of jade and bone , were
in regular
natural to bronze .
In China, as in the Near East, the
Age
.
worksh ips. Such
societieseverywhere
city rulers
who
.
dominate d
a vast peasantry slowly emerging from neolithic pnmitiveness
enjoyed the monopoly p Lbtonze/casting and therefore of the Vun: most effective weapons. Policy, as well as expense and the
Stockholm:
from Hsiao
c,
this
b,
,
The of a
secretiveness
The
farmers.
difficult
craft,
Earlier
Bronze Age:
Shang Dynasty
the
withheld bronze from the
of writing^ appears to have be en in China,
art
more than in the Mesopotamian states, a closely guarded"" monopoly oTthe ruling caste The oracular inscription s which survive, illuminating as they are regarding superstition, some mil itary affai rs and the acts of kings, inform us hardly at all on .
common local
life,
trade,
systems of land/tenure, civil rights or
gove rnment.
The method of augury
so abundantly illustrated by the oracle/bon es recovered atJHs iao T'un is one that survived among some primitive peoples of the Far East until recent time$. The answers to questions put to the test were given by interpreting cracks produced on animal bone, usually shoulder blades,
by applying
i.
hot bronze point.
scapulimancy has been produced from
No
sites
augury
evidence of this
of the Yang Shao
Plate
24
more primitive form at Ch'eng Tzii Yai and other Lung Shan settlements. On the Ch'eng Tzii Yai bones marks were scratched which remain undeci/ pherable and do not seem to constitute writing. written record of the oracle was added in later Shang times. The choice of bone used in the process shows a gradual change from the Late Neolithic to the end of the Shang period. Goat, ox and deer shoulder-blades were used at Ch'eng Tzu Yai, and at the Shang I and II sites at Cheng Chou. But in the upper level of Erh Li Kang, Shang^III, ox bones account_for half the total recovered, and a few tortoise carapaces appear. At the People's Park site, Shang IV, it is the tortoise-shells, nearly always the lower half, which amount to half the total, and deer is virtually absent. The greater proportion of ox bones in the central Honan sites as compared with the Lung Shan
period, but
it
was
practised in
A
may reflect the increasing importance of cattle 2 c Roy economy, but the predilection for tortoise in the Shane j&' 5 —r-i Ontario Museum. rV r r cities can only be ascribed to a refinement of the augurs s ca \ei .~ technique. The tortoises suggest too that trade relations were sites farther east
in the
1
mi
'
.
1
»
99
China
now
established with peoples living south of the
Yangtze
River and in the Huai River valley, for these animals cannot
have been found in the natural
At Hsiao T'un
Under
varies at different times. thirtieth
to
and
state farther north.
the choice of tortoise-shell or animal bone
thirty/first
the twenty/fourth, twenty/fifth,
kings tortoise predominates, but seems
have been temporarily abandoned under the twenty/eighth
and twenty/ninth kings when ox bones were used_almost ex/ clusively.
No
specialisation according to the content
oracular questions
is
noticeable,,
sometimes stored apart,
which held
as in Pits
respectively shells
tions appearing only
on
127 and 344 in sector C,
and bones. Some
tortoise-shells
importation of them to Hsiao
of the
but the different materials were
Tun,
"rare inscrip/
appear to record the_
although the
tortoise/
shell is not named in them. According to one such inscription someone had 'brought in 250 pieces'. Another places the figure 1000 after a character which is interpreted as a place/ name. Allusions in literature of the late Chou period suggest that tortoise-shell augury was practised throughout the ChpjLi Dynasty, but no evidence of it has been excavated at Chou sites. Han historians say that it was used in their time through/ out the country^ and that only 'eastern tribes' used boneu. The cracks on the bone or shell which the Shang augur inter/
preted were not allowed quite to take their
own
course.
By
round and later, from Shang IV, a round pit overlapped by an oval one, the run of the lines was hot bronze point was applied on to some extent determined. the edge of the pits and the cracks appeared on the other side. Ideally these cracks consisted of a main line with a small spur leaving it at right angles, producing the shape which was used for the character k pit, to divine. By a convention which now boring a shallow
pit, at first
A
,
eludes us the relationship of the small cracks to the larger ones
determined the a nswers
,
which might then be inscribed
'favourable' or 'unfavourable^ after the questions.
100
A
as"
bronze
The
Earlier
Bronze Age:
the
Shang Dynasty
Kang (found with a bone had been used) and a jade model of a bronze Kuan Ts'un graver with sloping point of V'section from near Hsiao Tun are the only specimens of the augur's tools, but he must have used saws, knives and scrapers besides, for the carapaces were trimmed and burnished before use. The oracle in scriptions, engraved, or, more rarely, painted on the bone or shell, are the earl iest kn ow n form o f Chinese writing. The principles of the script do notj^erfrorrTThose ufc the mo dern writ ing and are the same as those underlying ihchieroglyphic and cuneiform writing of the Ne.ar.£ast. Many words are written by a partial or simplifie d drawing _pf the o bjects or actions they denote or represented by the picture ^f an object which is close to them in pronunciation^. Some are abstract conventional signs. Another method was to place to' gether two elements, one of which e.g. 'tree', 'hand', 'water' hinted at the associations of the word, while the other sug/ gested the sound in the manner of a rhebus. This laitprocejiuie is rare in the oracle sentences, but later it became the most useful means of expanding the written vocabulary. In all respects the language of the oracle sentences is the Chinese of historical times, monosyllabic, uninfected and dependent on word order for relating the parts of speech. Although the principles of writing have remained basically unaltered from the Shang drill
of square section from Erh Li
on which
it
Wu
Fig.
26
,
—
—
T
X > 1 ^ ¥ * n ± *
f Fig.
H¥ m
ft
k
I
*
m
it
m % m
Jff!
II!
m
26 The earliestform of Chinese writing, asfound on oracle hones, with {below) modern Translation, from left to right: Ox; goat, sheep; tree; moon; earth;
equivalents.
water; tripod, vessel (ting); to show, declare; field (showing divisions); then
and bowl); ancestor
(phallus); to
go
(man
against, towards; heaven; to pray.
IOI
China dynasty to the present day, a reform undertaken in the second century B.C. has obscured the meaning of the greater part of the oldest stock of ideographs.
The
sentences turns therefore in the
and
identification
interpretation of the oracle
first
place
on
of the old forms with the
the comparison
later.
Out of some
5000 ideographs recorded from the Shang period only about 1500 can now be convincingly interpreted, and divergent views are entertained on lation
of the
sentences
is
many
characters crucial to the trans'
terse oracle sentences.
difficult in
Even
the discussion of the
any language but Chinese,
for the exact
Shang phonetic values of the ideographs are not known, and modern Chinese words in romanised form can only be sub' stituted for the ideographs when both the meaning and the equivalence with the standard Chinese script are reasonably sure.
The main
subjects
on which
was
the oracle
interrogated
were the appropriateness of sacrifice to the royal ancestors, the
and comings and goings of the king,
sickness
the advisability
of undertaking hunting expeditions or of taking military action against hostile neighbours, the likelihood of rain, the success of
crops and the possibility of untoward events. Questions last
subject were generally confined to the following
ten^day division of the calendar^
It is clear
on
the
hstin,
a_
from the form of
"some ofthelongerinscriptions that the sentence engraved on the
bone was a record made
after the
completion of the oracle'
taking, for the verification of the oracle's answer
added.
The
is
occasionally
brief sentences presumably note only the essence
when
bone was burned and the cracks interpreted. Most of the sentences begin with a combination of two characters indicating a day of a 60'day cycle which was of what was spoken
the
obtained by placing together and repeating in parallel a often,
The
and a
distinct series
of twelve, symbols.
briefest sentences consist
'Rain or
not?', 'Is
it
of only two or three words: But even the
permissible to go forth?'
matter of rain might be elaborated
102
series
11
and
the verification noted, as
The
Earlier
Bronze Age:
the
in the following series of sentences. These are inscribed different parts
Shang Dynasty
on
of the same ox scapula and, being dated to the
same day, clearly refer to the same prognostication: 'Day keng tzu, oracle taken, Cheng (augur's name) asking, tomorrow, hsin ch'ou, will the weather be fine? asking, to/ ( morrow, hsin ch ou will the weather not be fine? 'The king examined and said, this evening it will rain, to/ morrow, hsin ch'ou, it will be fine. 'In that night rain was granted, on hsin cUou it was fine.' But normally the record is briefer: y
'Kuei maOy asking, in the (next)
hstin,
nothing untoward?'
'To Ancestor Chia (eighteenth king) a goat? To Ancestor Keng (P'an Keng, nineteenth king, founder of the city of Great Shang) a goat?' Yi wei, asking, an ox to the Thirteen Ancestors? goat to
A
'
the Lesser Ancestors?'
'Kuei mao, an oracle, asking, any harm to the king in the (next) hsun? '
Ting hai9 an oracle, asking, shall
we hunt
pi lu (Place or
animal?)?'
Questions on
sacrifice,
of which scores of different kinds are
given special names, are the most frequent of recipients
were the royal ancestors
their
names
respond closely to the king/list and the
Shang
ancestors preserved in the histories.
traditional
list
list
all.
are
When
found
the
to cor/
of the pre/royal
The
validity
was thus dramatically vindicated,
of the
to the dis/
comfiture of sceptical historians. 12
The
sacrifice lists distinguish
and individuals representatives
(cf.
the royal succession father to
i.e.
the chief
of generations, and the 'Lesser Ancestors' in
the sentence quoted). In the
from
between generations of kings
the 'Thirteen Ancestors',
son
first
half of the Hsiao
went from older
after the
to
T'un period
younger brother, but
twenty/seventh king.
animals were chiefly the ox, goat and pig
— the
The
THE SHANG STATE AS REFLECTED IN THE ORACLE SENTENCES
sacrifice d
suovetaurilia
of
103
China
Romans
the
—though
deer
and dogs, and very
beings, were also offered. In
many of the
rarely
human
sentences in set form
m
'oracle taken* and chen 'asking or inter/ which is believed to be the name of the augur. These names form distinct groups numbering
there occurs
between
preting' a character officiating
from a half-dozen
to a score at different times.
Tung Tso'pin
made a brilliant contribution to the study of the oraclcbones when he made the augurs' names the basis of a chronological division. He divided the reign of the Shang kings at Hsiao T'un into five periods: I
II
III
twenty/second king twenty/third and twentyfourth kings twenty/fifth to twenty'sixth kings
IV
twenty'seventh to twenty^eighth kings
y
twentyninth
to thirtieth kings
and so much enhanced the historical value of the information which is gleaned from the oracle records. Ting The first of these periods, that of the King (sixteenth or early fifteenth century B.C.), has produced the
Wu
greatest
prises^
number of sentences concerned with militaryenter' The common form of question asks for the auspices
regarding the chastisement of an entity which appears as two first a proper name and the second the word meaning direction or region. Of the proper names more than a dozen occur with some frequency and clearly refer to tribes with whom the Shang were at enmity. The study of these names in connexion with later literary traditions sug' gests that the majority of them inhabited the region lying to the north-west of the Shang capital, in what is now south and east Shansi. Written history confirms that Shang power had begun to expand in this direction in the earlier part of the
characters, the
fang,
dynastic
reign.
The
locations
given of capitals that were
occuped before ]^an Keng's move
to
Hsiao T'un
are in
some
instances obscure, but several seem to have been in eastern
104
The
Earlier
Bronze Age:
Shang Dynasty
the
Honan and one (Yen, cited in the Bamboo Annals) was in Shantung. 13 The move to Hsiao T'un thus seems to have been and north-west. what is meant by the alleged perc grination of the Shang rulers, whether the moves involved considerable numbers of people or, as seems more likely, only an advance
to the west
It is difficult
to say quite
the settlement of the ruling house at different points in a large territory
which they dominated. Perhaps
the flooding of the
Yellow river, or a superstition connected with the king's death, were contributing reasons. Students of the oracle sen/ tences infer that the influence of the Shang_ kings made itself felt through most of central China, including the provinces of Shantung, Honan and Hopei, and even extended into the northern part of Anhui and Kiangsu. Sites of Shang date, identified by pottery and minor relics, are being excavated at the present time over the whole of this area, and as methods of
Shang period are refined, it may prove pos/ of Shang power archaeologically from its centre in Shantung and Honan to the outlying regions. Apart from the historical records of the moves of the kings, dating within the
sible to trace the spread
the chronological succession recently established between the
Cheng Chou and Hsiao T'un hints at a move of the Honan in the midd le of th e Shang period. The expansion towards the north-west seems to
cities at
centre of jx>wer northwards in
have encountered the opposition of the Shansi tribes and to have stopped on the line of the T'ai
mountain its
barrier
tributaries
and
dwelt
Hang
mountains. Beyond
this
Yellow
and
farther west along the
tribes
who
river
appear in history as the
Chou
and whose eastward advance o verthrew the Shang and occupied their capital in 1027 B.C. Already in the time of Ting there is mention of a Chou chieftain allied to the Shang. At this time the Shang king is preoccupied with confederacy,
Wu
attacks in the north/west of his territory. In oracle^bone periods
IV and V,
the age of the last four kings, in the late twelfth
and
105
China eleventh centuries B.C., the military oracles are chiefly con/
cerned with hostile peoples
who
appear to inhabit the
east or
from an inscription on a bronze vessel found in Shantung that Chao, the last of his line, undertook a major expedition to the east. It may have been this distraction south/east. It appears
which gave
the
Chou
their opportunity. 14
In the light of the oracle sentences, perhaps inevitably from the nature of them, the cracy.
The king might
Shang
state
appears as a kind of thee
himself act as an augur, increasingly so
in the later periods of the oracle" sentences. sides the
named
names of which some ritualists
He
is assistedj
be/
augurs, by other individuals designated by
recorded in the
are applied also to the earliest
Chinese
shamans and
literature.
of priests of this kind may have included the
The
activity
and communication with the world of spirits and ghosts which is still the role of the village medicine/man in some primitive communities of the Far East. In the ancestors are gods
ecstatic trance
official religion
the royal
whose favour must be ensured, but their less than those of the deity called Shang
powers appear to be
Supreme Ruler, who is able to visit the state witri storm and blight of crops and other disasters. Some _of the sacrifices Ti,
i.e.
reflect
animistic beliefs which, like the presence of shamans,
suggest the nature of the popular religion over
system was raised. Heayenly__hdLrigs were, besides
Shang
who
which
the official
received sacrifice
Ti, the Sun, Clouds, Rain,
Wind and
Western Mother and Eastern Mother. Gods of theearth were Earth itself (denoted by a symbol later used in tTte^nelining of altar, originally representing perhaps an earth mound), the Four Directions, the Mountains and Rivers. In outlying territories the Shang kings appear to have exer/
Snow, and
the
power through officers who figure in the oracle titles of Ho, Po and T'ien. At the end of the Shang period at least, they stood to the king and each other in some kind of feudal subordination, and so foreshadowed the
cised their
sentences under the
106
The
Earlier
Bronze Age:
the
Shang Dynasty
more developed feudalism of the Chou. On the border of the Shang country were the 'regions', /tf«£, some of which accepted Shang suzerainty, while others periodically were at war with the central power/The wisdomof calling on the local terri/ torial rulers to join in a royal punitive expedition was also put j
to the oracular test:
'Ting Mao. The King took an oracle and interpreted. Shall we join our force of T'ien to our force of the Po and punish the Po of the Yu region?' 15
There
named
is
evidence of slavery^ with which some
in the sentences seem to be specially concerned.
which
various terms slaves
officials
may
are interpreted
reflect distinctions
as
among them. The hole show how human beings,
of status
causts observed at royal funerals
whether they were slaves or prisoners of war, might be ficed as chattels.
But it is difficult to accept the view
by Chinese authorities of a that systematic slavery
The
denoting clasjes__of
'slave/state',
was the
basis
sacri/
now adopted
with the implication
of the economy.
On
the
other hand the oracle sentences tell us nothing of peasants be/ yond the mention of the grains which they cultivated. There is slight evidence in the sentences that irrigation was practised, though the great co ncern with the prognostication of rain and the prospering ofcrops suggest that it was not very extensive.
The
of characters denoting grain
identification
is
beset
with
doubts. Varieties of millet are believed to have provided the
main crops and
the mention of rice,
which could hardly be
cultivated without carefully controlled irrigation,
As in the in the
known tmued
picture
West, the to us
is
uncertain.
we have formed of Bronze Age communities
life
of the peasants of Shang times
than that of
to cultivate
with stone hoes and digging
reap with stone knives. Before the spread of iron, available to them.
The
is little
more
They con/ and to metal was not
their neolithic forebears.
sticks,
kings of Shang, with their extrav
agant hunting expeditions, their bloody funeral
pomp,
their
107
:
China
and eventual
charioteers, their priest/like role
more
the
and
vessels
nstruments of
survived the
Chou
in
Age
deification, are
world, both east
west.
The bronze i
Bronze
familiar figures of the
consigned to Shang graves were primarily but they
sacrifice ,
fall
times.
of Shang and attained
The Shang
inscription appropriating cestor, the series
fulfilled also
vessels
them
a social role,
political
importance
sometimes have a brief
for sacrifice to a particular an^
individual being denoted by one of the calendar
often symbols.
The
briefest ins criptions
name
the
by a single character, stating that he 'made a pre cious
Ancestor
vessel for (sacrifice to)
mula
is
(e.g.)
maker
sacrificial
Ting'. Often this for^
preceded or followed by an emblem, distinct from the
ideographs of the ordinary
script.
Sometimes only the emblem
appears, or the maker's name, or 'vessel' with the ancestor's ritual
calendar symbol.
that the
Although
emblematic characters
the theory
are totemic
is
marks,
now it
rejected
seems clear
that they are a personal designation of some kind, probably the
signature of a clan or great family.
On a few vessels assigned to
Shang a fuller formula appears, e.g. The King was in the East Hall. The King
the latest decades of l
Keng
shen.
augustly came.
The
stowed
of cowrie
5 strings
sacrificial vessel for
Minister
Hu
shells.
followed him.
They were used
Ancestor Ting,
to
He
be'
make
a
In the 6th month, in the
King's 25th year
The
inscription describes a royal
currency (or at
least a
award of cowries, a form of
valuation of goods), and the recipient,
using the gift to honour an ancestor, has recorded it and announced it piously to his ancestors. The dedicatory texts, far more frequent, in which there is no question of a royal gift, suggest that some form of clan organisation persisted in the upper class of the Shang population and was the basis of an ancestor worship like that practised by the kings.
108
Chapter
The Later Bronze Age: c onquest of the Shan^ The of house of Chou and
Chou Dynasty
the
by_the rulers
territory
the political arrangements
the
which ensued have been regarded by Confucian
III
histori ans as a
THE FEUDAL EMPIRE OF THE CHOU
revolutionary upheaval, the most important event in the early history
of Chin a. According toliistorical tradition the motive
Chou
for the
attack
was
to chastise the
Shang king
debauchery and neglect of the public weal. Moral
of this kind
propagated in the older parts of the Shu Ching,
is
which were composed in the earliest
Chou
kings.
of
early decades
found also in inscriptions cast of the
for his
justification
on bronze
Chou
rule. It is
vessels in the reigns
The Chou were
later believed to
be
which they instituted and public and private loyalt ies
the o riginators of the feudal ord er
of the
therefore the fountain-head
upon which Confucius founded
his ethical system..
Yet be/
cause a reigning dynasty must be recognised as culturally superior to the peoples of the outer territories of the empire, the
Chou
once
are presented at
as political saviours and, until the
eve of their conquest, as cultural barbarians. There are indica-
was not
tions that this
so,
but the archaeological evidence for
the cultural status of the western region
period
most
Age
is still
very slight.
It is
interesting discoveries
culture in
From
China
the histories
perhaps in
will be
made
and from
first
The
this direction that the
concerning the origins of Bronze
something can be gleaned of the dynastic successors.
during the Shang
in the future.
Shang
the
oracle sentences
earlier history
centre of the
of the Shangs'
Chou kingdom
lay at
on the upper courses of the Ching and upland country suitable for both agriculture The Chou potentate mentioned in oracle sen-
in western Shensi,
Wei
rivers , in
and drovin g.
tences of the time of the
Shang king
Wu
Ting
is
called 'hou^
109
China ('marquis')
and seems
to belong to a
group of local
rulers so
who normally accepted the suzerainty of Shang. In the case of Chou it must have been an uneasy submission from the start. One sentence queries the auspices of a punitive expedi' designated
by the Shang king against the Chou, in which the forces of the royal clan were to be joined to those of a hou called Ch'uan. The latter, in the light of later tradition, may denote the ruler of nomadic peoples in the north-west, probably tion
occupying the northern
The Chou were quarter themselves.
wards and rivers.
tracts
of Shansi and Shensi. 1
apparently expe riencing pressu re from this
They were
at first
later to the south, farther
obliged to
move
westy
downstream on the Shensi
Here, in the vicinity of the modern Si/an Fu, were built
Feng and Hao From fliese the camp aign against the Shang kingdom was eventually l aunched The Cfiou state was powerful en nngh even by the midd le" of the Shang period t o arouse the fears of theHangs of the^^finttaTTiain an d provoke an attack by them. An enemy who could threaten the Shang state must have possessed kmpyp wpapnm, and a considerable military organisation. Even after the conqueit of 1027 B.C. the Chou kings r emained in their capita l in sout h Shensi The fortress city of Ch'eng Chou (not to be confused with Cheng Chou!) which they built in Honan nea r Loyang, from which to dominate the Central Plain, remained a secondary the cities^o f
.
.
.
capit al until 771 B.C.
Then
th e loss of the western territories to
invading Junp; nomads a reversal aided by a palace intrigu e, co nfined the kinp;s to the Honan capital and made of it the ,
centre of the s ion
Chou
tt ate.
between a Western
This event
is
taken to mark the divi^
Chou and an
Eastern
Ch ou
period
Cl027-77I. 771-222 B.C. ).
The
forces led
by the
Wn
Wang against Shang some of wEom appear to have
Chou king
consisted of a federation of tribes,
been of Turkish or Tibetan origin. T3ut the bulk of people over
no
whom
the
Chou
kings ruled in their western homeland
The Later Bronze Age: cannot have been nomadic In the Shang .
denoted by an ideograph (which representing a
s quare field
that the choice of the
is
texts the
the character
divided into four.
symbol was an allusion
It is
Chou still
Chou Dynasty
the
are
used)
quite likely
to their practice
of agriculture, a recognition that the Cho u, l ike the Shang themselves and unlike the majority of the Shang's enemies, based their power on a farming peasantry In contrast to
this,
whom
Wu
.
the term ch'uan^JAo^, used to denote the people
Ting was prepared to use in an attack on Chou, may allude to their n omadic Ji fe, in which the dog was specially important for droving.
Upon
S hang king his so n was enfeoffed b y Shang territory in Hona n. Shortly afterwards Wu Wang's son and su ccessor Ch en g Wang, assisted by Wu Wang's brother, the Duke of Chou, who acted as regent, was obliged to crush a Shang revo lt. The S hang vassal was executed_ and a Chou ruler, another royal brother was set over his territory as marqui s of the feudal state of Wei Other members and relative s of th e Chou royal the defeat of the
Wu Wan g
in part of the central
,
.
clanjfrf*^ gpf nvfr tV^ states of
Yen (Hopei) Lu (shantung), ,
a nd Ch*! (Shantu ng). These four were the
first
great feudatories .
nder them were^eventually ranged hundreds of small fiefs.
The
first
concern of ih e
Chou
city
leade rs, as ot the leaders
ofthe nomads' armies in Asia inlater times, was to reward the
commanders who had served un der them. The whole of northern Ch ina was garrisoned by troops loyal to the Chou king, whose own territory under direct rule was confined to the r egion around the ea stern capital at^ Loyang The £hou partitioning^ of theempire into fiefs and the in' stitution of five classes of hereditary nobilit y continued a method of decentralising power which we see fore shadowed in Shang^ times, it was now more minutely and systematically regulated Obeisance an d tribute^ pa ssed up the ranks ofthe feudal hie r^ .
.
archy to the king
at the top.
The
nobles were required" to
in
China
Fig. 2 j Pottery of the Western
B.C.
Chou period,
late
nth^early 8th centuries
Scale approx. 1:10
journey periodically to the capita l. But in practical
affairs the
was more taken up with the sub/ and administration of the lands granted them in fief. Although the fe udal state s were under an obligation to supply garrison troops to the Chou kin g, no large army was permitted to be formed under his control. Military assistance _was lfp f ^ fk» Wnp; by th ^ states acting independen tly. IrTtnis lay the germ of the inter/state rivalries, the le aguing "togeth er, the creation of new states and the swallowing up of older ones attention of the feudatories
jection
112
The Later Bronze Age:
which determined hundrecTvears
home was
.
at a
Chou Dynasty
the
the course of Chinese history for eight
from
the start the king in his north/western
disadvanta ge, for he was neares t at hand to stem
the inroads of nomad s, badly placed to enforce his policies
Fig 28
on
the feudatories, and, having a greater proportion ot semi'
nomadic people in his territory, perhaps less able to build his power upon a settled peasantry than were the feudal rulers of the eastern parts of the Central Plain. Even the semblance o f a c entral p ower passes with the defeat of King Yu in 771 B.C. and the move oi his successor P'ing to the capital at JLoyang The t erritory he relinquished reconquered from the pretender and his barbarian supporters, b ecame the fief of Ch'in whose expansion westwards centuries late r was to close the chapter of feudal history and imit£lhe empire under a single comman d. In the centuries after 771 B.C some score of feudal states con' .
,
,
.
tended togeth er, using the apparatus of feudal allegiance to
Chou
means
as a
while could
hegemony
ally
own
The Chou king
fo7"a
himself with the strongest contender
The
to their
ends.
.
which had Shantung peninsula and by its position astride water routes had become an important centre of trade. It also benefited from a state' organised monopoly of salt, produced from the sea^— an advant' age which Chou itself is said to have enjoyed in the Fen River valley of its homeland. From Ch'i the hegemony passed to other northern state s, a ll of which w ere gradually compelled t o sink their differences as a~threat gr ew trom <^hjn. 1 his was a state established in the low er Yangtze basin, forming the s outhern limit ol the empire which was regarded as semi' barbarous In the fifth century it began to expand its power t o the north overthrew the states of and Yueh and pro/ enlarged
fell at first
its
territory
to the eastern state of Ch'i,
b y conquering th e whole
of the
,
.
Wu
,
ceeded to engulf the smaller
of the Yellow ^arrested
H
river.
states
of the Central Plain south
This encroachment was destined to be
only by the even more explosive expansion of Ch'in
113
China
from itsjweste rn highlands in the
part of the thir d
earlier
cent ury B.C.
Leanwhile provocation from 'barbarian s' in the nortlvwest r
from the nomads of s outhern Shansi. inter' Chou king and his neighbouring feudatories
particularly
p ut the
mittently
in peril. In 6 60 B.C . the in vaders succeeded in occupying th e capital rison.
of th e
By
state
of Wei in Honan, putting to
time the
this
Chou
flight its gar/
king was stripped of real power,
him was
thougfrlf ceremonial allegiance to
professed . Tn
704
of Ch'u had arro gated the title of Wang king, an action which spelled the dprjinp even nf the fnrmal fpuAi] B.C. the
,
Chou
Nevertheless the integ rity of the
ties.
256
until
RELIGION
r uler
B.C.,
w hen
The Chou
it tell
state
was respected
a prey to Ch'in.
feudatories,
as
prin ces,
free
exercised auto/
and feudal
cratic rule
ceremonial
us no thing of land tenure or legal systems which might throw light on their closer relations with their subjects. Taxa/ tion and conscription could be aggravated to the point of raising
from
their
walled
Unfortunately the histories
cities.
te jj
rebellion.
We
each
and
was absolute and
state
agricultural, continued.
regulated in the legal system.
was divided by
cracy
it
There
is
,later
in iron,
^city state.
no "evidenc e
r
domest ic
that
it
was
the aristc
(sW)) and merchants (shanjj) The
the theorists into ejliicaied gentry
,
.
contro l^o f trade,
was an important
The
Slavery,
The population below
subordination of the merchant class to the
The
rights
seems that government in
c e ntralised.
peasant farmers (nung) , artisans
theoretical.
communal
learn nothing of traditional
allowed to the peasantry. In theory
s tate
rest
was more than
mon opoly
in j akjmd
feature^of jjae-ecojiom y of the
prerog ative of the feudal ru lers descended theo /
from the kingTwho in turn had received the mandate of Heaven, Tlie onTy threat the reformer might voice was that this mandate could be~~withdrawn that unrest am ong__the people was a sign that this was imminent The concept of Heaven as a ruling supernatural power, and the designation of
jgtically
,
.
114
The Later Bronze Age:
Fig.
28 China's physical features and
the
Chou Dynasty
the feudal states
"5
China the king as the
the
Son of Heaven seem to^e
idea s introdu ced by
,
Chou They .
are perhaps a legacy
of the religion of thT "*"*
nomads of inner Asia.
The officialj-eligion. had many deities celebrated by
freed itself
the Shang,
from obligation
and required
to the
sacri fice
Heaven (which was evidently equated witrTthe Sha ng Ti o f the Shang) and to Earth. Divination of the kind attested by the nracje^bone s in the Shang period can nojonger
principally to
be traced in excavated material, and, judging from inscriptions
on bronze
preserved direct
seems no_longer t o have been a
vessels,
concern of the kings. The c ult of royal anc estors also
cease s as
an impor tant part of the
tion ot tamily piety finds
which had Although
its
state r eligion,
buttKe
already taken root at the beginning of the
would seem natural to a nomadic kind which is claimed
this cult
patriarchal,
people in their homeland,
tradi'
expression in the ancestor cult
we need
Chou
era.
"society
of the^
for the
Chou Chou
not suppose that the
were responsible for introducing it into central China. The m of ancestor worship e xisted in Shang times.
ger
In the elaborat e ceremonial which was observed
of the
Chou
at the courts
king and the leudal princes, the award of hono urs
recorded in inscriptio ns cast on bron z e vessel s holds the greatest interest lor the archaeologist.
The custom seems
to
have begun
of the Shang dynasty
(see p. 108) and it can be whole of the Western Chou period. Under the Chou kin gs, particularly in the first few reigns, the inscrip/ tions are often long and circumstantial, and con tain importan t Historical information. 1 he Ceremonial of awar d had become the symbol of the political bond between Chou and the feudal states, The award might be fro m the king or f rom a feudatory to a subordinate, and the r ecipient is appointed to a fie f, or an
before the
fall
traced through the
,
office ,
perhaps given a
newnoble
titl e;
his devotion in service
ma yT)e commented on and a moral exhortation Bestowed with the material
116
gifts.
More
along
rarely the inscription is cast to
The Later Bronze Age:
commemorate an important awards
to individuals ;
more
event
rarel y
of the
gift is
to set
made
lation of a boundary. Trie bronze
campaign
or
still,
to
down
mark
without the regu/
the occasion
usually designated in the inscription as a 'precious
vessel* destined for use in sacrifice to ancestors, to a
named indi^
Often inscriptions contain n o more than this dedication and jCang (late eleventh and tenth centuries F.c.J~the king is found speaking an d
vidual.
~7n early
Chou Dynasty
the
.
the reigns ol king sCh'eng
award in person T hereafter the p hraseo logy of the shows that the king, even j f present aljowed the pronouncement of the award T cTbe made by one of his officers. The text, written on the bamboo slips of which the books of the time were made, was handed by the king to_an officer who read it aloud. In one instance the king appears with an officer on either side of him, one of whom handed him the bamboo brevet, which he then handed to a second officer to be read out. 2 The king is generally stated t o be in his capital and in a
making
the
.
inscriptions
great hall
,
of his palac e. There, with his
assistants,
he faced
south , while the recipient of the award was introduced by a s pecial
officer
and stood facing the king After the citation away the bamboo brevet and presumably .
reci pient carried
the the
material git ts also.
Une s cribed
ot the longest
on
and most circumstant ial texts is that in^ Tin g', cast in the time of the t hird
the '(^relt Yii
Chou king, K'ang, who r eigned for s ome thirty year s at the beginning nf the tenth century B.C It was found in 1821 near .
Mei Hsien
in Shensi
.
The
brevet
falls
into four sections, begins
rung with the moralising eulogy of the
Chou
victory
which
is
customary in the early decades of the Chou. Then follow the besto wal
— or
ofriceTan d a ""^In
confirmation list
—of the
fief,
an appointment to
of gifts:
the 9th month, the
the western capital near
The king had spoken
King being
in
Tsung Chou brevet on
Loyang] conferred a
thus: "Yii, the glorious king
[i.e.
Yii.
Wen 117
China the last of the predynastic rulers of
[i.e.
Chou]
received the
When King Wu succeeded him he established our empire. He abolished their [the Shangs'] iniquities and extended our rule to the four quarter s. He great order of
Heaven.
imposed order on their subjects. In exercising the kingly office he did not presume to abuse the use of wine, nor to disturb the customary sacrifices. Therefore
Heaven
son.
its
also defended the former
Heaven
king
king, Ch'eng] ... to rule the four quarters.
[i.e.
protected
the second
We have learned
that the kings of Shang
The
had forfeited the mandate of Heaven. and the royal officers of Shang were use of wine, and so the empire was lost to
great feudatories
reckless in their
them. 1
"You, Yu, from your youth have shown great devotion You [have been our mentor?] and devoted your energies to us. We model our government on the virtuous principles of King Wen. And now we enjoin on you to be the assistant of Yung, cleaving to virtue and wisdom. Be diligent day and night to advise your sovereign fearlessly. in service.
.
.
.
The king
.
said, I
his ancestor the
.
.
command Yu
to
assume the heritage of the rest of your life
duke of Nan. During
time you shall be the lieutenant of Hsia in the control of affairs
affecting
offenders,
mand of the territory 1
the
Jung
day and night empire.
Thus
bequeathed to
"We
barbarians.
assist
Diligently
punish
your sovereign in the com/
I shall
me by my
preserve the rule
and
bestow on you a wine goblet
for sacrifice, a
head/
dress and robe; also the duke of Nan's chariot banner
use in hunting.
I
common
fiftynine; likewise thirteen
sand and
fifty
men
.
.
.
from
118
people, six hundred
Shih Ssu, with one thou/
their land.
'"Yii, maintain your probity,
command."
for
bestow on you likewise four Pang Ssu,
with men, from charioteers to
and
the
royal ancestors.
do not disregard
this
our
The Later Bronze Age: '
Chou Dynasty
the
Yii returned thanks to the king, and, receiving the honour,
had a precious
ting
made
for [sacrifice to] the
duke of Nan.
In the twenty/third year of the king's reign/
The bestowa lof men
seen here
is
usually taken to indicate
some form of feudal subordin^ ation is involved Pang Ssu and Shih Ssu are jjtles of officers, the former possibly t erritoria l and the l atter military and since each is followed by a number of m en it would appear that they are in command o ver these Unfortunately the two characters s lavery,,
but
possible that
it is
.
,
.
preceding the phrase 'from their land* have not so
Could
any sure sense.
some
they be interpreted,
far yielded
might
light
be thrown on the feudal status of these subordinates. In the inscription
on
the British
Museum,
the kuei of the
Marquis of Hsing, preserved in
the gift of slaves
bestow on you the three
classes
is,
of slaves
however, explicit:
'I
,' 3 .
Plates 34, 35
.
As
an example of an inscription affording important his/ torical information none better can be cited than that on a bronze kuei excavated in 1954 at Yen Tun Shan in Kiangsu. 4 It records a sacrifice made by Ch'eng, the second Chou king, to his father Wu, speaks of the 'subjugation of the Shang' by
Ch'eng
—here
the suppression of the
rebellion
—and
A
Ch'eng fief is granted Nieh in Yi, in which the find'place of this bronze and its
states that
to
Shang
Plate 33
visited the eastern region.
fellows presumably lay. This corroborates the historical record
of Ch'eng Wang's campaig n in eastemj£jbiiia, and shows that already in his time political control
the east coast in the region"of the
had been extended
to
Yan gfye mnnfh Surh rnn/
temporary mention of Ch'eng's campaign suggests also that the
king acted independently, and not under the regency of his uncle the duke of later
Confucian
Chou, whose
historians
were
at
prestige
and
political role
pains to aggrandise.
Eventually similar reremonies and awaits came
to
be
ob served by the feudal princes, t hough not before the central authority had begun to decline and the feudal territories bega n
119
China to
assume the cha^ rt^ nf in^pppnrJpnf
The
I
i.e.
fortified
Y™ of the bronzes
t
771 B.C. Ves sels with are characteristic
r ulefs
C hou
cities
staff*,
he feudal courts can be dated b efore about 950 B .C. majority fall after the end of the Western Chou period*,
cast at
brief inscripti ons
naming
of the seventh to fifth centuries
,
feudal
when the
no longe r mentioned. T his political disint er flected is re also in the rise ofregional arti stic styles. uration j The early and middle centuri es of the Chou periocTare so far spars ely documented by scientific excavatio n, although many bronze vessels belonging to this period have found their way into collections. The early Chou cities of Kao and Feng are not even precisely located. Of the e astern c apital, Ch*eng Chou s ome sign has, however, been found near'Loyang in Honan. Sections of rammed/earth wall 3-6 metres wide are be/ king
is
r
lieved to belong to
The
it.
garrison to wns of the early
Chou
period were not sited on
hills
and eminences apart from modern
habitation like"the Iron
Age
forts
sequently depopulated like the
of Europe, nor
tells
at places
of the Near East. They
stood on rive rs and other routes at places
still
modern tow ns, where excavation and even
detection
We
cult.
Chou t ively
can readily imagine that in the
period,
early centu ries
peaceful , the
its
circumstances cha ngeo^ in the
strategic
filth
internecine warfare of the feudal
i
mportance. But these
and fourth states,
now
centuries.
Almost
embattled against
its
every state iound itself at
some time
neighbours, and the smaller ones were
successively engulfed by the greater. Archaeological accessible ancient city sites
tion
on
The
feudal only in
the last traces oi the ord er established by the
settlement.
been carried very
of the
in ce ntral
economic cen tre o utweighed
Chou
occup ied by is dim/
China at least were compara/ funct ion of the town as a political and
which
name, removed
sub/
far
and we
brief surveys
of the still
made by
later
depend
Chou
work on
period has not
largely for our informa/
the Japanese during their occu/
pation of the country. These surveys were confined to the pro/
120
— The Later Bronze Age: vinces of
and Lu,
the
Cbou Dynasty
Hopei and Shantung, in the territory of Yen, Ch'i which did not lose their independence until the
states
second half of the third century B.C.
commemorates the Ch'in unification, and is perhaps
The
impressive scale of
their fortifications
threat they faced before
the
the reason for their long
survival.
Not all of the fortified cities adopted t he rectangular plan which was used at Cheng Chou in the Shang period. The 'Lower Capital' (Hsia Tu) of the north-western state of Yen one of the seven paramount states of the Warring States period
—has an The
irregular perimeter
area
it
enclosed
is
traced in their entirety, kilometres. earth,
At
The
its
greatest
which have been width measuring over 7
wall was build of successive layers of rammed
on which no
one point
formed of straight sections of wall.
the largest of those
traces
it still rises
of harder revetment have survived.
to a height
of 10 metres on a base of 7
and partly outside, near the more than fifty rectangular earth platforms similarly constructed, which formed the foundations of important build' ings. The largest, situated beyond the wall some 800 metres to the nortlvwest, has an area of some 1000 square metres. The part of a small river which traverses the city was confined in metres. Partly within the perimeter
wall, are
straight artificial banks.
In the same province of Hopei are the ruins of an earth'
which preserves the rectangular plan and formal more typical Chou capital. This is Chao Wang Ch'eng the City of the Kings of Chao at Han Tan. The state of Chao, formed in Shansi and Honan from the terri/ tory of Chin at the end of the fifth century, was compelled to transfer its capital twice in the first two decades of its existence,
walled
city
layout of a
—
its
second eastward move bringing
surviving walls enclose
and
west.
Fig. 29
—
The
it
to
Han Tan in
two rectangular
3
86 B.C.
areas, adjacent
on
Its
east
chronological relation of the two enclosures
has not been established, and
it is
possible that the smaller one
121
China
was not completed. The western enclosure
to the east
is
a
square of sides measuring approximately 1400 metres, orient' ated to the cardinal points.
The
wall survives to a height of 10
some places, but is estimated to have stood originally on a base some 20 metres wide and to have risen to about 15 metres. The sides are believed to have had a single slope, only metres at
slightly inclined
The
from the
vertical.
sputlvfacing plan of a
late'Cnou
texts
Chou
and followed in
have been reversed
at
capital, as described in
historical times, seems to
Chao Wang Ch'eng. The
internal earth foundations
lies
the central axis
sited,
one third of the wall length from
is
—the
and
middle one
—the south wall had only two, symmetrically
of other building foundations on the axis
of the
nearer to the south wall,
whereas the north wall had three gateways
on
largest
either end. line
in keeping with the ritual pattern.
The
placing
of the north-south
The largest foundation
marks the position of the king's palace. Other cities in Shantung, the capital of Ch'i at Lin Tzu and that of Lu at Ch'ii Fu, were protected by similar massive earth walls, those of the latter having a quite irregular shape. None of the plans appears to have been dictated by features of the terrain useful for the protection of the cities. In the flat country of the plain only the courses of minor rivers could serve this purpose. Towers and breastworks must have been built on the top of the wall, but no trace of these is visible on the surviving sections. south, near fortress
architect
ture
It is interesting to find farther to
Ch'ung Chou
in
uninfluenced by the traditions of the Central Plain.
Here two very irregular concentric earth ramparts are combined with wide moats to protect a central citadel. The areas enclosed by the city walls we have described have been given over to tillage for two thousand years. Apart from the foundation platforms of the major buildings no external signs of streets or houses remain.
122
the
Kiangsu province, a type of
We need not suppose that the
The Later Bronze Age:
500
Fig. 29 Plan of remains
the
Chou Dynasty
1000 yds.
ofCbao Wang Gb'cng, capital of the Cbao state.
4th century
B.C.
whole or even, in the case of the larger perimeters, the greater was covered with buildings. As in the Japanese imperial capital at Nara, built at the beginning of th e eighth century a.d. on the Chines e model the major buildings may have risen above cropped fields and orchards. On the founda' part of the area
,
tion platforms the only surviving building materials are frag'
ments of curved roofing paving
tiles.
The
uncertain. There
tiles
date of the introduction of roofing is
no evidence
than the fourth century B.C.,
marked the
first
and occasionally expanses of tiles is still
that they were in use earlier
when
their adoptio n
probably
advance in roofing methods since the Shang
123
China
The
period.
circular or
more
monster masks in the same
bronze
On
en ds of the
s emicircular
often
decorated with figures ot dragons or fao
e ave tiles are
styles
on
as
t'ieh
the contemporary
vessels.
form of wooden architecture of the Chou dynasty little better informed than on the architecture of the Shang period, were it not for the architec tural d esigns en^ graved on a few fragments of bronze s. JL he most important of
we
Fig.
30
the
should be
on the sides of a bronze bowf recovered from one of the latcChou tombs at Hui Hsien in Honan. In spite of the these
is
spatial
the
liberties
has allowed himself, the relative
artist
scale
of the building and the
true.
The
Wang
figures
may
be nearly
excavation of one of the foundations in the
Ch'eng
have carried
revealed footing/stones of sizes
pillars
The apparent seen here
human
is
no
Here stepped on the
than those shown in the picture.
larger
superposition of one building over another as
by the
also explained
vations.
Chao
which could
Chao Wang Ch'eng exca^ mound was
appeared that the foundation
it
east
and west
sides, the central
portion standing
2 metres above the level of the lower foundation and
at least
separated from
by a
it
vertical rise
of rammed earth.
The
size
of
on the lower foundation indicates slender which can hardly have risen to the full height of the
the stone footings pillars
central structure. It appears
on
from these
features that the building
the central part of the foundation stood above
galleries
whose singlcslope
roofs rose
little
if at all
two
lateral
above the
height of its floor.
On another scrap of bronze, found at Ch'ang
Chih
which
in Shansi,
is
decorated with an
all
but identical
of the building is shown end/ of the upper building. In the
picture, the roof of the lower part
ing precisely
at the floor level
Chinese architecture of
later
times a gallery with lean/to roof
surrounding the main structure then
it
shares the
structure of these
124
same
a common feature, although What at first appears to be the
is
floor level*
late/Chou buildings,
i.e.
pillars
springing from
The Later Bronze Age:
Fig.
30 Engraved decoration of a bronze bowl found at Chao
activities represented included hunting, the striking
possibly rites of
sacrifice.
a floor which
used in the
of bronze
Ku Hui bells
the
Hsien, Honan.
and musical
stones,
Chou Dynasty
The and
Scale i:$
is itself
wooden
carried
on
pillars,
was never a method
architecture of the Far East.
In both bronze pictures the main building, raised above
its
is surrounded also on its own level by a whose roof slopes into the line of the main roof. At the gable ends and at the centre of the latter are horn^shaped ornaments showing an earlier form of the singlchorn acroteria which appear on pottery models of buildings of the Han period and became a regular feature of the traditional architecture.
surrounding
gallery,
similar gallery
125
Chma As
in the
Han
buildings, the rpof lines are straight.
waxd^curves of the eaves characteristic feature
which
to
Western
expanded in the
adorned
Chou
capitals. If the
The
the most
drawings on bronze have not tended to
we must assume
of
elaborate, bracketed capitals
to reveal the interior. Probably, as
wooden
later,
tops of the"" pillaTS
Han
we may
that the
buildings were an
innovation of that period. In the pictures the walls are
later,
up/
buildings by means of simple, un/
simplify because of their small size,
more
is
of Chinese building, was adopted
probably not before the T'ang period. are
eyes
Th e
see a
left
out
few centuries
or plaster partitions closing the spaces between
openwork
the outer pillars were decorated with painted or
designs of the kind
which appears beneath
the upper eaves in
the drawing.
From the pottery models of hou ses preserved in Han tombs we may see some features ot this architecture applied to simpler dwellings, the homesteads
and farmhouses of
the peasants.
In these, as in the village architecture of China until recent
were the rule, only the form of the roof showing greater sophistication. To know something of the humbler houses of the Chou period we must await the result of further excavation. But we may picture a majority of the times, earth walls
buildings in the
Chou
cities as single/storied huts,
groups like the villages of the countryside,
often set in
among
fields still
Here and there rose the great ornate roofs. These looked down
cultivated within the perimeter.
palaces
and
halls
with
broad avenues to the
their
gates,
where, under the towering walls,
peasants from the surrounding region gathered in the markets.
The tombs of
TOMBS OF THE CHOU
departure from those
PERIOD
Many great tombs
the earlier
Chou
period reveal no sudden
we have described from Shang times. of the early centuries must have been opened
numbers of bronze vessels and weapons which are preserved in modern collections, but of all these only one description has been published. This is at Hsin Ts'un, near to yield the large
126
The Later Bronze Age:
Chou Dynasty
the
Chiin Hsien in Honan, probably the burial of a prince of the whose territory it is situated. It follows the design of a Shang royal grave. North and south from the ruling house of Wei, in
The
stepped central pit sloping passages led to the surface.
bronze
vessels
contained point to a date early in the tenth
it
Some dozen
century B.C.
were buried and over
chariots
seventy horses, together with the bronze ornaments of the vehicles
and
harness.
The
smaller graves of the eleventh
early tenth centuries as excavated at
Loyang continue
of the Shang
having stepped
sides.
were laid
either
pottery
pit,
and bronze
vessels
times at one end of the lower part of the coffin.
The on
Beneath the coffin some graves
sacrificial pit in
which
the bones of a
the shape
grave/goods of
the shelf, or
outside the
pit,
still
and
some
wooden
have the basal
dog have been found.
The size of the pits seldom exceeded 4 by 2 metres with a depth up to 3 metres, the longer axis being generally orientated approximately north and south. The body was laid supine, with the head to the north; burial in the prone position in the
manner is now
quite exceptional.
or any other distinguishing marks
No trace survives of a on
Shang
mound
the surface.
Beforjejtliesixth to fifth centuries B.C. the only variation
of the
A
tomb pit isTa^h^n^etParrangement of the step ped sides tomb excavated at \? u lu is' tin near <^h ang An in Shensi, .
J
Chou
homeland, shows the rise of one such minor feature which became an established custom in the north-west. The style of the bronze vessels is that of the later tenth century B.C. and the inscription on one of them points to the reign of King Mu. Only the longer, east and west, in the heart of the
sides
of the
of the south
pit are stepped, side.
and the
In one of the
end a metre short recesses so formed were
shelves
lateral
Honan and Shensi tombs of the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. the recess for the gravegoods is often excavated as a niche or even a short tunnel opening from the side of the main pit; or the niche or
stacked the bronze vessels. In the smaller
Fig. 31
127
China tunnel
may be
large
enough
to
accommodate
the
main
or a
secondary burial.
/The main
occupant of the P'u
Tu
Ts'un grave was
^vith his head to the south, and his mouth had been
filled
laid
with
fragments of jadclike stone. Beneath, in a basal pit of careful construction lay the dog, accompanied by
two cowrie shells.
On
the floor of the north end of the pit, presumably outside the
Vwooden
coffin,
were two
~jfuneral victims, laid in a
human
skeletons,
crouched position. The
/and seventeen pottery vessels comprised a
(The burial of a body on
legs, as seen at
in Fig. 31 e
oj
om
j
recess
vated at
BC
4th
Tu
its
side,
bronze
array of the
with crouched or flexed
Ts'un, continues a burial
neolithic graves of north-west
century
-
Scale appro*. 1:90
Nor
i
°
excel'
Pan P'o
Ts'un, Sbensipro' vince.
P'u
ls
t
with
fifteen
rite
observed
ChinaT^No crouched o f Honan, where even
a w erc found n the Shang graves ^b^ur slaughtered victims oi the great tombs were laid extended.
Plan and
tva ton
some
full
forms.
^sacrificial *
presumably of
°
in the tombs of the
Kuo state at Shang Ts'un Ling in the
same province, dating from the eighth to seventh centuries B.C. In the fiftlv and fourtlvcentury graves of Shensi it is particularly common, and by this time had spread into Honan. At Shao j^ QU near L y an g I0 ^ out f II2 graves contained crouched burials.
Other departures from the normal burial rite of the Central Plain may be seen in graves of the sixth to fifth centuries in the north-western province of Hopei, as exemplified at a ceme/ tery site at T'ang Shan. Here a box formed of thin stone slabs set on edge takes the place of the wooden coffin, or the body is placed in two large pottery urns set mouth to mouth. The state of Yen, which comprised the territory of the modern Hopei province, reveals a foreign influence in the figured decoration
of some of
its
bronze
vessels.
Flexed burials in slab'built
of tombs of the Early Bronze culture in southern Siberia, whither we can trace a few of Karassuk other connexions of the Chinese Bronze Age. But by the
chambers
128
are characteristic
The Later Bronze Age:
the
Chou Dynasty
Hopei as in the other central provinces n ormal grave was the rectangular earth with the body laid extended on its back At other sites near Tang Shan these have been tound with traces of a wooden coffin. Weapons and ornaments were placed inside the coffins, and vessels in the space left outside at the end of the pit, at the feet or head of the fourth centu ry B.C. in
the
.
occupant.
Some
graves held double
wooden
coffins,
with a
space between the outer and inner to receive the grave^goods.
A
few of the skeletons were crouched. The practice of burying a
dog
at the
base
had
ceased..
The pit graves of the middle Chou cemeteries more than 2
are as a rule not
and 1 or 2 metres wide. Their comparatively shallow depth of 2-4 metres has seldom proved sufficient to preserve more than slight traces of the wooden coffins.
or
3
metres long
In the fourth century B.C. graves of
from the
this type
spread
and south, Kiangsu and Hunan, and as far west as Szechwan. The numerous tombs of this kind found near Ch'ang Sha in Honan, as much by their structure as their contents are a measure of the growing sinicisation of the Ch'u state. The damp soil in which they are excavated has preserved their timbers in remarkably good condition. The elaborate design of the burial chamber sur/ passes any tombs of comparable size in the Central Plain. The scale and finish of the timbers and the precision of their rabbeted jointing may be judged from the example illustrated in Fig. 33. The chamber has double walls, between which the gravegoods of pottery, bronze and lacquer vessels and bronze weapons were laid. The outer and inner coffins, fitted closely together, contained the skeleton laid on its back, with jade pi rings at shoulders and knees. The bottom of the burial chamber lay 7 metres below the surface. This depth and the stout timber roofs preserved these tombs from spoliation until recent years, and since 1950 careful excavation has recovered the contents intact from many of them. central provinces farther to the east
Fig.
33
129
China
Most impressive of all the late Chou tombs are those ex/ 1 951-5 near Hui Hsien in central Honan. At the village of Liu Li Ko was discovered a group of twenty/seven intact tombs with lacquered coffins, belonging to the late fifth or early fourth centuries B.C. Near to those was a pit con' taining chariots, presumably related to a larger tomb as yet un/ cavated in
or possibly one already destroyed by treasure/ and a few miles away, near the village of Ku Wei Ts'un, three great tombs were sited in a row east to west. The most elaborate internal structure was found in the middle tomb, No. 2, whose dimensions exceeded even those of a royal tomb of Shang. The plan is a modified version of that seen at Hsin Ts'un: access ramps slope down to the central pit from north and south, the latter the ceremonial entrance being con/ siderably wider and longer. The total length from north to south was over 200 metres. The upper part of the filling and the
discovered, seekers;
Fig.
32
—
J5oo] short stone walls either
si
de
tomb chamber
iSSa
of
plUf
laid stone floor on which
Ml^gl
the
YsSA
earH> filling
wooden
sand 'A
yQjA
—
coffins rest
filfina
natural
stamped
card)
parapcr
U^^i^g^ -
mm. Fig.
130
32 Plan and
elevations of the great
tomb at
Ku Wei
Ts'un.
Hu
Hsien,
Honan
The Later Bronze Age: pit walls
were constructed of rammed
earth.
The
the
Chou Dynasty
timber/built
chamber rested on a bed of stone slabs and was sur/ rounded by a free stone wall. Soil filled the space between the inner and the outer coffins, and the lower part of the filling over the burial chamber consisted of pure sand burial
A feature of this tomb unparalleled elsewhere
is
the capping
of a halfrmetre thick layer laid on the surface over the burial
chamber, forming a rectangle of 25 by 6 metres. The border of
low platform
boulders laid at intervals along the edge of this is
example so
the only
tomb
indicating a
far
earlier
discovered of an external structure
than the
Han
dynasty,
when mounds
were sometimes raised over subterranean brick/built chambers.
The
setting
of stones
Age
is
reminiscent of the circles built around
The main contents of Ts'un tombs had been pillaged long before they were excavated. Nevertheless many small bronzes and iron tools which remained, and a jade pendant and a silver/gilt belt/hook which the plunderers had overlooked, are among Bronze
the
graves in southern Siberia.
Ku Wei
Plate 59
the finest objects ever recovered in a controlled excavation.
During
the
first
half of the
Chou
period
( Western
Chou,
armament of t he feudal states remained l ittle altered from that of the Shang age. From the tenth century B.C. the ko halberd was gradually pinrhfierl. The base whic lay against the haft was lengthened, t he i nner edge of the blade thus a cquiring a concave curve E ventually a s lender and very elegant shape was reached as seen" in tombs of the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. S ometimes a spearhead and a halberd Made were combined on a single haf t. In examples of tne Western Cho u period this weapon might be cast in a single gjece Occasionally spearheads and ko lie close together in a tomb in positions which suggest that they were hafted together; and in tomb wall-paintings and reliefs of the Han dynasty the composite weapon is seen in the hands of palace guards, by this time being made of iron. 1077-771 B.C.) the
.
ARMS AND THE CHARIOT Fig.
38
Plate
46
Fig.
^g
.
131
China In a grave of the
l
ate fourth or early third century
B.C
.
at
F
nnnr> was discovered the e arliest survivingCh'anff S ^fl in e xample of the bow. In Fig. 33 it can be seen lying on the north side of the tomb between the inner and outer coffins. Its
length nf ^< the
i". is
approximately the same as that inferred for
Shang bows, and
it is
similarly double/curved
struction agrees with the description preserved in the
The middle
.
con/
Its
Chou
Li.
which extends about two thirds of the length, consists of a core of four plates of bamboo, to which tapering ends are closely fitted and bound on. The whole is bound and glued with bamboo strips and finished with close binding of lacquered the cord.
part,
Separate
silk.
The arrowhead s of this
Shang ly pe. but
their
line often ogival
and
From
wooden
the
lat e
bronze point
beyond the
is
notched to receive
tips are
time are de scended fro
the central spine less prominent.
fourth century , however, a nother kind of
found. They are designed to project
line
m the
barbs are usually longe r, the out'
t railing
of the shaft behind them
little if at all
Some have
.
a
tri/
angular section, with three narrow blades, others are bladeless points, Fig.
points
34
round in section and with blunt rounded heads. Such armed the bolts of the cr oss-bow. This weapon, evi'
dently a Chinese invention, for
h ad a stock and
this early date,
mechanism of bronze. V •
It
was
not
it is
bow
the p rincipal
wh ich
b epn to
[
who manned
I
century B.C. against the incursions of
\
the walls
known
elsewhere
at
of wood, an d a trigger
arm
oi the soldiers"
rise
in the fourth
nomads from Inner
Mongolia. The power and rapid action of the cross-bow were probably greater
sufficient to
than the
keep
effective
nomad horsemen
range of the normal
at
a distance
bow which
they
fine combination of the cross/bow, the barrier offered by the walls, and the rapid communication along them gave
carried,
great advantage to a defence
yiptsTlrhe n orthern boundary
had 132
which states
relied
on
of Ch'in,
i
nfantry con/
Chao and Yen
already built long sections of wall in the second half of the
The Later Bronze Age: i
Chou Dynasty
lacquered shield
2,3
lacquered wine'cups
4-6
bronze vessels
7-9 pottery 10
the
vessels
lacquered dish
11,12 wooden grave attendants
13
wooden sword
14
wooden spear
1$
wooden grave attendant
16
fragments of a wooden
bamboo basket ij
mechanism
of a
cross'
bow 18
bow with
19
halberd
its
string
20,21 fragments of leather bags
22
bamboo model of a boat
23
lacquered table
24
lacquered toilet
2$
bronze sword
26
pottery censer
2j
bronze sword
28-33 jade
rtn s>
&
box
pi
Fig.
33 Timber'built shafugrave at Ch'ang Sha, Hunan. B.C. The grave gifts are placed between
4th'3rd century the
multiple
coffin
and the outer walls of the burial
chamber. Scale approx.
1
.36
133
China arrow rest
34 Bronze trigger^mechdnism of Museum. Length: 11 cm. Fig.
fourth
and the
the cross-bow.
HuangiTi re/ Myriad League Great Wall
early third centuries >leted
the 1 ine. ^iis
3rd or 2nd century B.C. British
B.c.fShih
emain s today substantially the same in fabric, t hough re paired i n parts from time to time down to the Ming period tor the historian this astounding monument s ymbolises tne end of feudalism and the fou ndation of the united empire Its length is over 2500 miles, st retching trom the coast of the Po Hai oppo/ r
,
.
site
the JLiao
wes tern "~
tip ot
'1
'ung peninsula to
just
beyond the
xvansu province
lne chariot retained
its
period, "though probably
134
Yang Kuan
its
military
im portance
in the
Chou
usefulness declined in the last
few
The Later Bronze Age: centuries
when
number
ot chariots a feudal prince
the
Chou Dynasty
were increasingly foupht by vast armies^ of consc ripted infantry, and no longer by the charioteer patrician with his following of retainers. But even then the battles
measure of his strength. For ful ruler is a 'prince
Museum
command was
could
C onfucius
and Mencius a power/
often thousand chariots'.
collections include
many
axle/caps with linch pin
(the only indispensable metal part of the chariot),
be dated to the early and middle style
Chou
is
e vidence for
very slight. Chariots might
from the
Chou
the structure of th e
still
Plate 39
which can
ce nturies
of their decoration; but from the beginnin g of the
period untiLabout-700 B .C. vehicle
a
Fig.
46
be buried in the
Chang Chia Pb in Shensi, where a and another with two horses had been
funerals of the great, as at
chariot with four horses
placed in a single
pit.
A
tomb
near the eastern suburb of
Loyang, much disturbed by gravcrobbers, contained the five chariots, and a pit near-by held eight horses. The wheels here have 20-24 spokes, and the shape of the box, to judge from the trace of its base, is similar to that of the wheels of
Shang chariot. The them about 800 B.C.
a xle/ca ps have
ornamen t which
The .chariots o f the middle Chou p eriod can
places
be reconstructed
n considerable detail from the results of brilliant excavations made in Honan province. One of these was the chariot'pit at Hui Hsien mentioned on p. 32 where Mr Hsia Nai and his
i
Plate 52 Fig.
35
colleagues of the Institute of Archaeology revealed entire casts
of nineteen chariots by tracing the deposit of earth
which had replaced
fine,
compact
the long/vanished timbers, a feat of
excavation comparable only to the recovery of the 'ghost' of the
Hoo
Anglia in 1939. In 1956-7 way at Shang Ts'un Ling on the Yellow river in east Honan, and proved to contain eleven chariots of which Rwe were revealed intact. In this tomb two bronze halberds were inscribed with the
ship'burial at Sutton
in East
another chariot'pit was excavated in the same
135
China 'Prince/heir Yuan Tu of Kuo\ and a bronze // was marked *Tzu Tso of the Chi family of Kuo\ According to the Tso Chuan the s tate of Kuo was annexed by the state of Chin in^. _6ss B.C., and it is presumed that the tombs as a whole belong
name
to the eighth to early seventh centuries B.C.
This date
is
sup/
ported by the shapes and decoration of the numerous ritual vessels
of bronze which accompanied the
burials.
The
chariots
of Hui Hsien are separated from those of Shang Ts'un Ling by
more than two
of the two groups are
centuries, but the vehicles
almost identical in construction.
At Hui
Hsien, where the arrangement of the burial
east in a pit
4-4 metres deep.
measuring 21 metres by 7-8 metres and
shaft
of each rested on the box of the
A narrow balk of earth separated off a section
chariot in front. 3
The
better
packed in two
preserved, the nineteen chariots were closely
rows facing
is
metres in length at the east end.
Of this
compartment only a
small part had been spared by the builders of a
Han tomb
which intruded on the pit. Even in so small a space fortyfour horses had been heaped. In nearly every case the shapes of the chariot parts were preserved in the earth.
shows a vehicle chariot.
the fair
box
The left
differing
little
The
in essentials
reconstruction
from the Shang rails around
lacquer paint which had covered the
enough
accuracy.
The
trace to suggest their size sides
of the
and form with
driver's platform
were
better
Shang Ts'un Ling: the box was 1-3 on either side, and only cm. deep from back to front. It was surrounded by railings 85 only 30 cm. high formed of spaced upright and horizontal wooden rods, a gap being left in the centre of the back for preserved, however, at
metres wide, reaching to the hubs
mounting.
All but a few of the chariot bronzes (which in addition to finials from the
axlccaps and jingles from the yoke included rails)
had been removed
spoked wheels,
136
finer
before burial at
Hui
than those of Shang or
The 26' Western Chou, Hsien.
The Later Bronze Age:
&&
35 Reconstruction of
Hsien, Honan. 4th century
the
Chou Dynasty
from excavations at Liu Li Ko } Hui B.C. The axle caps and the ornaments of the
chariot
yoke and of the rear pillars of the box are of bronze. Scale 1:20
137
Ckma
o
Fig
$6 Bronze
<§>
swords vi, from
©
Chung Cbou Lu,
Loyang, 6tb'4tb centuries B.C.; e,from Shang Ts'un Ling, late 8th or early jth century
B.C.
Scale approx.
Fig.
37 Bronze sword with hand'
and'serpent
China.
mark.
qth'^rd
South-west
century
B.C.
Scale 1:3
1:6
depended on pegging or lashing, for no bronze parts Some of the wheels are 'dished', having their rims advanced outwards beyond the plane in which the spokes enter the hub, and are strengthened by two parallel struts set across them near the diameter. These chariots pre sumably entered the pit on the completion of the funeral pro' cession, and their horses were slaughtered and consigned to the annex prepared for them at one end of the chariot/pit. No trace remains here to throw light on the method of harness. The form of yoke suggests that it was still of the choker type descended still
appeared with them.
138
~
The Later Bronze Age:
Chou Dynasty
the
from Shang: even so light a chariot still called for two horses. But the linked bronze bridle/bits which were found in the chariot'pit at Shang Ts'un Ling and in a smaller grave at
Hui Hsien
are a
new
device.
A strange feature of the armament of the
e arlier feudal perio d
ack of a sword r which does not appear until the late r T hereafter swords are common in tomb s through central China from Shensi to Hunan. I t is probable, as has been often argued, that the Chinese sword is a jwrowitigfr om the nomads of the steppes, who at this period were already armed with their akinakes, b ut from the start the Chinese sword is quite different. The hilt is cast in one pi ece with the_blade and either tubular or formed of a solid thin stem with two ring' like swellings at the centre. On some pieces preserved at Ch'ang Sha with their wpoden sheath s we may see the b inding of cord which c ompleted the grip. Normally the b lade is of narrow rhomboid section, and two thirds down the length it is slightly narrowed to give an outline like that of th e 'carp's tongue' " swords of the late Bronze Age of Europe. Qtlardly any development can be traced in the shape of these swords J The type with ringed grip may have been adopted a little later than the one with a tubular handle^ and it is the only form found in the late fourth/ and third'century graves; but the two types were in use together for a time. few swords are known which have a simple hafting spike, but their date is not clear, and there is nothing to show that they were the fore' is
the
l
sixth century B.£
Plates 48,
49
Fig.
36
.
r
.
Plate 50
~
"
'
A
runners of the swords with cast handles. 5
Fig-tfe
A
more likely ancestor found at Shang Ts'un Ling: it looks like a narrow spearhead with prominent central rib and rounded shoulders, to which is added a plain thin handle ending in a disc pommel. Its length is only 14 in. If daggers of of these
is
the form of dagger
kind existed when the Chinese adopted the sword in imitation of the nomads, it is understandable that they should not have copied the nomads' weapon exactly.
this
139
China
38 Bronze halberds: a, from Liu Li Ko, Hui Hsien, Honan; bjrom Chung Chou Lu, near Loyang, Honan: The spearhead and halberd had
Fig.
been mounted on the same haft. $th'4th century
The
B.C.
Scale 1:4
shortness of the Chinese swords can hardly have been
determined merely by the relation of weight and
rigidity.
The
sword looks like a horseman's weapon, made to sling convenie ntly from the belt when its qw neris in the saddle. Such swords are worn in this way by the horsemen depicted* in the bronze figurines from Shih Chai Shan in Yunnan. The adoption of the sword must mark an importan t change in methods of warfare, and one connected with irontier defence against the nomads in the north-west. Towards the end of the short
fifth
century B.C. the northern Dounclary
state of
Cnao adopted
M
onits enemies, the nomadic Tu rkish and whose mounted razzias were pro ving so costly " Hitherto cavalry had not been used in Chinese armies, kmiliar cavalry, imitating
gol tribes
.
with horses though they were tor chariots.
IRON
,
s
northern
.
C
When less
140
The o ther
J
Ch'in copied Chao
example The further history ot hinese swords i nvolves t he still obscure qv^Slifln ^f th" ji se and spread of iron metallurgy. states/anc! espec ially
it is
buried in
than bronze, and
damp it
is
soil
iron
resists
corrosion
much
not surprising that the unlovely
The Later Bronze Age: r usted
who
the
Chou Dynasty
and fragments were discarded by excavators
objects
sought only bronzes for the antique market Before the war .
iron objects of latcCnou date
had been discovered in systematic
excavation only in the north-eastern provinces of Liao
and Hopei. Recently they have been fojjnd and Shensi; and,
far
in ten
from the an cient
seats
at sites in
of
Ning
Honan
C hinese culture,
o t the metropolitan Chinese culture s^Xt * rY "J _ _ . t¥
little
"
tad spread before
500 B.C.,
at
Ch'ang Sha
•
in
Hunan ana
»
fn Szechwan.
The most varied i ron tools were found in the Hui Hsien tombs. They comprise edges for the square and pointed blades ofwooden spade s; n arrower sjppdp hladpg mad^ wholly nt'tHe" metarancfsocketed to receive wooden handles: edgi ng for an axevblade and a Jew specim en s of the socket ed a xe wh ich, in bronzeTTrad continued to be made almost unaltered since Shang
Other
times.
sites
have produced broad and narrow
iron hoes with strong hafting sockets blades,
and rectangular and
these are clearly agri cultural tools.
and axe have an
knives which
angles to the
Nnrfy^all of Only the socketed spade
ancestry in bronze forms of earlier times.
digging tools are designed to reinforce the shape of a
set at right
crescentic sickles.
wooden
first
hoe.
The
wooden
sickles
blades, or
The copy
reproduce the stone
appear in the Neolithic period.
(£rom these iron tools we can infer something of the conditions earlier Chou centurie^ As in the rest of the world, the high cost of bronze, the d ifficulty of working it and the tnfprp^f wriirh r|] Wc had in preserving a monopoly of bronze as the material of weapons a nd a substance ot wealth, prevented the spread ol this metal a mong the peasantry, ir^t rmers worked ffieir comparatively li^ht soil wi th wooden spades and hoes which were improved versions ol the digging sticks of the most of agriculture in the
primitive agriculturalists.
The long
knives
have been found in use in remote
(t hey
are said to
regions in recent times)
and
survival of stnne reaping- /
their direct translation into iron
\f
\
Fig.
39
Bronze
From Chung Chou Lu,
spearheads.
Loyang.
$th'3rd
centuries,
Scale
B.C.
2:9
141
China
when
this
became
available
is
striking proof
of the denial of
bro nze to the farmers: bronze evidently could not be had even tor their
Fig. 40
most
essential cutting tool.
The iron tools from the Hui Hsien tombs are skilful castings, and we must assume that long experience of iron founding lies behind them. Although archaeology has not yet given proof of the use of iron at an earlier date, references to iron in literal ture are sure evidence of the knowledge of it before 500 B.C. In general the
literary
evidence
is
held to support the intro/
duction of iron in the seventh or sixth centuries.
The only
early
closely/dated allusion, in the Tso Chuan, speaks of the casting
of iron cauldrons
(tin£)
in 512 B.C.,
when
a minister of the state
of Chin levied from the people more than a quarter of a ton for this purpose.
On the vessels were inscribed penal laws.
This
and we must suppose that iron had already been known for some time. Iron moulds for casting socketed axes, found at Hsing Lung Hsien in Jehol province, can is
skilled founding,
hardly be
later
than the 6th century.
Some bronze spades of Shang age can be brought into the argument about the date of the introduction of iron. They are known from tombs at Loyang and near Hsiao T'un (Ta Ssu K'ung), where, like the Hui Hsien spades, they may have been ritually buried after serving to dig the funeral pit.
The
shape,
with socket of oblong rectangular section and, generally,
rounded shoulders, comes very
close to the iron specimens
made some six centuries later. Moreover, a spade blade of the Shang type was the model for the earliest Chinese bronze cur' rency, which circulated in the region between south Shensi and south Hopei.
On
admittedly slight
numis'
evidence
matists date the circulation of these spade coins in the late
eighth
and the seventh
centuries B.C.
They point out
that
it is
improbable in China, any more than in other parts of the world, that a bronze currency should have circulated before iron
known and 142
while bronze was the only industrial metal.
was
The Later Bronze Age:
Fig. 40 Iron edges for axe and spade.
From Ku Wei
Ts'un,
Hui
Chou Dynasty
the
Hsien. Scale 1:4
But even if we accept a later date for the issue of the spade money, nearer to 600 B.C., a problem remains. No specimens are
known which would
link the
Shang bronze spade of the
twelfth or eleventh centuries B.C. to fifth
or fourth centuries.
should
fill
the
It still
its
parallel in iron in the
seems improbable that iron forms
gap before 600.
Two
theses remain: that the resemblance
somewhat unlikely hypo'
of a carefully designed shape
two remote times is accidental, or that both versions copied wooden forms of which naturally no trace survives. But the resemblance seems too close for chance, and the spade socket can hardly ever have been made of wood. Another obscure question which we may look to the iron implements to answer at
is
The when
the date of the earliest use of draught animals in tillage.
Chou they
tribes are
sometimes said to have introduced them
moved westwards
Shang. But
to the conquest of the
archaeology remains silent on this matter until, possibly, the discovery of the
Hui Hsien
tools
which we have
described; for
here the larger iron edge of V'section shaped to reinforce a
broadly pointed blade
may have been
part of a ploughshare,
and not merely a spade. But, in both
senses,
it
is
flimsy
H3
China
We
evidence.
infer
from the
water buffalo,
histories that the
draught animal of rice/cultivating communities, was
the
already widely used in south
half of the
ment of
Chou
period.
Its
and
central
China
in the second
domestication, like the develop/'
rice cultivation itself,
must have taken place in the
south.
In weapons the replacement of bronze by iron was a slower
China than in Europe. In the West iron was adopted
process in
for swords, daggers
and
spears as soon as the art of working
was mastered. In China
made of bronze
the majority of such
reflected in a
Tzu
weapons were was
until the third century B.C., long after iron
in use for tools of the kind found at is
it
remark attributed
Hui
Hsien. This situation
to the philosopher
in an improving conversation with
Duke Huan
Kuan
of Ch'i:
'The lovely metal (i.e. bronze) is used for casting of swords and pikes, it is used in company of dogs and horses (i.e. for profitless hunting).
which used upon
casting of hoes (trees). It is
The liarity
The
ugly metal
flatten
(i.e.
iron)
the fruitful earth.'
fell
6
reason for the lateness of iron weapons
of Chinese methods.
used for
is
(weeds) and axes which
lies
in a pecu^
The development of iron
techno^
logy reverses the sequence followed in Europe, and hitherto
assumed start,
two
to be the natural one: the
and, as
far as
tell at
or three centuries later. In
process,
and
skill
Chinese
cast iron
from the
present, did not forge
it till
Europe forging was the original two thousand years,
the only one practised for
until the discovery
The
we can
of casting in the fourteenth century a.d.
of the Chinese ironmasters of the feudal period may
be judged from the clean, strong lines of the tools. It is
Hui Hsien
iron
even more striking in the high quality of the iron
moulds excavated from a foundry site at Hsing Lung in Jehol province. Eightyseven moulds for hoes, spades, sickles, chisels, chariot parts and axes were recovered, and the form of casting
Plate 51
the last indicated a date not later than the fourth century B.C.
144
The Later Bronze Age:
A mile to the west of the
the
Chou Dynasty
of an ancient mine from But cast iron is unsuitable for thin, sharp edges and points. So long as casting was the only method of working the new metal, swords must still be made of bronze. Only forged iron could supply superior arms
which
and
affect the
The
site are traces
the ore could be obtained.
warfare of the
evidence of a dozen
states.
sites
spread over north and central suggests that only casting
where iron objects were found, China from Shensi to Hopei,
was known in
this region before the
end of the Chou period. 7 Agricultural tools of the types we have already described, chisels and belt hooks have been recorded, but no iron swords or even knives. The only iron
must have been forged
parts that
are the tangs
of arrowheads,
made of bronze. These have been found at Hsia Tu, the capital of the state of Yen in Hopei, at Cheng Chou in Honan and at Tou Chi T'ai in Shensi. In Hunan, on the other hand, in ancient territory of the Ch'u state, forging was known earlier. In a tomb at Ch'ang Sha an iron dagger was found together with a form of pottery of which the point
//
which
known four
itself is
suggests a date not later than
here
Ch'u
little
if at all later
c.
B.C.: 8 iron
was states. Sixty centuries at Ch'ang
400
than in the central
graves of the fourth to early third
Sha and Heng Yang produced a total of over seventy iron objects, of which thirty^three were weapons, including swords, chi (the combined spear and halberd), daggers, knives and spearheads. In the manufacture of these the iron can only have
The possession of the iron sword would have Ch'u armies a decided advantage over enemies still fighting with the bronze sword, and would help to explain the success of Ch'u arms and the expansion of the Ch'u state been forged. 9
given the
in the fourth century B.C. But the superiority of the iron sword,
and
resilience and better edge, seem not to have ousted the bronze weapon. In a large group of Ch'u
its
greater length
graves at
Ch'ang Sha excavated more
recently
by the
Institute
145
China
Fig. 41 Pottery of the 6th' 4th centuries
of Archaeology only the short
B.C.
Scale approx. 1:14
'classical'
bronze sword, and
bronze ko and spearheads of the standard types were found.
Archaeology can
yet give little
support to the theory that the
sword was the decisive factor in the sue/ cess of the Ch'in conquest. But Ch'in was able to exploit iron ores in Szechwan province, and the rapid and universal adoption of iron arms about the time of the unification sug' gests that Ch'in was chiefly responsible for the change. The histories frequently relate the ferocity of the Ch'in armies in possession of the iron
beheading
their
enemies by the thousand, a prowess perhaps
swordsmanship conferred by the iron weapon. 10 The iron swords of Han times are of two types. One is two-edged, about an inch and a quarter wide at the guard and tapering only slightly to the point, with a hafting tang on reflecting the superior
146
The Later Bronze Age:
the
Chou Dynasty
which guard and pommel, sometimes of bronze or jade, were fitted separately. The other sword has a single/edge, and a still narrower blade.
Its
cast^on ring handle gives
it
the appearance
of an enlarged version of a form of knife made by the nomads of the north/west: here
is
possibly a reflexion of the part
Ch'in
played in propagating the iron sword.
The
spread of cast iron tools in the sixth to fourth centuries
B.C. initiated a revolution in agricultural
methods,
facilitating
and increasing the production of food. class whose activities were a chief topic with economists. History records the growth and wealth of this class, and clearly it caused anxiety to the govern' ment, which was still inclined to attempt to control the pro/ ducers of iron. Of the methods of these ironmasters we still
tillage It
and
irrigation
also gave rise to
know
very
little.
an industrial
The
analysis
recently been taken in hand. It
was
of the ancient iron has only is
uncertain whether forging
method of working iron already extracted and cast, or arose directly from the treatment of particularly rich ores. Furnace bellows were employed by Han times, at the latest. Any light which archaeologists are able in the future to throw on the earlier history of iron technology may add to our know ledge of the political history of China, particularly the reasons for the military power of the Ch'u and Ch'in states. a
147
Chapter IV
The Art of
the
Bronze Age
art as in other matters IN extraordinarily tenacious of tradition.
China
a
country
Some themes
invented
is
over three millennia ago, at the beginning of the Bronze are
still
meaningful in Chinese
eyes.
Age,
As ornament in por/ now banal enough. But
and jade the motifs are in the forms in which they first appeared and while they con/ tinued to dominate the whole visual art through the Shang dynasty and the earlier Chou dynasty they have a power still celain, lacquer
capable of
stirring
our imagination.
The Bronze Age years after the close
tradition
of the
was submerged
Chou
dynasty.
The
for a
thousand
of Han, of
arts
and of the T'ang Dynasty and one less estranging to the the naturalistic art of Greece and
the period of the Six Dynasties
take a quite different course,
whose heritage is Rome. Throughout this period
occidental
there are recorded instances of
Shang and Chou. By the Sung period we can speak of an archaistic revival in art which accompanied a renewed interest in the Confucian philosophy and ancient epigraphy. Sung porcelain copied the shapes of the ancient ritual vessels. In Ming and Ch'ing times the interest Chinese antiquaries took in the relics of
motifs from the decoration of the ancient bronzes were copied and adapted in bronze, jade, and lacquer, supplying ornament
of a dry, dignified kind, to our eyes perhaps unexciting, but
seldom sinking into banality. The tive
schemes of Ch'ing
chinoiserie.
the
art
The ornament which charmed
West touches at some points of Shang and Chou
to the vision
As
it
the rococo taste in
a tradition
which
leads
back
artists.
has been preserved for us, Bronze
the art of the bronzcworker,
148
courtly, overloaded decora'
were the basis of the European
and
its
Age
art is largely
development
is
traced in
— The Art of the Bronze Age the
ornament which he applied
to vessels,
tarian objects with surpassing skill. It
dimensional
art,
is
weapons and
utili/
predominantly a two^
delighting in vital linear figures subordinated
and appropriate ly to the to rms on which they appear. Sculpture on a large scale was never attempted, and of painting other than linear pattern allied to the bronze ornament
strictly
—
only a single example, of the third century B.C., has survived
On
burial.
bronze
a small scale, as additional decoration of ornate plastic
figures
similar portrayals of the
human
vessels,
In the decoration of bronze (Pai
Chia Chuang
site,
of animals abound, though figure are rare.
III) the art
period has already a sophisticated
ment behind
it.
It
excavated
vessels
Shang
air, as if it
Cheng Chou
at
earlier Shang had a long develop'
of the
deals already with conventional formulas:
in the neck of the vessels
an animal mask with prominent
eyes
appears at the centre of a band of pattern which has no obvious
connexion with natural or even simple geometric forms. The origin of this style of decoration
not suggest that first
it
was invented
place, but hints rather at
wood
an
is
obscure.
for casting earlier
Its
character does
on bronze
in the
development in carved
or bone. Unfortunately such perishable material has not
survived from the Neolithic to illustrate the possible ancestry
of Bronze
found
Age
at the
art.
The
schematised face painted on a pot
Yang Shao village at Pan P'o Ts'un
(p. 39
above)
Plate 5
motif—the mask and the connexion is not very convincing. The spirals and other figures painted on Kansu neolithic urns and the motifs found on painted pottery in the is
the only possible neolithic link with a bronze
ubiquitous animal
—
Central Plain are alike remote from the
artistic
ideas of the
Bronze Age. In the Lung Shan Neolithic culture there is nothing of artistic import which leads on to the Shang dynasty. Nevertheless
it
seems likely that some elements of Shang
art
knowledge and ornament previously
existed before the acquisition of metallurgical
the
dawn of
the Bronze
Age; and
that
149
China carved in wood and bone and already elaborate and refined was then transmuted into metal. The same phenomenon occurs later,
when new
of equally sophisticated bronze orna^
styles
ment appear suddenly
in southern regions to
which
the mastery
of bronze had just penetrated. motifs
of the shang
The earliest phase of Bronze Age art, that of the Shang state, is at home in Honan province. Although we know it best in bronze, enough of other materials survive to show that the repertoire
of designs used by the bronzccaster was not coiv
fined to his craft alone.
The same
wood,
and the white
ivory, jade, stone
indifferently to ritual vessels,
personal ornaments.
It is
pervaded work done in
style
pottery,
and was applied
weapons, axes, chariot parts and
an 'animal
art',
in
which
main
the
motifs are taken from the shapes of animals, real or imaginary. It
differs
fundamentally, however, from the
later
art
of the
Scyths and the other steppe nomads. This copies parts of real
animals
then combines them into a fantastic whole,
faithfully,
joining birds' heads to tiger/like bodies, adding extra heads and Plate 19
and horns. But the dragons and monster/masks divorced from reality, reduced from the start to abstract symmetry and often rendered in a bewildering pat' tern of hooked and scrolled lines which loses nearly all contact strange crests
of Shang
art are
with organic forms.
For
all
the complexity of the designs, the ornament comprises
number of motifs. The monster^mask commonest of all, and is chiefly responsible for
a comparatively small F/£.
42a
called
t'ao t'ieh is
the disquieting effect of
and the reasons
for
its
Perhaps they were no
strange better
bronze decor.
Its
origin
anatomy have not been explained. for by the Shang them/
accounted
selves
than they are in the moralising interpolations of
times
when
mask
is
in
but a few examples, and huge fangs protrude from the
all
it
was
said to be a
less
later
warning against greed. The
a distillation of feline ferocity.
upper one. In the
150
much of the
It
lacks the lower
jaw
abstracted designs a lozengcshaped
The Art of the Bronze Age is placed on the noscridge between the eyes. The latter round or slightly elongated horizontally and always pro/ trude above the general level of the relief. The nose^ridge ends above in a crest of varying form and either side of this are horns, which may be shaped like eyebrows into recumbent Cs, or are curved upwards and inwards. In the more intelligible forms patterned bands extend sideways from the region of the eyes, to terminate with an upward scroll which is regarded as
figure
are
the
t'ao t'ieh's tail.
Beneath these bands,
either side
jaw, are claws consisting of a number of hooks.
of the body picted
on
at either side
the
symmetry and
Fig. 42 a,
of the face in
t'ao t'ieh
bronzes simply follows the
of the upper
The doubling
and
serpents de^
requirements of
frontal posture.
T'ao T'ieh and
b,
k'uci. Later
Shang
period, ljtb'iitb centuries,
B.C.
151
China
Cn<[ext to the t'ao t'ieh, the commonest figure of the ornament is a which from Sung times has been termed a dragon?S This is not the familiar whiskered dragon of medieval ancT later Chinese art, but the k'uei which is spoken of in some pre/ Han texts and which mythology connects with rain/making. creature
Fig. 42b
t
In the Shang version
paw
a single
it
beneath
appears always in side view, extending
gaping jaws. Perhaps
its
was
it
sentation in profile that gave rise to the belief that
it
this pre/
possessed
only one
leg. {fts
trunked,
beaked, jawed, turning, feathered, winged!)
never rprh ieed
chief variants are classified by Karlgren as
like the t'ao
to a
t'ieh,
maze of
lines.-
It
nor
is
is it
r
wnich in its rarer appearances remains quite distinct. Although it is generally placed hori/ zontally, the dragon also stands on its head either side of a tao t'ieh mask. It is in connexion with the mask that its nature is most mysterious. The ridge which usually runs down the ever confused with the snake,
middle of the
k'uei exactly similar to k'uei
When
pendently in the ornament.
design. In either case
fanciful tre atment
may
design this
ments
time went on. But
as
it
the vertical k'uei flank a
looks as if the
of the mask
realistic
:
starting
k'uei arose fr
om the
from a more or
less
nave^disintegrated into separate ele/ it
was Another
has also been suggested that
which
the confrontation of two k'uei
led to the t'ao
t'ieh.
advanced by Loehr when he attempted
theory,
used indc
they take the place of the lateral developments of the
t'ao t'ieh
mask
divides the design into halves,
iith often
t'ao
each of which forms a
it
to relate the
patterns of the painted neolithic pottery to the bronze decor, that the
which
mask began with an
amid a maze of spirals, around becoming a logical unit of horns and jaws, and finally, disintegrating again, more or less abstract pattern in which these elements
reverted to
were separated or these theories
152
eye
a face eventually coalesced,
eyes, ears,
we
is
lost
would
at present possess,
from
sight.
require
and
Proof or disproof of any of
much more
it is
dated material than
possible that they
all err
in sup/
The Art of the Bronze Age posing that the designs developed in clear successive
steps.
We
can only note that the Cheng Chou motifs are already dissolved into linear patterns, while more 'naturalistic* t'ao e
come from Hsiao T'un and are later in date. The t'ao t'ieh set at the centre of a band of linear pattern as found at Cheng Chou and Hui Hsien is the onlystvle of b ronze ornamen t which we can attribute so far to the pr e> Hsiao/Tun period There is no doubt that at least during the t
ieh
Plate
20
.
latter
toire
part of the occupation of the northern capital the reper/
of ornament and the
skill available to
render it in metal had
An innovation at Hsiao T'u n was to c ombine
greatly increased.
masks and dragons with sm all gpnmpTrir fl^u^s. S piral s and hooks in engraved line cover the raised portions of the main elements an d the whole is set on a groun d of small, tight spirals of circular and SdUaf'dd 'Shape, the thunder pattern so named from its resemblance to a character ot the script. The
the
l
,
effect gives
a res tless confined
movement
to the design, like the
an elementary sea/creature. borne simpler schemes found at Hsiao T'un come close to the Cheng Chou style, the fr iezes prornament being rendered squirming
ot the cilia ot
which has the appearance of being engraved on a flat surface. But on nobl e r vessels this o rnament is renned, rep eated arid elaborated to cover the whole available surface, set in horizontal band s and divided vertic^ ally h y prominent Hang es, the deeper ot which have rows of
e ither in thin raiseoTine or in a line
T/shaped c uts just tailing to penetra te their thicknes s. The" 't hunder pattern is an addition to this evolved decor, and is ne ver found with the simpler designs At the same time, as the 1
.
horror vacui seizes the
rh omboi and
s cale
draughtsmen, ihey introduce zigzags.
pat terns.
The
final
stage in the log ical
de velopment oTthe ornament seems to be reached
of the designs are raised in hi gh t
wo
sometimes in
~
parts
relief at
when horns and ears project into space, and may be made in the shapes of animals.
levels,
vessels
relief,
when
w hole " '
153
— China
This rich st yle must have matured in the la ter part of the Hsiao Tun period perhaps not before the end of the twelfth ,
century B.C
.
It is vessels
The
sionally.
carved ornament of the fine white pottery cor'
responds to this
Plate 30
material
so decorated that bear inscriptions occk'
style
with only such differences
would account
as the different
for. Stylised birds , s nake s
and cicadas
are included in the bronze decoration L wlnle entire vessels take
the shapes of rams, elephants
and owls. But the field in which was still strictly limited. If
the draughtsmen could experiment
we
discern magical intent in the swathing of sacred vessels in
monster
masks and
£
^-
dragons
—and
we may imagine
inescapable
that
conclusion
seems
the craftsman conforming to
superstitious custom.
Beginning with the ornament of ritual narrow but powerful convention dominated no
vessels, this
in the embellishment of
less
The
weapons and
utilitarian objects.
formal and dramatic potentialities of the few conventions
were exploited more intensively than was ever done in similar circumstances elsewhere in the ancient world, whether in
Maya and Aztec Shang approaches most
Egypt, Greece of the Geometric Age, or the cultures of Central
America which
the
closely in spirit.[The great bronze vessels
the
Shang dynasty seem
symbol of the magical
of the
to culminate the quest for
rite
of
memberment which was lesser extent the k'uei
naturalistic
Plate 15
ting
into
f
dragon.
The
arresting
intact as
t
ao
t'ieb,
and
to a
and comparatively found on a famous
Hsiao T'un, rams' heads such as those on the in the British Museum, the elephants and owls formed
vessels,
at
were probably
all
animals which were slaughtered The manner in which the art into three categories,
acceptable
as
representing
in the royal sacrifices.
motifs are combined shows d ivision of the motifs o f Shang Karlgren places together the bovine
interesting divergencies. In his
154
an
art resisted the dis'
apt to overtake the
bovine masks, the deer mask
excavated
great tsun
decades of
sacrifice."!
Certain designs used in Shang bronze
Plate 14
last
The Art of the Bronze Age
Fig. 43 Jade amulets. Later
Shang
period. 14th' 11th centuries
B.C.
British
Museum.
Scale 2:3
mask, intac t
t'ao t'ieb, t'ao t'ieh
with a coher ent 'body', cicada
and vertical k'uei. Tnp^ mntifi nr r^combined into all-over ornament which is free of the tendency to linear ela boration and d issolution. Trie 'dissolved fao t'ieb, a form ol bird 111 Wllll'h the tail has become separated from the body, and repetitive minor geometrical figures associated with these, are never com/ bined with motifs taken from the first group. third list, com/
F&47
A
prising the less abstracted
t'ao t'ieh,
the varieties of horizontal
and another series of geometric figures, makes use of motifs which appear combined indifferently with
k'uei,
the intact bird
155
China
Fig.
44 Bronze pole
Later
Jinial.
Shang period. 12th' nth century B.C. British
Museum. Scale 1:2
elements belonging to either of the two other groups.
Karlgren argues that the forms and greater
first
group, with
its
plasticity, represents a style
From
this
more coherent of
earlier date
than that which made use of motifs belonging to the second group, though the two
may have overlapped
for a time.
This
conclusion has not been generally accepted; the evidence from
Cheng Chou,
as
we have
seen, tends to disprove
an
andjhe
'dissolv ed' styles ot
attac hed
t
o
No less
al ternative
differe nt
It is
it.
pos'
explanation, that the more naturalistic
sible, as
ornamenTwere
the
work
ot artists
bronze ioundries.
than the creators oFthe later animal
art
of the steppe
nomads of central Asia, the Shang artist could observe animals and portray them with unaffected naturalism,
sympathetically
w henever laid aside,
t
he c onventions of the ornamental
buch
subjects as the side
style"
miflht be"
view of deer with reverted
156 f*
The Art of the Bronze Age heads on a wine bucket (yu), 1 profiles of Przewalski's steppe
on bronze 2 and of deer, hare and birds among the small jade amulet plaques, are sensitively drawn without decorative bias. The realism and expression of the head, and the stance of a zoomorphic vessel can create a vivid illusion of life even when the form as a whole is fantastic. These horse in the
are hints
emblems
cast
of a naturalistic
art practised
alongside the hieratic
convention proper to the sacral bronzes and funeral
Have £6me
down
to us.
The
Chinese, too specialised in
its
hieratic style
is
gifts
Plate 27 Fig. 44
which
fundamentall y
forms and application to have
had any influence beyond the Yellow river valley to the north and west. But the naturalistic animal art belongs to a wider tradi tion. Some of its most striking products at Hsiao T'un were the horse and ibex heads decorating the handles of the bronze knives found in the graves of the later period. These, with the Bronze Age of southern form of the knife and the style of the animal ornament. We cannot be certain in which direction the artistic influence passed between Siberia and China. Future research may solve the problem by revealing something of the as
we have
seen, are links
Fig. 21a
Siberia, both in the
bronze culture of north Shensi and Kansu, territory,
The
i.e.
the intermediate
during Shang times.
artistic traditions
no
less
than the political
of the innovations OF THE conquest of state
to be overthrown by the Chou 1027 B.C. Students of the bronze vessels and their inscriptions have paid more attention to the problem of distip g"t>hi n p; ^ re Shang from early Chou than to any other. Since the number of
Shang were due
Bronzes assured of a Shang date by excavation
is
small
com/
pared with those which survive without documentation, the
argument has turned inevitably on intrinsic features and on the evidence of inscription. By this means Karl/
generally
gren demonstrated that
Shang seems
style
many
or namental motifs of the late
survived into tHe tenth century B.C. Indeed, he
finally
to have
despaired of establishing any simple
157
China criteria earliest It
distinguishing
for
Shang
vessels
from those of the
decades of Chou.
has often been assumed that the changes seen in the bronze
vessels after
1027 B.C.
new
inferior taste
and
masters corrupting the art be/
queathed to them by Shang. But
Chou
of the
are the result
technical resources of the
it is
more probable
that the
people were already familiar with monster masks and
dragons in their homeland in Shensi, that they shared mytho/
and artistic traditions broadly with the Shang, even if their art had a distinct local character. Unfortunately excava / tions have thrown no light on the nature of Chou art before their move eastwards to conquer Shang in 1027 B.C The earliest inscribed and datable bronze vessel from the western region is a ho wine pourer from Bin T11 TVun in Shens i which belongs to the reign of King u, in the later tenth century B.C. But there are many signs that the Chou brought logical
.
M
something of their
own
into the culture of the Central Plain.
In the decoration of the bronze vessels the changes that occur so on after
me rely
1027 B.C. are too sudden and too positive to be T he expansion of the bronze
the result of defeneration.
inscriptions in the
and elegant
Chou reigns, their sophisticated language suggest that the Chou scribes were not
first
script,
merely pupils of their Shang predecessors, any more than the
ornament of the Chou bronzes were entirely dependent on what they copied from Shang art. In one case at least, a bronze kuei bowl set on a square pedestal in a manner unknown at Hsiao T'un the phrasing of the inscription makes
designers of the
,
one strongly suspect that
it
was
cast before
Wu Wang's defeat
of the Shang. 3 It is
certain that after
morrow of the and
158
fall
1000 B.C.
of the capital
at the latest, if not at
on
the very
Hsiao T'un, th e graphic
out ot
bronze deco rs most charac teristic of Shanft art fel l fashio n. 1 he most typical and eccentric S hang shapes,
the ku t
cbtieb, cBia
relief
and the zoomorphic
vases, ceased to be made'.
1
The Art of the Bronze Age
The
dissolved
t[ao t'ieh
among
s olid designs are favoured
r
scrollery
and the
beco
me
More
rarer.
outlines are often frilled
wi th
ows of hookylike quills not seen before. At times the relief is__ and is concerned more with producing a startling
grotesque,
p rofil e than with enlivening
the interest of surface ornament.
Deep jagged
some of the
flange s overload
the only innovations, one
shapes. If these were
Chou
might speak of
art as
barous exaggeration of features present in germ in
But
s imultaneously,
or very shortly afterwards,
a bar/
Shang
t here
art.
appea r
Plate 34
more refine d shapes and ornament which do not derive fr om Hsiao Tun. The kuei of the Marquis of Hsing p reserved in the British Museum illustrates one of these. The motifs of the decor are d epicted in a thin raised and rounded line on a plain ground The r estraint of the ornament and the dignity of other
.
th e vessel contrast utterly with the plastic extravaganzas of other
p ieces which must be nearly contemporary.
From the l ate eleventh century B.c.:t ne tense u pward move/ mentof the profile characteristic of the Hs ifln T'n n vessel^ ewes way to heavier more inert shapes with curves spreading i n the lower part The handled kuei and the vu wine bucke t, in
Plate
3
.
which
this c hange in the feeling for
are comparatively
r are
among
form can
best be followed,
known
with certainty to
vessels
h ave been excavated in or aroun d Hsiao T'un. hand, both figure in a number ot tomb
sets
On
the other
of sacral
vessels
thought to be of late S hang date found farther to the south/west "
in the same province, near as the eastern ca pital
here
is
of the
Lovang first
,
the place due to be chosen
Chou
rulers . 4
Their appearance
perhaps a cultural sign of the encroachment of the
which culminated in the defeat of the Shang king. The role which the Chou rulers assigned to
Chou
the ritual
bronzes pronzes in rneir their poli political tical ceremonial ensured tn the of e dispersal 01 t
hese throughout the
t heir
Shan
control,
in
J
te rritory
which
th ey
had brought under
he inscribed kuet recently tnnnrl
Kiangsu
testifies at
once both to
at
Vpn Tun
this dispersal
and
Plate 33
to
159
China the independence of the
Chou
tradition of bronze craft, for
its
shows that the vessel was cast in or just after the reign of King Ch'eng at the end of the eleventh or the very
inscription
beginning of the tenth centuries B.C. Kuei of the shape seen
at
Yen Tun Shan, with high
foot,
natural than the
continued to be made well into the
and four heavy handles surmounted by animal heads (the form of these is sometimes reminiscent of a deer head, but they are no more t'ao t'ieh),
tenth century. Often the
Fig. 45
hooked
bowl was
set
flanges
on a high base or on four be based on the t'ao t'ieh
low feet. The decoration might still though occasionally a pair of heads with gaping jaws face each other in side view. But before iooo r.c. a form of con/ ventionalised bird with long' tail a nd p]nme ipvaH ed the decoration,
and in
its
was
larger versions
the basis of
some of7
tKeJinest designs of the tenth century .
In the middle and
THE MIDDLE
later part of the
Western
Chou
period
CHOU STYLE
950-771) the c ommonest vessels are a new type of tinjr with hemispherical bowl set on bul ging curved legs, kue i with
Plate 32
l
( c.
id
and
large monster^head
o fa food container termed
hand les, and
a re ctangular version
The de coration
fu.
is
coa rser, being
and tw isteci/and/ popular. For the first time
oiten designed in a broad Hat band. Rolled Fig. 4$
rolled dragons of a
crh prnp r eminiscent
^t
new kind ra
are
tge/scale repetitive fig ures,
in detail of the dragon pattern.
One
g eometric, o r motif
freq uent
two recumbent Gs set either side ofa sm all boss whic h eye. The motifs are developed as seermtnJ2e_theve^ geomejucaljfjgures in a spirit quite distinct from the more
"rfqprnh jes
Fig. 4$ Decorative motifs ljatt
160
ntb'i8tb
centuries
from
B.C.
bronzes,
The Art of the Bronze Age qgganic formulas o f the older
style s.
In the light of the
later
Chinese bronze art the rise of the Middle Chou style even more signific ant f n the re placement of the Shang
history ot
^
is
tradition
by the
of the
style
Where and when
early
the middle
but the choice must
certain,
T he
Chou period Chou style was .
lie
evolved
between central
is
un/
Honan an d
example of the decumbent Gs motif is the decoration of the neck and lid of the ho from P'u Tu Ts'un in southern Shens i, which belong to the late any bronze vessels with ornament of sinu^ tenth century B.C. .ous dragons in the broadband manner come from excavations at Hsin Chen^ in Honan from tombs which range in date from about 900 B.C. to the late seventh or early sixth centuries. These were not systematically recorded, but the excavations at the cemetery of the Kuo state in Honan (p. 135 above) produced southern Shensi.
earliest datecT
?
M
,
gravcgroups
several intact
ot
bronze vessels similar in shapes
Fig.
Harness
46
cheek'piece
bronze.
of
8tb^yth
B.C.
century
Museum-
British
Scale 1:2
and ornament the age of the
B.C.
we
are
to the earlier part
of the Hsin
Cheng
find.
Since
Kuo
tombs is deemed not to descend below 655 on ftood ground in attributing the broadban d
stvlfLof dragons to the
Figs.
4J-49
two centuries between 900 and 700 B.c? Hsin Cheng and Kuo graves cover the
The b ronzes of the when the Chou
rulers were experiencing great pressure from the barbarians inhab iting the north-western region en^
p eriod
closed in the great loop o f the Yellow riven Attacks by the
Tung c ompelled the king to move his seat to Loyang in 771 Between 660 and 6^0 the Ti held the terri-
B.C. (See p7 113.)
Wei
tory of
Loyang of
in north
in 64 8
Cheng
Honan.
W
ith the
and then proceeded
lying south ot the Y ellow river.
had marr ied a Ti
Jung
King Hsiang who royal domain ,
was driven from his in 63 $ s poradic inroads of nomads c ontinued century.
One
princess,
into the sixth
archaeological trace ot this infiltration
the spread of c rouched burials along the (see p.
they attack ed
to operate against the state
128 above).
The
Yellow
is
probably
river valley
degree of contact between the settled
161
Chinese. and nomadic peoples in the north-west
we may
sup/
pose to have t?een much closer than is implied in the h istories' rfmtrsgf hpfwppn P.kinpcp aprl 'barbarians', Ethnically the two groups were akin a^d the pponnmi c aspects of separated Fiji.
4J Interlaced
dragons
from
Hsin
Cheng,
Honan. 8th 'early jth
century
it is
which
for either.
not surprising, even as early
a
bronze vessel found at
them were not immutable
In the light of these events
life
B.C.
as the ejghth or seventh centuries art ajrt
which two o r three of theHoomajJof
B.C ., to find trends in Chinese
centurieTTat er can be identified in the
on
thf_ Asiatic steppes ,
hrnn7es anddecorated knives
.
The nomads ha d
for pure geometric pattern, spirals,
th eir harness
ong taste beading, rope-tw istxa"d a
str
p laits, which they combined with their fantastic animal themes Some of these minor geometric motifs appear on the Hsin .
Fig- 47
""
INTER'
LACERY AND LOCAL NORTHERN STYLES
A
'
great feature of steppe_art as
laceryl Pattern
with which
horses they were so
much
patterns
weaving the
we know
it
lines
seem
almost
of their
as
horsemen and breeders of Th e S hang and earl y
concerned.
figures,
deliberately
to
avoid
inter-
however complicated. But
Star-
162
later is inter-
of t his kind was probably inspired by the plaiting
of ropes a nd thongs
Chou
——
"""
Cheng v essels.
at
&M>
.
The Art of the Bronze Age
Hsin Chen g
interlacery appears, at
.
ribbonvlike dragons
whose
ot the ninth century.
The
is
ancestry
is
first
timidly, applied to
date of these dragons at
perhaps a hundred years
later.
on vessels Hsin Cheng
to be sought
The b and of
interlacery
Fig. 48a, b
is
o ften decorated in engraved line with a repeated figur e: a brie fspiral curling
on
^g\ rl
to the
bj^eofan_elongated_triangle—-the
The dragon has be/ rnm^ ynprply^ajonp line, usua lly doubled, terminatin g in a head which gets increasingly"" bird/like. I nterla ced pattern Volute anH
tr
of the
art historians.
Fig. 49
appears also in tight, squared unit s. In the transformation of
fhed r^on bend s we maj Lsee an InrTuence from, or perhaps the o rigin of, the griffin head which figures so prominently in s teppe art.
Last to appear are units of pattern consisting of tight/
packed curved and hooked elements with a scatter of eyes, un/ except as a degeneration of interlaced pattern from whtr4j fhp rrnccing ar e omitted This o ccurs on a series of tal l v ases which resemble so closely pieces we shall presently des/ cribe from a tomb 600 miles away to the south-west, at Shou Hsien in Anhui province, that one might think them products
i ntelligible
.
fi
of the same workshop.
Fig.
48 a,
b,
Dragon
motifs used in the decoration of bronze vessels
found
at
Hsin Cheng
Honan. jth Century B.C. (from rubbings)
163
China
•^^SP^^^^S^^^^ Fig. 49
Diaper of
century
B.C.
The
interlaced dragons on a bronze vessel.
s maller
on the latest' Hsin (^heng clearly^ casting moulds with a stampr^Taj
repe titive units of design found
looking groups
oi
we re impressed o n as we can tell tfiis
blliuzL to the
llll'ihuil
a nd early Crh nlL periods
ornament has a
vlsslK from
WdW iim
when
lesotled to in the Sha_n g
in the best
vi tality inse parable
model necessary for each piece.
164
Hsin Cheng, Honan. jth'6th
1
wor ks
the bronze.
irom the individual
wax
he use of the stamp and the
— The Art of the Bronze Age covering of surfaces with the small identical motifs which
which was to per ^ On the Hsin Cheng sist until the end of the Chou period and vessels decorated on their main surfaces by this means it animals modelled monotony of compensate for the as if to fully in the round were added as handles, bases or finials. Tall vases stand on a pair of tigers, and tigers with reverted heads cling to the sides. Tortuous dragon/handles reflect the same
it
encouraged
set
a fashion in decorative art .
—
On
baroque tendency.
these animals curled snouts,
Fig. 48a
hear ts
formed of double rounded claws and th e and brief spiral set over the main limb joints
shapeol ears, feet
^pecu liar^circle
Plate 41
Plates 44,45
jujjTonventions which recur in steppe
art, whether of southern China. 5 They are common in Chinese art of the middle Chou period, from the late seventh to the fifth centuries, and their special connexion with
Siberia or of the
Ordos region
bronze harness trappings
of
Plate
42
Plate 43
another pointer to the north-west,
is
and of
the region of horse^raising
fraternisation
of Chinese
and nomad. Before tracing the history of the late
Yellow
takes us south of the
bulent
Ch'u
state,
we may
of Li
style,
which
of the tur^
glance at two local variants of the
animal'interlacery style in the north. after the village
Hsin Cheng
river into the territory
Yu n i
One
of these
is
named
Plate
40
the north-east corner of Shansi
was made and oval SsSEE wtrh inf orming
province, where an important find of bronze vessels
n 1923 Here the spherical deep lids and ring/base. or three small
i
.
with engraved dragons
,
w hich
friezes
on
feet ('ting) are
covered
of apparently continuous interlacery of
closer inspection proves to be a repetition
of identical stamped
units.
The
rib bon
o f the interlacery
is
with close spirals and neaMriangle s not much different from those we noted in Hsin Cheng. V olutes are placed at the
Tilled
e nd of a
where It turns in a right angle. This ornament often includes a stylised iulMace animal mask based on a ramVhead, and the lids are decorated with ribbon, or
at points
165
China naturalistic sheep, buffalo or birds, three sensitively
the
stumpy
legs.
The masks
"but the resemblance magic.
of each on a
vessel,
modelled in the round. Monster masks surmount
The
vessels
is
a revival of the
s uggest
remote. There
may have been
t'ao t'iek
no longer the hint of
is
used in
sacrifice,
but
they'
have now acquired a secular elegance, suited to more festi ve and mundane occasions. The panels of decoration are often se parated
by a
relief pattern
plaited rope.
ot
bronzes belong probably to the centuries B.C.
Chou
are
seventh or the sixth
late
some of the most
attractive
products o f
art.
Ornament
Figs, so, si
They
The Li Yu
re lated to that
c avated in 1953 at
Chia
of Li
Yu
is
Ko Chuan^
seen on bronzes ex^ n ear T' ang Shan in
Hopei province One of these is a fit/, a nearly globular ves sel which appears for the first time about ^00 B.C ., and another a .
y/',
Figs. S2,
166
S3
a water container,
mad e here to
a notably individual design. 6
But one elegant vase introduces a style ot decoration unxnown at Li Yii or Hsin Cheng. It consists of a nimated huntin scenes fi gures of men and animals crisply drawn in pane formed by the plaited rope carrying/cradle which is simulated ,
Ku near,
Fig.
so Bronze hu. From Chao
Hui
Hsien, Honan. Height 37-8 cm.
The Art of the Bronze Age
m bronze on the sides of the vase. and
deer
The animal s include boar, would appear to be real game fanciful among them and a creatureresemblin% an
birds^ which
phoenix/like bird
elephan t, which
is
.
no
is
less
imaginary in
A
elc
this setting, since
phant have not lived wild in Central China in
historical times.
The huntsmen are armed with spears and one is followed by a number of similar hunting hu are preserved in col'
dog
.
A
'
but hitherto no find/place had been recorded.
lections,
shows
bowmen
One
shooting at birds with arrows to which cords
are attached (intended
probably to help in recovering them),
and a chariot driven by a man wearing an animal mask, as if a kind of sympathetic magic were part of a hunting ritual. Another famous piece includes a hunting scene with others illustrating a great variety of activities. Another hunting hu, the only inscribed piece which is known, commemorates a sacrifice at a place in the territory of Yen, in the modern pro/ vince of Hopei. The Yen state maintained its i ndependence from the eighth century B.C.
until
it
was overthrown by Ch'in
sho rtly b e fore the unification of 232 B.C
eluded the modern Hopei and extended
We
.
Its
territory
in/
Fig.
51
tou, from
Chuang,
Bronze
Chia
Height
Shan.
3S'S cm
-
far to the north-east.
can readily imagine that in the sixth century B.C. the
population of
this
region stood to tribes inhabiting Manchuria
and the forested tracts beyond the Amur river in much the same relation as the Chinese of the north/west did to the Jung and Ti. Here as in the north-west cultural i nfluences emanating from the barbar ians could be transmitted
Some such connexion may J
'hunting
style
.
it
presents oi the
whether in Africa or
li
ne on
plastic
S ome
China
the style
hunt in progress
is
anoma/
are curiously
rock drawings of primitive huntsmen,
reminiscent of the
lian isthmus.
P lain 7
aiTOllng for the appearance of the~
in the state of Yen In
lous: the pictures
to the Central
at the
figures
opposite end of Asia in the Kare/
of tigers and dragons represented in
F& 54
Chia Ko Chuang recall the flamboyant animals of Hsin Cheng vases, but the scales and dots flat
Ko
Vang
surfaces at
167
China
which
fill
variant of
They which was now due
the outlines arc distinctive.
an animal
style
Hopei
are the
to spread
from
the Central Plain into the Yan^tse vallev._
BRONZES OF THE CHU STATE
soo B.C. the lo weaving region south of the Huai
x3y
mountains^ forming the mi ddlebasin of the Yangtze with
its
Yang river
system of lakes and tributaries, was under the control
of the powerful Ch'u
whose rapid expansion and aggres / now a dominant feudal states. factor in the politics of the large number of bronze vessels, weapons and ornaments that have reached collections during the past thirty years came from tombs in the vicinity of S hou Hsien, a city of the state of Wu, which wa s annexed by Ch'u in 473 B.c .LChis sudden appearance ot fine "bronze'Craft in an area in which no metallurgy seems to have s ion
against
state,
northern 'neighbours was
its
A
F& 55
been practised in the
earlier
and sinicisation of a people on as barbarians rpT he Ch'u
Chou
period
whom art
Much
of it so closely resembles the
found
southern
Hsin Cheng
style to
a sign of the wealth
had looked
appears in bronze fully fledged
vessels
at
is
the northerners
that
be derived from
it.
style of the later
.
group of
one might think the new But the very abundance of
Hsien suggests that there was here an inven/ bronze centre which produced its own version of the
the finds at_Shou t ive
,
ornament and animal motifs
now
fashionable farther north,
possibly influenced by a local artistic tradition
Fig.
52 Decoration of a bronze vase ('hunting hu')
Copenhagen. $th Century B.C. Scale approx. 1:3
168
in
the
which had not
Kunstindustri' Museum,
The Art of the Bronze Age
Fig.
55 Decoration on a bronze hu. $th'4th century B.C. The scenes include bow and the picking of mulberry leaves (top register); shooting
target
practice with the
pounding
rice
birds,
(?) and playing music on bronze bells and musical stones (middle register);
a battle on land and water (lowest register); National
Museum,
previously been expressed in metal.
We
Peking. Scale, approx. 1:3
may assume
these times a trade in finished bronzes passed
from
that
b
state to state
from one workshop to another. The motifs found on the bronzes from Shou Hs ien were taken by Karlgren to define a Huai style, s o called after t he rive r ideas travelling rapidly
on which
the
town
stands.
The
stylejreyeals the
same
partial
169
China Plates 54, 55
I
kin ship with the animal
\
northern
I
J
/
/ <\.
styles
s pirals, scales, i nterlacery
is
built
art
we have just dots
of the Steppes as
are
or the animals' bodies.
bold plastic
mounted on
Dragon is all
A
r ecurrent
ground pattern
effects is
the sides of bronze vessel s. In creasing ly fills
1".
.
openwork, in which the form of the animal in a flurry of small spirals, and comma/shaped
Vc
$4 Dragon and tiger depicted on a bronze dish (p'an). From Cbia Chuang, near Vang Shan, Hopei. Scale approx 1:1
170
tiff^
panels of the decor
,
lost
The
more marked Tigers anddragon s
designs, in
but
Fig.
two ,
ing band bent in a hook, or resembling a feathered wing. ta ste for
5
seen in the
.
of small units consisting of a brief spiral and an adjoin /
sq uared interlacery of small scale Plates 42,
is
Rope and plait patterns and hachuring commonly frame or fill the discussed
Ko
The Art of the Bronze Age
Fi&' 55 Bronze vessels and bells from the tomb of the Marquis of Ts'ai Shou Hsien, Anhui. Early $th century B.C. Scale 1:21
at
171
China
Fig.
$6 Bronze openwork ornament, probably for From Chung Chou Lu, Loyang near Honan.
harness.
$th century
B.C. Scale 3:4
figures furnish the magnificent handles
seem
To
to
of
bells
which no w
be indispensable in the bronze treasury of a great hous e.
our eyes the trend of Chinese bronze
art is
now
towards
decorative effect at the expense of more arresting architectonic and symbolic designs of the earlier period. The force of the mythology which had dictated the mysterious ancient themes is spent, the pleasure of the eye
which Huai bodies and fi
art shares
their
gures, has lost
is
now
with Steppe
art,
the only aim.
T hat
part
the distortion of animals'
combination with subordinate geometric
some of the dynamic
quality
which in
the art of
jhe steppe nomads hints at the sympathy of the primitive hunt s'" man with th p ™"<^1e anA g pirir even the supernatural lifeof r
his prey.
This more condescending appr oach to the animal
world taken by the artists of civilised China is analogous to the de velopment of the steppe art at the far western end of its vast extension. Here contact with the Greek colonies on the Black
172
The Art of the Bronze Age
a lacquered box.
From Yang
Fig.
$8 Decoration of
Tzu
Shan, near Chengtu, Szechwan. 4th century B.C.
Sea coast produced a hybrid
in
art
which
traditional Steppe
motifs were softened by the imitation of classical naturalism. In both regions animals were depicted in a gentler mood, with a
comfortable condescension. In ce nturie s
B.C. this naturali sm
China of
the sjyfh an<]
seen at
best in the
is
its
fifth
sma ll
—
—
set on the lids of some of the goats, birds and oxen bronze vessel s, indepen dent sculpture ol ammals anr persons,
arfimals
l
rare at all times,
was r evived in
pair of wrestlers in the British
the last
Chou
Museum show
centuries.
well
The
what could
be achieved in the fourth century B.C.
By
the beginning of the fourth century B.C. the
Huai
style
Middle Cnou everywhere. We observe its further develop ment taking a banal turn. The p urely geometric elements came to dominate, first the spiral and triangle motil, and then a squared geometric" seems to have ousted th(TIingering
styles
of
RgureTepresenting a delicate abstraction ot the interlaced bands,
Fig.
57
a,
b,
Bronze beluhooks. 4th'3rd
century
B.C.
British
Museum. Scale 2:5
173
China
Fig.
$g Decoration of a lacquered
century
Fig. 60
toilet
box
(lien).
From Ch'ang Sha, Hunan,
yd
B.C.
nformed with a col d, draughtsmaivlike vigour of ruler and compassT The u nits of de sign are re peated over the wKoTe inrfur of th» V™7f s. contrasting thin and broad lines-ami silver or turquoise inlay, more rarely e nriched with gold embellished with roundels of the newest material, glass This
i
Plates 58, 59,
T
.
62, 69, 70
found in central China, w here it is from the rich shafiytomb at Chin Ts'un in Honan, excavated clandestinely in 1936, and more recently at Hsin Yang in the same province and in the numer/ geometricising
t
rend
is
exemplified in the bronzes
Figs. 62, 63
"
ous tombs around Ch'ang Sha in Hunan. The geometric rnntifcare desi gned with increasing attention to symmetry about a vertical axis in each unit of the pattern, or are set in corres/ 60
Fig.
Silver'
design
inlaid
'
in
bronze
sbaft'pole
mount.
From Yang
Tzu
Shan
Chengtu. wan.
c.
near
Szech'
300 B.C.
174
"pondin g pairs in heraldic fashion.
~ At
C franp
Sha these motifs are"used on some cups, toilet/ boxes,liriield s and sword scabbards made o f lacquer. ThislT the juice ot the tree Rhus vernicijera, which applied in thin, successively dried layers to a base of
a hard, durable surface
wood
or cloth provides
which can be polished
to a high lustre
The Art of the Bronze Age
and painted. The ab undance l
in the
Ch'ang £ha tombs of
acquered objects painted in red and yellow nn
a
F&59
hi ark
g round suggests that the craft was practised near/by. The lac quer tree may have grown in central China in those times, although today
it is
not
known much beyond
Szechwan province. The Ch'ang Sha workshop s contin ued times, when their products and those ot s pread
through
the
officiallyjoatmnis^cL
portant
commodity
The
the confines of
active well into
Han
their imitators
were
was Lacquer cups and boxes were an inv empire.
in the
gifts
made
Fig. 61 Pottery with painted decoration.
lac quer
to
industry
Hunnish
From Shao Kou,
chieftains
near Loyang, Honan.
/\th
century
B.C. Scale approx. 1:10
175
China
Fig.
62 Design on the
bronze tou.
lid
From Ch'ang
of a Sha.
3rd century B.C. Scale approx. 2: 3
and together with the tribute in return provided a kind of foreign trade.
beyond the north-west occasionally offered
frontiers,
Such articles seem also to have been a perquisite of high govern^ ment officials, especially, to judge from their frequency in tombs of the j^hinese^cxdoriy of Lolang in Korea, of officials who accepted appointments far from home. Conforming to the views of economists who advocated state monopoly as a means of preventing the dangerous growth of mercantile wealth in private hands, Han government assumed the control of the [The evidence for its organisation comes from l acquer factories .
the
first
century B.C.
Han
It is
reasonable to suppose, however, that
workshops continued methods established earlier by the makers of the Ch'ang Sha lacquers of the third century. The minuteness of the division of labour and the careful super' vision no doubt continued traditions of craftsmanship as prac 7 tised under princely patronage in feudal times. An inscription on a wine/cup dated to a.d. 4 illustrates the working of a lacquer factory, in this case the West Factory, one of five recorded from Han times. All of these factories were in the
176
The Art of the Bronze Age
Szcchwan. the region favoured by Rhus vernicifera. The words are personal names: '4th year of Yuan Shih [a.d. 4]. Shu [Szechwan] conv mandery, West Factory. Imperial cup of wood, lacquered, engraved and painted, with gilded handles. Capacity one
italicised
sheng, 16 yiieh. Initial work, Yi. Application of lacquer, Li.
Top work,
Painting,
Tang.
Gilding of bronze handles, Ku.
Ting. Engraving, Feng. Finishing, Ping. Pro'
duction, Tsung Tsao. Official in charge of the soldiers of the factory guard, Chang.
Head
clerk, Pao Chu.' from the inscriptions that workmen seldom held more than two or three years before they were re
ant, Lung.
[One
Manager, Liang. Deputy, Feng. Assist'
notes
a post for
placed, seldom to reappear.
The
senior officials enjoyed
average only a slightly longer tenure of office, it
seems,
Fig.
63
was of short duration in
office.
the
The
Han
on
favour of
bureaucracy.
J
Bronze beluhook with
and turquoise. From Chung Chou Lu, near Loyang, Honan. About 300 B.C. Scale 2:3
inlay of silver
M
177
China
o fficialdom was
surprising that
less
It is
taste,
-U ntil
little
change, and that for the worse ,
desi gns derived in the late third
JT,
its
"
workshops rep ea ted with R
conservative in
the latter half of the_J|r^_^fntnry A.r, the officiaT
\m t hp
frr
Kmn7P
^nd
par1
y g d^cor nfthe latest C.hnii
f
Tond fttylr-
centurie s
alfhnnpfr
judge from the decoration of other contemporary objects in bronze and clay, these designs were already old-fashioned.
to
Some wooden and lacquers
found in tombs
that lay with them.
human
shaped
effigies
at
Ch'ang Sha con/
with the sophisticated elegance of the bronzes
trast strangely
figures,
Many
of them are roughly
placed in the grave to serve the dead in
the next world. Others are figures of beings connected appa/
with the
rently Plate 75
after-life
of the dead,
for similar figures are
painted on silk together with a text (not yet fully deciphered) dealing with like matter.
One
carving represents two cranes
standing on a pedestal formed of two entwined snakes.
The
bodies of birds and snakes alike are decorated with designs in Plate
76
Plate 71
and yellow lacquer paint; where the pattern is not conventional scales and feathers, it repeats the volutcand/ triangle unit with internal spirals derived from the late feudal bronze style, which is foreign to Han art outside the archaising lacquer cups and boxes. Other figures display goggle-eyed heads with protruding fangs and pendant tongue, or, like the black, red
piece
now
in the British
Museum,
a
protruding tongue and carrying deer's
human head antlers. It
with long
was thought
at first that this
'un/Chinese' sculpture and the chthonic cult
connected with
it
were lingering remnants of the unsinicised
culture of the southern barbarians, but recently the discovery Plate 72
of similar highly coloured, grotesque wooden carvings at Hsin Yang in south Honan carried the evidence of the superstition
and Fig. 64
its
queer imagery into the ancient centre of Chinese
civilisation.
8
The blocking/out images
178
is
style
of carving used on some of these
reminiscent of the
style
of some of the
effigies
carved
The Art of the Bronze Agt
^/O' Fig.
64 Figures decorating a lacquered musical instrument, qtb'^rd century B.C. From
Hsin Yang, Honan
in the Moi' jungle of western
of tomb/houses. The the antlered
god
antlers
IndoChina
on
the British
or deified reindeer
for the
comer^posts
Museum
which
head
recall
figures in animistic
and legend spread from northern Europe across northern Asia to Siberia. In recent times the antlers on the head of a shaman in southern Siberia were described as a symbol of his capacity for rapid motion. The sha man, a nd his Chinese equivalent, the wu> was ever closely concerned with funeral rites; one of his tasks though this does not seem to have been explicitly recorded in China was to conduct the souls and
totemistic cult
—
—
of the dead to
their last resting-place.
He
used his magical
powers, often achieved in an ecstatic trance, to traverse space
179
China
and to pass between the worlds of men, go ds and gh osts. The mportanceoFthTcrane in Ta oist fable is enough tn connect i't with the circle of shamamstic lore. Indeed the h eavenly gods^ feathered men and mystic animals of the Taoist mythology as it a ppears in Han times no doubt came from the same body~oT beliefs as lay behind the wooden pffjgips nf P.n'an g £ha and Hsin Yang. Through the interest which Han emperors took in Taoist magic, these superstitions became more respectable i
as artistic themes.
an
Apart from the cult/figures there is nothing found in the INDEPENDENT Ch'ang Sha tombs, either weapon forms or artistic motifs, BRONZE ART which departs radically from the main stream of Chinese IN
YUNNAN
tradition.
In areas to the south-west and south, however,
regions beyond the pale of Chinese civilisation, local bronze
few centuries B.C. bore an indi/ and artifacts. These cultures developed in comparative isolation and their remains reflect local differences. The Dong'son culture of northern Indo'China owes nothing to Chou China, unless it be the bare technique of casting in bronze, and that remains doubtful. In Szechwan, Yunnan and south Kuantung (the region around Hong Kong), Chinese weapons, swords, ktvhalberds and spearheads were adopted, but with some original modifications, and the decora' tion applied to the bronze was of local growth. In boat/ shaped wooden coffins in Szechwan, alongside ko and swords of Chou type and ring'handled knives of the Han type, were found many examples of short swords with a simple tang in^ cultures flourishing in the last
vidual stamp in
Fig.
J7
art
stead of the usual cast hilt.
The
blades of these are decorated
with curious motifs, of which the commonest are a hand and
accompanied by shapes possibly Yunnan are found bronze socketed axes of rectangular section and expanded blades, distinct from those of central China; and from Yun/
serpent'figure
and
a tiger
representing a trap.
In Szechwan and
nan comes one example of
1
80
a ko
on which a socket
is
cast,
The Art of the Bronze Age
Fig.
6$ Decorated socketed axe of bronze.
From Shih Chai Shan,
ist century
B.C.
Scale approx. 1:4
which in the normal type passes through the wooden haft and projects above it. More striking, however, than these modifications of standard weapon and although
it
tool forms
retains the part
is
the originality of the artistic ideas interpreted in
bronze.
The
richest
southern
found thus far in the was contained in a tomb at Shih Chai Shan,
collection of bronzes
territories
Kunming in Yunnan province. History which suggest how Chinese influence, and with near
relates it
Figs. 65,
66
events
possibly the
knowledge of bronze working, first penetrated to this King Ch'ing Hsiang of Ch'u sent an expendition to the Tien lake on whose east shore the hill of Shih Chai Shan is situated, and the expeditionaries lingered there until their homeward route was cut off by the forces of the Ch'in at the moment of this state's dramatic expansion. Their earliest
region. In 334 B.C.
general
is
reported to have remained permanently at his out'
and to have founded a state and a kingship. The Shih Chai Shan tom b is dated to about 100 B.C. by mirrors^and" vessels of Han type, evidently imported, which it contained. The place had been inhabited much longer, from a time when cropping was combined with the gathering of freslvwater
post
181
China molluscs.
A
body laid on accompanied by a few rough pots, the similar burials found in Kansu, Shensi and smaller grave near/by contained a
with flexed
side
its
recalling
legs,
Honan. Fig.
Some
66
fragments of bronze drums excavated
Shih Chai
at
Shan have ornament of birds, and human figures in huge plumed hats rowing in a boat, quite similar to that of the famous drums from Dong^son. Some of the minor motifs, small circles, groups of parallel lines in bands and loops, hachuring, etc., can be compared to similar 'filling' devices in Huai art, but the resemblance is a cousinship rather than a direct
borrowing.
The
original part of this
Yunnan bronze
an astonishing skill in naturalistic modelling in the round, unique and excels anything of the kind known either from
art, is
Plate 73
China
or south-east Asia.
The
figures
of animals,
birds, placed
on the sockets of axes or
are designed
wholly in the round, with a
bulls, tigers,
cast as separate
ornaments,
pictorial realism
un/
more conventionalised and graphic designs of the Chinese and the northern nomads. Whereas so little of paralleled in the
the bronze art
depicting real
we have
described hitherto
activities, the
Yunnan
artists
is
concerned with
represent scenes of
huntsmen and their prey, village festivities and ceremonial which they must have seen with their own eyes. Tigers and wolf'like creatures are shown attacking cattle and deer, a group of huntsmen pin down a tiger under their spears, mounted hunters and warriors with armour and helmets are
fighting animals,
Plate 74
shown
at the gallop, or
leaping at a tiger or boar. Musicians
and dancers in elaborate costume stand in rows or gesticulate legs. Still more of social life is re/ vealed by scenes of fully modelled figures placed on the top of
with outspread arms and
bronze stands (termed 'cowrie^shell holders' by the excavators),
which copy
182
the shape of the bronze drums. In one scene a
rows of drummers squatting beside
high/gabled hut
shelters
their instruments,
surrounded by a crowd of villagers
who
seem
The Art
Fig 66 Decoration on
B.C.
the sides
of a bronze drum.
From Sbib Cbai Shan,
oj the
Bronze Age
ist century
Scale approx. 1:4
The scene where a bull is from a low door in a wall on which rows of spectators seated suggests a festival of bull'catching such as may still
to be talking together excitedly.
issuing are
be seen performed in southern India. Other crowded groups represent elaborate religious ceremonial.
perhaps a
surrounded by thirteen further
whom
In one a
woman,
on a throne at the centre, women and three men, some of
priestess or chieftainess, sits
hold up offerings to her while others appear to be en'
gaged in plaiting and other unidentifiable
tasks.
The double
buns of the women are like those still worn by the Miao women of south-west China at the present time. In another scene of some fifty individuals a pillar standing at the centre is entwined with a serpent and supports a tiger. An execution or coiled
human
sacrifice
seems to be in progress, the victim tied
A
down
on a high throne. Some of the and baskets offish. In these compositions the modelling of the figures is crude, but fresh and expressive. Some processions of people with animals and carrying female notables in sedan/chairs are engraved on the flat surfaces of drums. They are depicted with the same free realism, and the same imagination and skill is displayed in relating them con'
on
a board.
priestess sits
figures carry firewood
vincingly to each other.
In pursuing the spread of Chinese influence into the *un^ opened'
territory
beyond the area of metropolitan Chinese
183
China
we have
culture,
which
described from
Yunnan and
repeats the history of the north
a
phenomenon
China. was known, bronze was used not only to produce weapons, no doubt the initial incentive behind the mastery of bronze/casting, but to produce ritual and artistic objects be/ sides. The weapons varied only a little from the Chinese forms
As
soon
as
centre of
it
they copied, but the bronze art perpetuated a local tradition of plastic
and
linear subjects.
The drums
apart (which
been imports from northern Indo/China)
this art is
may have
independent
equally of the art of south-east Asia exemplified by the
son
finds,
and of the
art
compositions of fighting animals and horsemen have
with the
of the nomads living
far to the north,
SCULPTURE AND JADE CARVING
Fig. 67
Plate 16
60
freedom
is
to
be made with the
of
human
beings
fall
made
of the dynasty. The in the
Chou
plain
evidently
68
less
rare
bronze figures
period are small, seldom
five inches,
lack the vitality of the animal themes.
184
its
distinctive
exceeding a height of four or
Fios. 23, 43,
but
affinities
and original. Apart from this re/ semblance of artistic themes, which is never very close there is no evidence yet of historical connexion between Yunnan and north-west China or the steppes of southern Siberia. No monumental sculpture and very little free modelling in the roun d, even on a small scale, is found in the Shang ancT Chouperiods. T he absence of a tradition ot stone building Is perhaps enough to account for the lack of the former. Probably in earlier as in later times the wooden buildings of the Chinese gave no place for large-scale carving, and they did not nurture the mason's craft which underlies a tradition of stone/carving. The conventionalised figures of birds and animals carved in limestone which were placed in the great Shang tombs ceased plastic
Plates 37,
art
Dong/ The
of Ch'u and central China.
and
for the
most part
The human form was
keenly studied than were animal subjects.
One
might speak of an aversion from depicting men. T ade/carving during the Shan^ and earlier Chou period was confined to flat forms of animals serving as amulets and dress
The Art of the Bronze Age
Fig. 6j Limestone owl.
From Hsi Pei Kang,
near Anyang, Honan.
Shang
period.
Scale
approx. 1:3
ornaments, and the ritual objects: the perfo rated disc called pi
,
the pi llar/shaped tamf (explained respectively in later tradition
symbols of heaven and earth), the hum^sz&sgnt, and cere^ monjal knives an d halb erd blades. The expansion of jade/
as
carving which took place irom theTlfth century B.C. adapts the decorative schemes of the bronze decor, the animal shapes
and
the small/scale repetitive
may be
ornament echoing motifs which on bronze. Jade was in/
seen in greater elaboration
creasingly used for personal adornment.
The
sword/guards,
Plates 63, 64,
65, 66, 67
scabbard mounts and ornaments of the dress and person made
of it have a perfection of design and execution which was never to
be surpassed in the long subsequent history of jade/
carving in China.
185
China
The end of the Chou
period closes a great cycle in the history
embraces more than a millennium of singularly logical development. At the advent of Han art,
of Chinese with
its
art.
wider horizons in which
vegetation
and
more with the era
It
human
architectural forms
activities,
landscape,
were encompassed, and
arrival in the early centuries
still
of the Christian
of western influences of which the Buddhist religion proved
the most lasting,
China and
we have
quitted the world of Bronze
stand at the beginning of
artistic traditions
Age
which
have lasted to modern times. But the inventions of the ancients never lost their appeal. Particularly in the decorative art oi
Sung and later dynasties the shapes of ritual bronze vessels and of ritual jades, dragons and t'ao t'ieh appear again as solemn
the
evocations of the past.
•j
Fig.
68 Ritual jades of the Shang period, Museum. Scale 1:10
British
186
a, b,
tsung:
c, d,
knives;
e,
pi.
Notes Chapter
I
J. G. Anderson discovered the deposits in 192 1. On the evidence of teeth, Davidson Black named the new type of man in 1927. The first skull was found by Pei Wen/chung two years later. To date, parts
of the skeletons of over
The
first
found and
forty/five individuals
have been recovered.
of the skulls was
best preserved
lost
when
the
Japanese occupied Peking in 1941. In 1959 excavations were resumed.
The principal argument for an earlier neolithic stage, ante^dating the Yang Shao culture, is based on material from a few sites in Shensi. But the Sha Yuan culture of central Shensi belongs to the Gobi tradition, and has no better claim than the Gobi sites to be regarded as a neolithic precursor of the Yang Shao, although the presence of polished stone shows neolithic influence. At Tou Chi T'ai, near Pao Chi,
farther west in central Shensi, the pottery is
mitive, tery
and although
distinct
from
that
however more
pri'
of Yang Shao (painted pot'
being absent), may, like the pottery found on Gobi
sites,
be no
earlier in date.
Andersson makes the Ch'i Chia P'ing culture of Kansu earliest
of his succession of cultures.
angular
The
and
writer accepts
Ku Kao Ku
K'ao
profiles,
is
quite
It
the
has plain black pottery with
distinct
from the painted wares.
Hsia Nai's argument
for a later date for
it.
cf.
Hsiieh Pao, vol. Ill, pp. 101-117.
Hsiieh Pao, 1955,
No.
10, pp.
27
ff.
Chapter Hsiao T'un
II
km. north/west of the modern prefectural town of Anyang. The latter name is often used to denote the Shang is
a village
3
site.
In archaeological
literature the
dynasty
is
called
by
either
name, and
sometimes 'Shang/ Yin'. Dates argued from historical sources for the defeat of the Shang by the
Chou
vary
from 1027 B.C., which
is
the latest to
11 22
187
China which
B.C.,
the
is
historical text called
From
and
earliest
by the orthodox
given
that
In recent times dates derived from the
chronology.
traditional
Bamboo Books have
the
gained increasing
C. Bishop derives his dates of 1558 and 1050 for the beginning and end of Shang rule. Wang Kucwei deduced from his reconstitution of what he con' credence.
the current version of this text
sidered to be the authentic text the dates 1523 figures
According
to the
accession of P'an
and
Shang king. This
the defeat of the last
of P'an Keng's
found
to strengthen the
Shang
reign, as against the
suggested by
argument
Mizuno
1765 of the orthodox
Seiichi in
An
Asia
campaigns of excavation
far
from
ideal.
of local
treasure/hunts establishing
The
villagers
added
illicit
probing method of
list.
Sinica carried out
occasional approach of bandits profit
from
and
their
its
war
before the recent
long accustomed to
the
own
of the work. The chances of
were reduced through the disturbance
digging. their
can be
II, p. 9.
Anyang
to the difficulty
stratigraphy
caused by the
at
1300 B.C.
texts
Outline of World Archeology
Academia
circumstances in which
hostility
Other
1523 as the beginning of the
for
The were
gives the year
capital.
(Sekai Kokogaku Taikei), Eastern
fifteen
these
studies.
Bamboo Books 273 years intervened between the Keng, who moved his capital to Hsiao T'un,
for the establishment
As
and 1027, and
have been accepted by Ch'en Meng/chia in his recent
The
own
with Japan interrupted the
villagers
official
had located tombs by a
The outbreak of the war
invention.
excavations,
which ceased in
spring of 1937 and could not be resumed before 1950.
the
The prewar
excavated material had by then been removed to Formosa, where
some of it
still
awaits detailed publication.
Lung Shan site of Ch'eng Tzu Yai in much invoked as further evidence of the close connexion of the Shang and Lung Shan cultures, is now thought possibly to belong to the late Chou period. The rammed/earth
wall
Shantung province,
at the
hitherto
Unfortunately no complete report of the excavations has been pub/ lished.
Summaries have appeared by Li Chi and Shih Chang/ju
who
were
others
more
(see bibliography),
excavations,
and
Ch'en Meng'chia and 188
Hu
among
those in charge of the pre-war
recently printed
Hou/hsiian.
on
the mainland by
The main
finds are,
how/
Notes by now well known in
ever,
of the eight great tombs
illustration.
we rely on a
development of the white pottery tutc
For the
brief survey
at
Yin Hsu',
trace
(cf.
of the plans
Li Chi, 'On the
Bulletin of the Insti/
of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, xxviii (1925) p.
861). 8
There
no evidence
is
structure,
is
shaped in a single
nocking the arrow nearer one This device made spite
9 10
it
bow
for the doubles-curved
from the eighth century a.d. onwards
more
at least, the
in Japan. Here,
bow, of compound
but balanced for holding and
arc,
end by about a quarter of the
suitable for shooting
length.
from the saddle, in
of its considerable length.
Loehr M., Chinese Bronze Age Weapons, pp. 100-4.
The nomenclature of terms used in this
differ
pondence of character
is
a study apart.
are those accepted today,
Sung
by the
were adopted
part
pronunciations
the bronze vessels
book
and
antiquarians.
for the
The most
The modern The corres' in many cases,
from the ancient readings. to vessel
is far
from
certain
Shang and early Chou shapes. Ting, //, kuei, ku, chueh are among those which are most reliably identified. In later Chou times the use of vessel names was not consistent (differences generic name yi, i.e. a sacri' of dialect contributing to this). ficial vessel, was often used by the Shang for a variety of forms. Yetts particularly for the
A
deals abundantly with the nomenclature in his writings.
11
The
texts
will be
and published source
for the oracle sentences
quoted here
found in Ch'en Meng^chia's Comprehensive Account of
the
Oracle Texts from Yin Hsu.
12
Of the
whom Wang
Kuo^wei failed to identify Tung Tso'pin points out that the last two were unlikely to be named as ancestral spirits, and he found equivalents for the remainder, conv eight kings
pleting the total of thirty.
two, the names of the 13
cf.
Of these identifications Kuo Mcjo
fifth
and
doubts
fifteenth kings.
Kaizuka Shigeki's study of a group of bronzes found at Liang near Shou Chang Hsien, Shantung province, in his
Shan,
Development of
the Historical
Shigaku Hatten), pp. 369
14 15
Study of Ancient China {Chugoku Kodai
ff.
Kaizuka Shigeki, op. cit., p. 267. Quoted by Kaizuka Shigeki, op. cit. pp. 264,
cf.
t
116.
189
China
Chapter
III
Kaizuka Shigeki, Development of
cf.
the Historical
Study of Ancient
China (Chiigoku Kodai Shigaku Hatten), p. 309.
The famous Sung Ting of
King K'ung,
the reign of
century B.C. This inscription
translated in
is
W.
late tenth
Willetts, Chinese
Art, p. 125.
This inscription
is
translated in full
by P. Yetts in the Catalogue of
Eumorfopoulos Collection, Vol.
the
5
of the type seen on Plate
i.e
No.
XXXV,
Age Weapons, No. 88 on
Chinese Bronze
27-29.
1, p.
Wen Wu Ts'an K'ao Tzu Liao, 1955, W. Archaeology in China, pp. 23-24.
5,
No.
the
pp. 58
87, in
same
ff.
Watson,
M.
Loehr's
plate belongs to a
group of swords which Loehr places in general before the swords with cast
hilt,
book
Archaeological Journal
but excavations published
after the
Ku
appearance of his
No. 2, show that they are much later, probably of the fourth century B.C., and a barbarian product of the south-west. Kuo Yii. Quoted and translated in J. Needham, The Development {cf.
pp. 77
[Kao
Hsiieh Pao] 1958,
ff.)
of Iron and Steel Technology
K'ao
Ku
Ku
T'ielvfu.
Hsiieh Pao, 1957,
Some
in
China, p. 2.
No.
3,
pp. 93
archaeological
ff.
questions
concerning grave
Ch'ang Sha, in Wen Wu, 1954, No. 10. Li Cheng'kuang, 'Iron objects of the Warring States period found at Ch'ang Sha and Heng Yang', K'ao Ku Tung Hsiin, 1956, No. 1. 52.826
10
at
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Sun Tso^yiin. On the theory that the T'ien Wang Kuei was made before Wu Wang's defeat of the Shang, Wen Wu Ts'an K'ao Tzu Liao, 1958, No. 1, pp. 29 ff.
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Select Bibliography Abbreviations
bmfeas
Bulletin of the
Museum
of Far Eastern Antiquities, Stock/
holm.
kkhp Tr.
K'ao
ocs
Hsiieh Pao (Archaeological Reports).
Transactions of the Oriental Ceramic Society.
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society.
jras
The
Ku
titles
original
of Chinese and Japanese books and
titles
articles are translated.
The
of books only are given in brackets.
General
HISTORY H. G. Creel, The
Birth of China.
Chinese Civilization.
A
Survey of
the
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H. G. Creel, Studies in Early Chinese Culture. London, 1938. G. B Cressey, Chinas Geographic Foundations. A Survey of the Land its
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New
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Eberhard, A History of China. London, 1950. O. Franke, Geschichte des Chinesischen Keiches. Vol. I. Berlin, 1930. A. Herrmann, Atlas of China. Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1935. Shigeki Kaizuka, The Development of the Historical Study of Ancient China. Tokyo, 1946 (Japanese: Chugoku Kodai Shigaku Hatten). O. Lattimore, Inner Frontiers of Asia. New York, 1940. H. Maspero, La Chine Antique. Paris, 1927. Torajiro Naito, Ancient History of China. Tokyo, 1944 (Japanese:
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Shina Kodai/shi). J.
Needham,
Science and Civilization in China. Vols.
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ARCHAEOLOGY J.
G. Andersson,
Cheng
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TE'k'un, Archaeology
Cambridge, 1959-60. Vol.
192
II.
in
China.
Vol.
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Prehistoric
Shang China (in progress).
China.
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Li Chi, The Seiichi
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Mizuno
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Yin' Chou Period.
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W. Watson,
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WEAPONS Chou Wei,
Draft of a History of Chinese Weapons.
Chung Kuo Ping Ch'i Shih Kao). Yoshito Harada and Kazuchika Komai (ed.),
Peking, 1957
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Part
I,
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Vessels and Vehicles.
Oriental Culture, Tokyo, 1932, 193 7 (Japanese: Shina
M. Loehr,
Chinese Bronze
Age Weapons.
Ann
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Arbor, 1956.
ARTS Ashton and
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B.
Gray,
Chinese Art.
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Bachhofer, A Short History of Chinese Art. London, 1944. B. Gray, Early Chinese Pottery and Porcelain. London, 1953. S. H. Hansford, Chinese fade Carving. London, 1950. W. Hochstadter, 'Pottery and Stonewares of Shang, Chou and Han.' L.
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24, 1952.
Seiichi Mizuno, Bronzes and Jades of Ancient China. Tokyo, 1959 (Japanese: Inshu Seidoki to Gy5ku, with English summary).
L. Sickman and L. Soper. The Art and
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O. Siren, Kinas Konst under Tre Artusenden. Vol. I. Stockholm, M. Sullivan, An Introduction to Chinese Art. London, i960. W. Willetts, Chinese Art. London, 1958.
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MYTHOLOGY AND RITUAL E.
Biot
(Trans.),
Le TcheouAi, ou Kites
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M. Granet, Danses et Le'gendes de la Chine Ancienne. Paris, 1926. M. Granet, La Civilisation Chinoise. Paris, 1929 (English translation London, 1930).
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C. Hentze, Mythes C. Hentze, Objets
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Symboles Lunaires. Antwerp, 1932.
et
croyances et
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YAmerique. Antwerp, 1936.
C. Hentze, Friihchinesische Bronzen und Kulturdarstellungen. 2 vols. Antwerp, 1937. B. Karlgren, 'Some Fecundity Symbols in Ancient China.'
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Saburo Morimiki,
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CATALOGUES OF COLLECTIONS AND EXHIBITIONS The Chinese Exhibition. A Commemorative Catalogue of the Inter* national Exhibition of Chinese Art.
H. S.
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Hut
Hsien. Peking, 1956 (Chinese:
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Chou Heng, 'A Ancient
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KKHP
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H.
S.
Hansford, 'A
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China
Honan Province Bureau of Culture, Dynasty
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Archaeology of the Academy of Sciences, Peking, The Erh Li Kang Site at Cheng Chou, Special Archaeological Series, D, No. 7, 1959 (Chinese: Cheng Chou Erh Li Kang). Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, Excava* Institute of
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Kuo
PaO'CHUN, 'Excavations
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Shih ChanG'JU, 'Important Recent Finds Stratigraphy at Hsiao Tun.' KKHP 1947
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2 (Chinese).
Ma
Te'Chih, Cou Yung^chen, Yun/p'eng, 'Excavations in 1953 Ta Ssu K'ung Village near Anyang. KKHP 1955 No 9 (Chinese). Nanking National Museum, 'First and Second Excavations at Pai Yin Yang Ying.' Nanking. KKHP 1958 No 1 (Chinese). Sueji Umehara, Ancient Treasures Found at Anyang Yin Sites. Kyoto, 1940 (Japanese: Kanan An^y5 Ih5). Sueji Umehara, Studies on Relics from Anyang, Honan. Kyoto, 1941 (Japanese: Ka^nan An^y5 Imotsu no Kenkyu). Sueji Umehara, Catalogue of the Impressions of Wooden Objects Discovered in Yin Tombs. Kyoto, 1959 (Japanese: Inbo Hakken Mokki In^ei at
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W.
C. White, Bronze
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STUDIES OF BRONZE VESSELS P.
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Jung Keng,
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WEAPONS Hayashi Minao,
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BMFEAS,
'Selected
Objects
from
Ancient
Shou
Chou.'
27, 1955.
Karlgren, 'On the Date of the Piao Bells/ BFMEAS, 6, 1934. Komai Kazuchika, A Study of Ancient Chinese Mirrors. Kyoto, 1953
B.
(Japanese: Chugoku Kokyo no Kenkyu). O. Janse, 'Le Style du Houai et ses Affinites/ Revue
No
8,
Needham, 'The Development
J.
des
Arts Asiatiques,
1934, 159-80.
of Iron and Steel Technology in
China/ London, 1958. Publications of the Newcomen Society. Peking Historical Museum, Illustrated Catalogue of an Exhibition of the Cultural Material of Ch'u. Peking, 1954 (Chinese: Ch'u Wen Wu Chan Lan T'u Lu). G. Salles, 'Les Bronzes de Li'Yu/ Revue des Arts Asiatiques, No 8, 1934. I4 6 ~58.
A Study of Semicircular Eaves'tiles. Tokyo, 1952 Hangat5 no Kenkyu, with English resume). C. G. Seligman and H. C. Beck, 'Far Eastern Glass. Some Western
Takeshi Sekino, (Japanese:
Origins/
BFMEAS,
C. G. Seligman,
10, 1938^
'Early Chinese Glass/ Tr.
Shang Ch'enG'TSO, An
OCS,
Illustrated Catalogue of the
excavated at Ch'ang Sha. Shanghai, 1955 (Chinese:
1940-1.
Lacquerware of Ch'u
Ch'ang Sha Ch'u
T'u Ch'u Ch'i Ch'i T'u Lu). R.
W. Swallow, Umehara,
Sueji
Ancient Chinese Bronze Mirrors. Peking, 1937. Studies of Mirrors.
Tokyo, 1925 (Japanese: Kankyd
no Kenkyu). Sueji
Umehara,
(Japanese:
Umehara,
Sueji 193
Sueji the
1
Study of the Bronzes of the Warring States. Kyoto, 1936
Sengoku Shiki Doki no Kenkyu). Ancient Chinese Mirrors
in
Europe and America. Kyoto,
(Japanese: O'bei ni okeru Shina Kokyo).
Umehara, Han
Catalogue Raisonne' of Chinese Dated Lacquer Vessels of
Dynasty.
Kyoto,
1943
(Japanese:
Shina Kandai Kinen
Meishikki Zusetsu).
203
Sources of Illustrations Since they
excavated the majority of the text
illustrate material recently
M. E. Weaver, P. P. Pratt, and and Japanese publications in which appeared. The maps have been drawn by H. A. Shelley.
figures
have been redrawn by the author,
P. R.
Ward, from
they originally
The
following are taken from the sources indicated:
chung toji
the Chinese
et al.,
Chung
figs. 2, 3:
P'ei
zenshii; fig. 8: Bulletin of the
Museum
of Far Eastern Antiquities;
9, 11, 22, 24, 31, 51, 54, 58, 60, 61, 65, 66: K'ao ku bsueh pao;
15, 21 b, c: Toho Gakubo; tion
Report;
fig.
Sinica; fig. 17:
figs.
12, 18, 19, 32, 35, 50:
figs.
figs.
10,
Hui Hsien Excava*
13: Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology, Academia
Jung Keng, Chin wen
Atlas of China; 38,
Wen/
juo jen lei shih hua tifa bsiett yii yen cbiu; fig. 5: Seikai
figs.
3 3.
pien; fig. 28: after
59, 62: Cb'ang
39, 56: Report of Excavations at
A. Hermann,
Sha Excavation Report;
Loyang Chung Chou Lu;
figs.
36,
fig.
53:
China Reconstructs.
The
sources of the plates are acknowledged as follows: 1-5, 9-12,
Hakuzuru Museum; 6, 13, 18, 25, 26, 37, 38, 41-50: The British Museum; 8: Academia Sinica; 15, 40, 58, 68: Musee Guimet, Paris; 16: Mr Ch'en 33, 51, 52, 59: Britain'China Friendship Association; 7, 19:
Jen't*ao; 17, 22 t 29, 30, 31, 63: Freer Gallery of Art, Institute
New 55:
of Archaeology, Peking; 23: Metropolitan
of Art,
J. H. Hewitt, Esq.; 53, 61: Art Institute of Chicago; Kunstindustri Museum, Copenhagen; 57: Museum of Far Eastern
York; 27:
Antiquities, Stockholm; 72: after shih chai shan ku
mu
ch'unfa
chiieh
Wen Wu;
pao kao; 7$:
after Cb'ang Sha Excavation Report.
204
Washington; 20:
Museum
73: after Yun nan chin ning
after
China Reconstructs; 76:
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74
Notes on 1
the Plates
Excavations in progress on the neolithic village
site at Pan P'o Ts'un, The floor was sunk a little below ground level. Ovens and storage are dug in the earth. Yang Shao neolithic culture.
Shensi. spaces
2 Foundations of round huts excavated tral fire-place
and post
from the roofing strews the 3
Grave with
at
Pan P'o Ts'un,
Shensi.
holes of the structure are clearly visible. floor.
flexed burial at Pai
Yang Shao Tao
A cen^
Clay
fallen
neolithic culture.
P'ing, Kansu.
Kansu Yang Shao
neolithic culture.
4 Storage pits dug among
Yang Shao
at the village site
the houses
on
of internal wooden
pits
were
structures.
bowl from Pan P'o Ts'un, Shensi. The painted decora^
the out'turned lip
the only
of Pan P'o Ts'un, Shensi. The
retain traces
neolithic culture.
5 Painted pottery
tion
and
known
neolithic culture.
is
characteristic.
instance of its kind
Diameter 15
on
The schematized
face inside
the neolithic pottery.
is
Yang Shao
in.
Yang Shao
Kansu. The Pan Shan, stage. The 'death pattern' is visible at the neck of the large urn. The painting is in maroon and black, executed directly on the burnished buff clay. The height of the largest urn is 12 in. British Museum.
6 Painted furneral urns of the
shapes and designs are typical of the
neolithic culture of
earliest,
the
7 Earth impressions of decayed wooden objects from the royal tombs
at
Hsi
Kang, Anyang, Honan. Above: impressions of carved and painted wooden vessels, right with inlay of shell (height about 5 and 4 in. respectively). Below: impression of a painted wooden panel depicting a Pei
dragon, with inlay of shell (length about 30
in.).
The
paint
is
red
and
the
impressions reverse the design. 8
Royal Shang tomb 1002).
The
size to those
at
Hsi Pei Kang, near Anyang,
Honan (Tomb No
lateral arms of the cruciform pit are approximately equal in
shown
in the picture.
253
China 9 Central
The
pit
of the great Shang tomb
bodies of
coffin
human
chamber,
left
may
be seen
10 Musical stone
30
Wu Kuan Ts'un, near Anyang.
bottom of which
at the
sacrifice, usually a
at
funeral victims were laid is
on
the ledge above the
a small grave f )r an animal
dog. Horses were buried in the farther ramp.
in situ
(cb'ing)
On
the
the stone cb'ing illustrated in pi. 10. (Scale model.)
from the tomb
at
Wu Kuan Ts'un (pi. 9). Length
in.
11 Burial of a chariot with horses
Anyang, Honan. Shang pared on the pit floor to
The
wheels.
grave see
fig.
charioteer
charioteer at
nth
Ta
Ssu K'ung, near
century B.C. Recesses were
receive the shaft, axle
and lower
bronze arrowheads,
12-nth
Shang
wooden haft Museum. 14 Bronze
at
Ta
pit,
with burial goods of pottery
funeral
shape of addorsed rams. Shang dynasty.
Museum. Shang
dynasty.
Burials of complete elephants were excavated at
Anyang.
15 Bronze ritual vessel,
in.
human
12-nth century B.C. The mark left by the visible on the corroded bronze. Height 9 1 in. British
dynasty.
century B.C. Height 17! in. British
Height 25I
and
century B.C.
is still
12-nth century.
vessels
Ssu K'ung, near Anyang, Honan. Shang
ritual vessel, tsun, in the
12-nth
pre
of the
buried prone. For a key to the contents of the
is
13 Bronze ritual axe, yueb, of the kind used for beheading victims.
parts
22.
12 Prone burial in a stepped
dynasty.
and
dynasty,
tsun,
in the shape of an elephant.
Musee* Guimet.
man found at Ssu P'an Mo, near Anyang, Honan. Shang dynasty. 12-nth century B.C. This is one of the rare examples of Shang sculpture, and the only piece representing a person. Height 5 1 in. Collection of Mr. Ch'en Jen/t'ao.
16 Limestone figure of a seated
17 Bronze
ritual vessel,
12-nth
the 'botde horns'
ornament of the
*S4
a bo, for pouring the
century B.C.
The
which
vessels.
lid is
sacrificial
wine. Shang dynasty.
shaped in a grotesque
are usually
Height 7J
worn by dragons
in. Freer
human
face,
with
represented in the
Gallery of Art, Washington.
8
Notes on 1
Bronze
ritual
Height 12 J
mask
12-nth
dynasty.
Shang
dynasty.
12-nth
decorating the neck of the vessel
which each approximate example on the
century B.C.
Museum.
19 Bronze ritual wine^vessel, yw, t'ao fieh
Shang
wine/goblet, ku.
in. British
the Plates
to the figure
is
century B.C.
The
composed of halves
of the kuei dragon,
as seen for
of the yu. Hakuzuru Museum, Kobe.
foot
ritual wine/vessel, chia, excavated at Liu Li Ko, Hui Hsien, Honan. The shape and style of relief ornament are characteristic of the earlier Shang period. Shang dynasty. I4-I3th century B.C. Height 9j in.
20 Bronze
Institute
of Archaeology, Peking.
21 Bronze ritual
9f
in. British
vessel,
//.
Shang
dynasty. 14-1301 century B.C. Height
Museum.
The blade is of jade and set in a bronze haft The turquoise is laid in cloisons of bronze which delineate the dragons and other ornaments. Shang dynasty. 12-nth
22 Ceremonial halberd,
ko.
incr dsted with turquoise.
century B.C. Length 13J in. Freer Gallery of Art, Washington.
23 Bronze ritual goblet,
was one of twelve
chiieh, for
vessels
Hsien, Shensi, in 1901.
offering the sacrificial wine.
found with a bronze
nth
altar
This piece
Pao Chi Museum.
stand at
century B.C. Metropolitan
24 Oracle bones. Left, from Ta Ssu K'ung, near Anyang, Honan, fragment of bone showing cracks from which prognostication was read. Right, bone inscribed with a question concerning rain put day ping shen of the calendar
cycle.
Shang dynasty
to the oracle c.
on
the
1500 B.C. British
Museum. 25 Bronze harness mounts, ornamental cheek'pieces: centre, and bottom right,
head
frontals similar to
century B.C. British
Shang
types. Early
Chou
dynasty. io~7th
Museum.
26 Carved bone handle. Shang dynasty. 12-nth century B.C. Such objects have been employed along with the bronze
seem
to
rites.
Length 9 \
in. British
vessels in religious
Museum.
27 Bronze pole^finial in the shape of a horse's head, nth or 10th century B.C. This piece was paired with another similar, and both probably came from
^55
China
The
a chariot burial.
horse represents the small steppe race. Height 6| in.
Formerly in the possession of J. 28 Bronze
7§
Shang
ritual vessel, ting.
in. British
29 Bronze
ritual
H.
Hewitt, Esq.
12-nth
dynasty.
Shang dynasty. 12-nth century B.C. which sometimes have the interior partly divided
winevessel, kuang.
Vessels of this form,
into two, are believed to have been used to
Some
century B.C. Height
Museum.
mix
the sacrificial millet wine.
surviving examples are furnished with labels. Height 9 J in. Freer
Gallery of Art, Washington.
30 Vase of white clay with carved decoration. Shang dynasty. 12-nth century B.C.
The
clay
close in composition to the kaolin
is
porcelain. In this instance
Such
clay
was used
at
it
is
Anyang
baked
stoneware hardness.
to almost a
only for noble
vessels,
decorated with carved ornament akin to that used
Height
13^
in. Freer
in. Freer
is
on
ritual bronzes.
nth
or early 10th century B.C. Height
Gallery of Art, Washington.
32 Bronze ritual tion
which were always
Gallery of Art, Washington.
31 Bronze ritual wine/vessel, yu. Late
20
of later Chinese
8th century B.C.
vessel, ting.
The
figure used in the decora'
derived from a stylized bird motif introduced into the bronze orna^
ment some two
Height 12
centuries earlier.
in.
Formerly in the Palace
Museum, Peking. 33
Bronze
nth
ritual vessel, kuei,
page 119. Height 6 J 34 Bronze ritual vessel, used in the ornament tion cast
35
The
excavated at
on
National
in.
kuei. is
Late
inscription cast
nth
Chung,
the
on
this vessel see
on
below. Height 7J
The
stylized elephant
the bronzes. For the inscrip' in. British
Museum.
the vessel of pi. 34, recording a royal gift to the classes, the
men of Chou, the men of
men of Yung'.
36 Above: bronze decorated B.C. Height
century B.C.
a motif rarely seen
this vessel see
on
Museum, Peking.
Marquis of Hsing of 'subjects of three
256
Yen Tun Shan, Kiangsu. Late
century B.C. For the import of the inscription cast
2J
in. British
human head Museum.
as a pole^finial.
io-9th century
Notes on Below: bronze harness mount in the shape of a grotesque 9-8th century B.C. Diameter i\ ties,
in.
The Museum of Far
human
the Plates
head.
Eastern Antiqui'
Stockholm.
37 Bronze
statuette
of a serving^man. 8-6th century B.C.
wearing a court cap. Height
2-J in. British
38 Bronze bridle cheek/piece in a
Diameter 3!
in. British
birdVhead
He
appears to be
Museum. design. 7-6th century B.C.
Museum.
The head of the pin is decor/ may be seen in situ as excavated in Length 5 J in. British Museum.
39 Bronze axle^cap and linclvpin of a chariot. ated with a tiger mask. Similar pieces the
Shang
chariot burial (pi. 11).
40 Bronze ritual vessel, ting, excavated Height 6 in. Musee Guimet. 41 Bronze openwork plaque of
tigers,
at
Li Yii, Shansi. 6th century B.C.
dragons and bull's head, probably a
harness mount. 6-5US century B.C. Height 3! in. British
42 Bronze axchead. 6~5th century B.C. Length $\
in. British
43 Bronze handle of a vessel in the shape of a winged B.C.
Length 6§
in. British
Museum.
tiger.
Museum. 6~5th century
Museum.
44 Bronze plaque depicting a tiger over a deer. Probably a harness mount. 7-6th century B.C. Height 4J in. British Museum. 45 Bronze plaque in the shape of a tiger. 7-6th century B.C. This is one of a symmetrical pair which perhaps decorated the sides of a chariot. They lay
underground against a woven rush mat, fragments of which have
left
impressions in the corroded surface of the bronze. Height I2f in. British
Museum. 46 Bronze halberd, ho, with the hafting finial and ferrule which survived with it. Found near Shou Hsien, Anhui. The hafting of ho seems to have been here.
This
effected as a rule is
without the help of the bronze mount seen
the only specimen
known
in
which
all
the bronze parts of a
halberd have been preserved together. 4th-3rd century B.C. Length of the ko,
blade and tang, g\
in. British
Museum.
47 Bronze spearhead inscribed with characters inlaid with gold, inlaid with turquoise at the socket, and decorated with variegated colouring of the
257
China
The
metal surface.
inscription
in the ornamental 'bird script* in vogue
is
in the 5 -4th centuries B.C. in the state of Ch'u.
Chou
Shao, King of Yiieh,
makes
the script
seems to read 'spear of
It
for his personal use',
but the obscurities of
The Ch'u
the identification of some of the characters uncertain.
variegation of the bronze surface
was a technique
practised in the
area, and is known from weapons excavated near Ch'ang Sha. It is not known how the effect was achieved. Length 1 1 J in. British Museum.
48 Bronze sword with
Length 20 J
49 Bronze sword of
bound with
copied from the Scythian type. 5 -4th century B.C.
hilt
in. British
the
Museum.
Chinese
classical type,
cord. 5 -4th century B.C.
50 Bronze sword preserving the original
and silk
3rd
with
Length 18 J hilt
hilt
designed to be
in. British
Museum.
binding of braided
silk cord;
Found wrapped in and fitted in a wooden box in a tomb at Ch'ang Sha, Hunan. 4thcentury B.C. Length 21 J in. British Museum. its
lacquered scabbard with carved jade chape.
51 Iron two-part
mould
for casting axes.
Jehol. 4th-3rd century B.C.
Length 11J
52 Earth 'ghosts' of chariots buried
wooden and
leather parts
Found
at
Hsing Lung Hsien,
in.
Liu Li Ko, Hui Hsien, Honan. The
at
(which comprised the whole chariot except
away completely and their shapes are replaced which could be retained intact in excavation. 4th
the axk'caps) have rotted
by a
fine
compact
soil
century B.C. 53 Bronze
bell.
5 -4th century B.C.
Height 24 J
in.
The Art
Institute
of
Chicago. 54 Bronze mirror. The lozenge pattern derives from textile design. The back/ ground, with quatrefoils and the 'hook and volute' motif is characteristic of the mirrors made principally in the Ch'u
Diameter
8 J in. British
state.
3rd century B.C.
Museum.
55 Bronze coffin handle with escutcheon in the shape of a t'ao t'ieh. 5 -4th century B.C. Height 8 J in. Kunstindusti Museum, Copenhagen.
56 Gilt openwork dagger handle, composed of interlocked dragons. 4th century B.C. Length
258
4I
in. British
Museum.
Notes on 57 Bronze
5-4th century B.C. Length
tiger.
5 in.
Museum
the Plates
of Far Eastern
Antiquities, Stockholm.
58 Bronze tablcleg in the shape of a demon, inlaid with gold.
provided from
foil,
even in the narrow
shallow incisions, undercut century B.C.
59
at the
lines
The gold
of the design, and
fixed
is
is
by
edges where the pattern broadens. 4th
Musee Guimet.
Silver/gilt belt/hook
with inlaid jade and
glass,
Ku Wei
excavated at
Hui Hsien, Honan. The glass inlay copies the 'eye' beads which were made in China on a western model. 4th century B.C. Length 7 J in. Ts'un,
60 Bronze
of a serving/man holding up a
statuette
as a lamp. 4th-3rd century B.C. Height 9!
61 Bronze
flask, pien hu,
vessel, possibly
in. British
decorated with the 'hook
century B.C. Height 14 J in.
The Art
Institute
and
intended
Museum. volute' motif. 4th
of Chicago.
62 Jade rings enclosing glass ring and boss, on a base of bronze. The glass inlays
copy the
'eye'
3rd century B.C.
63 Jade cup from
at Chin Ts'un, Honan. L. Winthrop collection. Fogg Museum.
beads of the period. Excavated
Diam 4^ in. G.
Chin Ts'un, Honan. 4th-3rd
Freer Gallery of Art,
century B.C. Height 8 in.
Washington.
64 Jade dragon pendant. Late Chou. 401-3 rd century B.C. Width British
3J
in.
Museum.
65 Jade sword guard. Late Chou. 4th-3rd century B.C.
Width i\
in. British
Museum. 66 Ritual pi of yellowish white jade, covered with the 'grain century B.C. Diameter 5 \ in. British
67 Jade
Museum.
sword hanger. Late Chou, 4th-3rd century B.C. Length
slide for
Z\ in. British
pattern*. 4th
Museum.
68 Belt'hook of gilded bronze with turquoise and glass inlay. This piece designed in the 'chip/carved'
style,
derived from woodcarving,
the Chinese imitated from the steppe nomads. 3rd century B.C. 3
J in. British
is
which Length
Museum.
69 Belt'hook of gilded bronze with inlay of turquoise. 4th century B.C. Length 3 J in. Musee Guimet.
259
China 70 Bronze belt'hook with turquoise 71 Grotesque
wearing
wooden
antlers.
Height 32
carving of a
human head
Length 8f
at
72 Carved wooden monster excavated
at
in.
with protruding tongue and
Ch'ang Sha, Hunan. 3rd -2nd century Museum.
Excavated
in. British
inlay. 3rd century B.C.
B.C.
Hsin Yang, Honan. 3rd century
B.C. Height 55 in.
The
73 Bronze spearhead with a frog adapted to the socket.
down. From Shih Chai Shan, Yunnan.
cut
7 in. British
1st
blade has been
century B.C. Length
Museum.
74 Bronze openwork ornament, possibly a harness mount, depicting wolves attacking a deer. Excavated at Shih Chai Shan, Yunnan. 1st century B.C. Height 5 J in.
75 Painting on silk of a woman, enchantress or goddess, with phoenix and dragon. Excavated at Ch'ang Sha, Hunan. This is the earliest surviving
Chinese painting on
silk.
4th-3rd century B.C.
j6 Lacquered shield from a tomb at Ch'ang Sha, Hunan. The lacquer was painted on a base of leather, which was mounted on a wooden frame.
The tite
colours,
on a black ground,
and Garcinia
are red
77 The painted decoration of a wooden the
and yellow, derived from haema'
morella. Late 4th or 3rd century B.C. Height 15 in.
tomb which contained
coffin excavated at
the monster of pi. 72.
of brownish red, with touches of yellow, on a B.C.
260
Length 76
in.
The
silvery
Hsin Yang from
design
is
in shades
ground, 3rd century
1
Indiex Acheulian
28
culture, 25,
Ch'in,
Anau, 46
Ang Ang Anyang,
Chou
Hsi, 35, 36
Arms, 82
ff,
1 3
Augury, Axes,
tool,
25
dynasty, 14, 17, 19, 21, 66 , 68, 75,
76, 82, 94, 109
52, 58
1-4, 139 ff
37, 82
Ch'u,
145
ff,
52, 99-104, 107, 108
33, 37, 5^.
ff,
157
ff,
258
ff
Chou Li, 66, 76, 132 Chou K'ou Tien, 22 ff
Architecture, 63, 64, 122-6
Arrowheads,
113, 114, 140, 146 f
state of,
Chopper
113, 114, 129, 145, 258
state of,
Ch'ii Fu, 122
Chuan
54
Hsiu, 18
Ch'ung Chou,
Axes, socketed, 85-7
City walls, 61 Beads, 29, 44 Bone implements, 29, 35
122, 149 64, 6j t 120, 121, 122
ff,
Confucius, 16, 19
Core tools, 24 Crossbow, 132
Bone pendants, 29
Book of Odes, 16 Bow, 82, 132
Dark Warrior, 19
Bronze/casting, 15, 79-82
Death
Burials, 30, 44, 62, 69-75,
126-31
Deer
Pattern, 42, 253
antler, 35
Diffusionist views, 15
Central Plain, 13, 30
Digging
Chang Chia
Djalai Nor, 35, 36
Po, 135
Ch'ang Chih, 124 Ch'ang Sha, 129, 132, Chao, state of, 140
Chao Wang Ch'eng, Chariot, 75, 88-94,
Cheng Chou,
x
52, 59
141, 145, 174
state of,
in,
34 ff,
79, 145
113, 122
Chia, 52
Chia
Ko
Dong Son culture, 180 Dragon bones, 58 Dunes, consolidated,
3
Epigraphy
oracle
121
Che'ng Chou, no, 120 Che'ng Tzu Yai, 52 Ch'i,
ff
sticks, 3 3
Chuang, 166 Ch'ih Yu, 18
{see
also
bones),
116,
117, 118, 157
Erh Li Kang, 60, 6j Factory
Feng,
sites,
city of,
68, 79
120
Fertile Crescent,
36
Five Elements, the, 19
261
Index Five Rulers, the, 17, 19
Flake
Fu
Iron,
140-7
24
tools,
Hsi, 17
Jade, 69, 73, 98, 155, 157, 184 ff
Kansu Yang/Shao (Pan Shan)
Gobi
Desert, 31 ff
41 Great Wall, 134
Green Dragon, 19 Giinz'Mindel interglacial, 2$
Han Han
253
Kao,
city of,
Kao
Hsin, 18
120
Kilns, 40
Ku Hsiang T'un, 35 Ku Wei Ts'un, 130,
Haematite, 29
Halberd, 83
ff,
f,
131, 185
JCuei, $2,
dynasty, 16
Kung Kung,
18
Tan, 121
Kuo,
128, 136, 161
Hand^axes, 25 Harpoons, 35
Heng Yang, Hoabinhian
Homo
145
54
54 Li Chi, 76
Li Hsien, 44 Li Yii, 165, 257
29
Hsi Pei Kang, 69, 253
Lin Hsi, 36 Lin Tzu, 122 Liu Li Ko, 67
Hsia dynasty, 16, 18
Lo Ta
Hsia Tu, i2i t 145 Hsiao, city of, 60
Loess, 13, 28, 37
Houses, 39
Hsiao
f,
Tun,
69
64, 66
58 ff
Hsin Cheng, 161 ff Hsin Tien, 42 Hsin Ts'un, 126, 130 Hsin Yang, 174, 260 Hua Yin Hsi Kuan P'u, 39 Huai river, 14, 37, 54 Huai style, 169 f
Huang
Ti, 17, 18
Hsien, 124, 130, 135, 136, 141, 153
Hunting
262
style,
ff
lit 52,
culture,
sapiens,
state of,
Lacquer, 129, 136, 174
Hong Kong, 56 Hou Chia Chung,
Hui
131, 259
152
166 f
130, 258
',
Miao, 60
Lolo, 12
Loyang, 135 Lu, state of, in, 122
Lung Kuan, 30 Lung Shan, 48 ff,
58, 60, 62, 66
Ma Ma
ff
Ch'ang, 42
ff
Chia Yao, 42
Magdalenian
culture,
Manchuria, 30 Mesolithic, 29
Miao, 12, 19
29
culture,
3
Index Microlithic
Shang dynasty, 14, Shang Ts'in Ling, Shao Kou, 128
sites, 3 3
Microlithic tools, 29, 32 Millet, 38
Ming Kung Lu,
64, 66
17,
57
Shell ornaments, 29
Mousterian man, 28
Shells, marine,
Nomads,
Shen Nung, 17 Sheng Ch'ih Hsien, 37 Shih Chai Shan, 140, 181
10 f
Oracle bones, 68, 255 Oracle'taking
(see
149 f,
Augury)
ff,
260
Shun, Emperor, 19
Pan P'o Ts'un, 38, 39 f, 44. 60, 14°. 253 Pan Shan culture, 41 f, 44 ff, 253 P'anKu, 18 (see Pithecanthropus pekinensis)
People's Park
site,
60
Sinian chert, 25 Sjara
Ossa Gol, 29, 32 culture, 55
Spade money, 142 f
Pit dwellings,
64
Spearheads, 87 f
Pithecanthropus pekinensis,
22
Spindle^whorls, 37, 55 Ssii'ma Ch'ien, 17
ff
Pleistocene period, 13, 22, 23, 25, 28
Po Chia Chuang, 62 149
Ssu P'an Mo, 254
,
Pottery, 30, 33, 34. 35, 37,
40
ff,
51
f,
55,
Step'flaking, 26
Steppe
73
Pu Chou,
Tu
18
art,
Storage
Ts'un, 127, 128, 158, 161
172
pits,
Bird, 19
40, 67 f
Sui Jen, 17
Swancombe
Red
157
Sickles (reaping knives), 37, 48, 50, 54 Sinanthropus (see Pithecanthropus pekinensis)
South East Neolithic
«.44
P'u
ff
30
Siberia, 35, 85, 86, 87, 88, 128,
man
254
Shou Hsien, 163, 169 ff, 257 Shui Tung Kou, 28, 29
Ordos, 28, 29, 30
Peking
ff,
139
Shell implements, 51
Mongolia, 23, 30
1
ff,
128, 135
skull,
22
Swords, 139 f
Rice, 38
Ritual vessels, 71, 73, 75.
7<>,
Script (see Writing)
Sculpture, 184 Sector
C, Hsiao T'un, 62
Shabarakh Usu, 32 Shaman, 179
77, 78
Ta Ssu K'ung, 72, T'ai Hang range, 1
88, 142, 254, 255
T'an Shih Shan, 55 T'ang Shan, 128
Tao
Tieh, 72, 76, 80, 84, 124, 150
ff,
166,
255
Three Dynasties,
the,
17
263
Index Three Sovereigns,
Thunder
the,
17
pattern, 153
White
Tiger, 19
Writing, 84, 101 f
Tien Shui Hsien, 44
Wu,
Ting, 35, 40. 7i
Wu Kuan Ts'un, 72, 87, 254
Ting Ts'un, 26
Wurm glaciation,
state of,
113
28
Tortoise, 67, 68
Tou Chi Trialeti,
Yang
T'ai, 145
SbsLo culture, 37
Yangtze
46
river,
n,
Tripolye culture, 46
Yao, Emperor, 19
Tung Chai, 60 Tzu Ching, 66
Yellow Emperor Yellow
(see
Wei
264
river, 12, 13,
37
Ts'un, 38
54
Yii,
Emperor, 18
Yiieh, state of, 113
Ti)
37
state of, in, 121, 128, Yen Ti, 17 Yen Tun Shan, 159, 256
Yin Hsu, 59
Wang Yung Ching
60, 253
Huang
river, 11, 13, 28,
Yen,
Upper Cave Man, 29, 30 Upper Palaeolithic, 28, 29
ff,
13, 14,
145, 167
About
the Author
William Watson studied at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, taking his degree just before the outbreak of World War II. From 1940 to 1945, he served in the Intelligence Corps, attaining the rank of major. On his return to civilian life he joined the staff of the British Museum, working first in the Department of British and Mediaeval Antiquities and later in the Department of Oriental Antiquities as Assistant Keeper. He is now Professor of Chinese Art and Archaeology at the School of Oriental and African Studies in the University of London. He is the author of numerous articles on the subject of Far Eastern archaeology and a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London. His latest book is entitled Early Civilisation in China.
FREDERICK
A.
PRAEGER
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New York
Washington
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