by Li Feng
Fig. 4.7 Ding-cauldron cast for “Mother Wu” (h. 133 cm, w. 110 cm).
The Discovery of Middle Shang
Standards for dating in Anyang have been worked out mainly in two ways: archaeological and historical. In the archaeological method, an interruption in the occupation of a site under excavation often offers the initial recognition of the overall trend of typological transition from the lower (earlier) stratum to the upper (later) stratum. This was exactly the case in the excavation of the residential site near the Dasikong village in 1959, to the east of the Huan River, where Anyang archaeologists were first able to isolate two large periods of occupation shown by stratigraphy. Then, the typological sequence usually needs to be refined by comparing and correlating types from underground structural units such as houses and storage pits to produce a seriation of types as foundation for further temporal periodization. In the case of Dasikong village, the site was subsequently divided into four consecutive periods. A large cemetery that was continuously used for burial over a long span of time can also provide an ideal situation for such operation. In Anyang, the largest concentration of tombs is the area to the west of the palace zone and south of the Huan River, where pottery types from more than 1,000 tombs excavated between 1969 and 1977 have been divided into three consecutive periods. The historical method represented by the work of Dong Zuobin on the oracle-bone inscriptions depends on the identification of the so-called “diviner groups” in relation to the reigning Shang kings.11 This enabled Dong to divide the oracle-bone inscriptions from Anyang into five periods. In addition, bronze vessels from Anyang have been separately analyzed by Zhang Changshou who grouped them into three large periods. Based further on the co-occurrences of the oracle bones with pottery types in the actual context of excavation and the dating of the bronzes, the three systems can be linked to one another (Fig. 4.8).
Fig. 4.8 Correlation of Anyang periodization.
This widely accepted scheme of periodization has enabled scholars to systematically analyze various types of materials from various locations in Anyang with a level of precision that was not possible at other sites; it has also sometimes been used as a standard for the comparative dating of sites beyond Anyang. As far as its use in Anyang is concerned, the periodization also exposed a thorny problem that had long puzzled archaeologists – a chronological gap between the oracle bones that appeared suddenly in large quantity in the reign of King Wu Ding (King 21), and the archaeological remains from Anyang that can be dated earlier than him, to a time roughly corresponding with Pan Geng, Xiao Xin, and Xiao Yi (Kings 18–20), the three kings of the first generation of the Shang royal house at Anyang. In other words, while archaeological research had identified remains of Shang occupation under the three early kings (Period I), their records of divination are missing from the current corpus of oracle bones and shells.
But this question has now been satisfactorily answered. In 1997, the Institute of Archaeology (Chinese Academy of Social Sciences) and the University of Minnesota organized a joint regional survey in the large area to the north of the Huan River, and east of the royal cemetery in Xibeigang. The team soon identified a high concentration of Shang cultural remains of Period I in the area near the Anyang airport. When the team carried out test coring two years later, to everyone’s surprise, they came across the base of a long wall 10–20 m wide, and by the end of 1999 all four sides of the wall have been confirmed and a new city of Shang date has been discovered.12 This new city, referred to as the “Huanbei Shang City” and located on the periphery of the previously known Anyang, is impressively large, measuring 2,150 m E–W and 2,200 m N–S, oriented 13 degrees to the east of north (Fig. 4.9). In subsequent years, archaeologists have surveyed the inner area of the city, and found a group of twenty-nine building foundations located along the central axis of the city square. In 2001, building foundation F1 was excavated, showing structural differences from the known building in the palace zone to the south of the Huan River (Fig. 4.10). More importantly, the excavation also recovered pottery remains from refuse pits filled probably when F1 was still in use. These pottery types date even slightly earlier than the initial Period I in Anyang.
Fig. 4.9 Location of the Huanbei Shang City.
Fig. 4.10 Palace foundation F1 in the Huanbei Shang City.
Thus it turned out that this new city was indeed the Shang center in Anyang before the palaces to the south of the Huan River were constructed. As the pottery sequence continues uninterruptedly from the north to the south of the river, placing the new city safely before the time of King Wu Ding, it is highly possible that oracle bones from the reigns of the first three kings in Anyang are buried somewhere in this newly discovered city. And this, in any event, has inevitably led scholars to rethink the overall development of the Shang culture. In 1999, Tang Jigen, the main excavator of the Huanbei Shang City, proposed to define a “Middle Shang” period based on the current archaeological evidence. Working from Anyang, Tang further confirmed the existence of the “Middle Shang” stage in a dozen other sites on the North China Plain. Since the Huanbei Shang City provides a clear and uninterrupted transition between the early Shang center in Zhengzhou and the late Shang center to the south of the Huan River in Anyang, the suggestion of a “Middle Shang” period has been generally accepted among scholars.
The Regional Network
Anyang was certainly not isolated from the world in which it was situated and the Shang king certainly had powers going beyond the royal capital. However, with little written evidence from other sites, it is hard to determine the extent of the political network of the Shang state. At the methodological level, this question about the extent of Shang’s political control is fundamentally related to the question of how power relations in the Shang state were constructed and how royal control was achieved. As will be discussed later, the Shang state was itself an elusive congregation of communities that were in various degrees of relationship to the political Shang state, loosely bound together by the hegemonic power of the Shang king (see Chapter 5). Archaeologically, however, Anyang, with its paramount power, was located at the center of a widely connected settlement network of secondary and even minor sites that had shared the same material entity – the “Shang culture” – although settlements that shared this archaeological culture might not necessarily all be part of the Shang state, which was a political relationship that cannot be directly projected from material evidence.
Archaeologists have uncovered some of these secondary settlement centers such as the one located in Taixi in southern Hebei, some 200 km to the north of Anyang. Shang cultural remains were found in an area of 100,000 m2 (about 10 ha) centering on three earth mounds raised above the plain (Map 4.1). On one of the mounds, archaeologists excavated fourteen houses, in which were found a large number of pottery jars (some with thick layers of dry yeast), filter-shaped pottery, and a large number of small jars containing various sorts of fruit remains (Fig. 4.11). The evidence suggests strongly that the Taixi community was engaged in the production of alcoholic beverages and might have been one of the production centers that supplied alcohol for consumption in early Anyang. Another recently discovered site is Daxinzhuang in Shandong, located about 240 km to the east of Anyang, having a time-span from the Upper Erligang period to late Anyang. Most importantly, some fourteen pieces of inscribed oracle shells were found here, making them very important evidence for literacy outside of Anyang.13
Map. 4.1 The external world of late Shang.
Fig. 4.11 House foundation no. 14 and pottery jars from it, in Taixi, an alcoholic beverage production center in southern Hebei, possible supplier to Anyang.
The above are only two examples of what might have been largely lying beyond the reach of the archaeologists as the regional centers that were connected to the royal capital at Anyang. In more frequent cases, it was the tombs yielding bronze vessels and weapons that identified elite activities in the regions. There is a great deal of sharing of the same material “Shang cultu
re” between these regional centers and Anyang, and some of them might have indeed been occupied by Shang elites who had migrated there from Anyang or Zhengzhou, hence forming local branches of the Shang people. Others might have been strongholds of autonomous groups of local elites who might or might not have submitted to the authority of the Shang king, hence taking part in the political Shang state, or perhaps traded or collaborated on occasions with the Shang. While the political relationships between the various local groups and the Shang elites in Anyang could have been constructed at several levels, they were all integral parts of the geopolitical network in North China over which the Shang state extended its control. The question is of course the extent to which the Shang state could do so, an ability that might have changed from time to time.
Independent Bronze Cultures in the External World of Shang
In the centuries when Shang was the dominant power in the Yellow River region with its capital in Anyang, we see the rise of a number of Bronze Age societies with evidently local characteristics in regions lying very possibly beyond the reach of the Shang state, particularly in South China. However, these independent bronze cultures were evidently in contact with the Shang culture in North China. There seems little question that they, embracing elements originally introduced from the early bronze culture in the north, had risen as the direct or indirect response to the continuing expansion of the Erligang culture from the north.
In 1989, an astonishing discovery was made in Dayangzhou in Jiangxi Province where as many as 1,900 artifacts including 480 bronze vessels and weapons were found in the sands of a river bed. The bronzes were apparently based on models borrowed from the north. But cultural hybridization is evident in the fact that the bronzes were often shaped in distorted proportions or show strong local features in the use of dense decorative patterns, particularly the three-dimensional tigers sometimes superposed on the handles of many vessels (Fig. 4.12). They were apparently a collection of bronzes produced over a long stretch of time that paralleled the Upper Erligang to the late Anyang period in the north. The accompanying pottery wares identify the site with the local Wucheng culture, known since the 1970s. The Wucheng culture is a good example of a regional bronze culture that was developed under the influence of the Erligang culture; in this particular case, it is very likely that the initial stimulus for the rise of the Wucheng culture was somehow generated by possible Shang activities to exploit copper deposits in the middle Yangzi region, if not specifically at Tongling, only about 180 km to the north of Wucheng.14
Fig. 4.12 Bronzes found in Xingan, Jiangxi.
Crossing the high Qinling Mountains south from the Wei River valley in Shaanxi Province, or crossing the Wushan Mountains west from the middle Yangzi region, there lies the Sichuan Basin. During the late 1980s, Sichuan archaeology made the national news headlines in China because of the discovery of two sacrificial pits at Sanxingdui on the Chengdu Plain. The complete city wall enclosure, located about 30 km to the east of Chengdu, would have measured more than 1,600 m on the west and east sides and 2,000 m on the south side, probably a little shorter on the north side – just about the same size as the inner city in Zhengzhou. The pits in Sanxingdui are located in the south part of the city (Fig. 4.13), and stratigraphical evidence suggests that both pits were dug at a time roughly contemporary to the late Shang in Anyang.
Fig. 4.13 The discoveries at Sanxingdui, Sichuan. Left, site map of Sanxingdui; right, bronze human statue, h. 262 cm including the base.
The artifacts from each pit make a very impressive list. Roughly speaking, there are hundreds of bronzes and jades, hundreds of elephant tusks, along with a complete life-size human bronze statue. It is clear that the artifacts were buried after purposely burning – some bronzes were actually partly melted because of the heat. Thus it was suggested that these two pits were made for sacrificial purposes after perhaps a major ceremony taking place on the site. The human statue from pit no. 1 is perhaps the only complete life-size bronze human statue in the entire Bronze Age in China. It is 172 cm tall, just the height of a medium-size Chinese male, standing on a square base cast into a single piece with the statue. The whole piece is covered with detailed décor imitating the actual robe of a man. The figure was clearly holding something, perhaps an elephant tusk, as already suggested by some scholars. But this is perhaps not the only statue that once stood on the site of Sanxingdui; the dozens of bronze heads buried in the two pits were originally all parts of complete statues, the bodies of which were likely to have been made of wood. The exaggeration of the eyes is another outstanding feature of Sanxingdui, probably having something to do with the local religious beliefs. Another characteristic item is the bronze tree from pit no. 2, measuring 396 cm high. This image of a tree in bronze is distantly echoed by the bronze money trees found in the Sichuan region dating to the Han Dynasty (206 BC–AD 220). Clearly, Sanxingdui had a cultural and religious system that was significantly different from that of the Shang in the north. On the other hand, contact with the north and the middle Yangzi region to the east is indicated by the appearance of a group of bronze vessels from the two pits, clearly modeled on Shang types, though they might have been locally produced.
Back to North China, in the regions of northern Shanxi and Shaanxi, archaeologists have long noted the existence of a Bronze Age society along the two banks of the Yellow River. This region, more often called the “Lower Ordos,” features high loess plateaus and deep villages lying in a semi-arid climate. By the end of the 1980s, more than ten groups of bronzes had been found in this region, all likely to have been from elite tombs belonging to this Bronze Age society. Most bronzes from these groups are similar to bronzes found in the central areas of Shang, and at least some might have been imported or looted from the Shang region. But there are also distinctive local designs, particularly in the types of hu (jar) and gui (tureen), and more in bronze weapons such as swords and knives with integrally cast hilts shaped as horse, snake, or other animals. It is also interesting to note that locally designed vessels were often paired up in burial contexts with pieces possibly imported from Shang. More importantly, archaeologists have found a wall enclosure constructed with stone slabs on a cliff in Qingjian County, indicating the location of a political center of this local bronze culture.
Due particularly to their geographical proximity to Shang as sufficiently shown by the high degree of Shang influence in its material remains, the Lower Ordos bronze culture must have been in very close contact with the Shang through the Fen River valley in southern Shanxi. Indeed, there are good reasons to believe that at least some groups affiliated with this bronze culture were probably at war with the Shang, but this situation can be better clarified with reference to the Shang oracle-bone inscriptions.
Selected Reading
Chang, K. C., Shang Civilization (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980), pp. 69–136.
Thorp, Robert, “The Archaeology of Style at Anyang: Tomb 5 in Context,” Archives of Asian Art 41 (1988), 47–69.
Thorp, Robert, China in the Early Bronze Age: Shang Civilization (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), pp. 117–171.
Bagley, Robert (ed.), Ancient Sichuan: Treasures from a Lost Civilization (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001).
Bagley, Robert, “Shang Archaeology,” in Michael Loewe and Edward L. Shaughnessy (eds.), The Cambridge History of Ancient China: From the Origins of Civilization to 221 BC (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 124–231.
Anyang Work Team of the Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, “Survey and Test Excavation of the Huanbei Shang City in Anyang,” Chinese Archaeology 4 (2004), 1–28.
Oriental Archaeology Research Center of Shandong University et al., “Inscribed Oracle Bones of the Shang Period Unearthed from the Daxinzhuang Site in Jinan City,” Chinese Archaeology 4 (2004), 29–33.
1 See UNESCO World Heritage List, “Yin Xu” (Ruins of the Shang) (ref. 1114); see http://whc.unesco.org/en/li
st/1114.
2 There are discrepancies in the accounts of the discovery of the oracle-bone inscriptions. Another source says that the bones were brought from northern Henan directly to Wang’s residence in Beijing by a certain Merchant Chen from Shandong.
3 “Studies of Bronze and Stone Inscriptions” (Jinshixue) is a native Chinese scholarship developed first in the Northern Song dynasty (AD 960–1279) when scholars began to collect and study inscriptions on stone steles and bronze vessels as a way to interpret institutions of the ancient time. The Song Dynasty was responsible for the publication of some twenty such works. The Qing Dynasty saw the resurgence of this scholarship in the seventeenth to eighteenth centuries. It was regarded as one of the roots of archaeology in the pre-modern world. See K. C. Chang, The Archaeology of Ancient China, 4th edn. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), pp. 4–13; Bruce G. Trigger, A History of Archaeological Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 42–43.
