Page 142 - The Golden Age of Chinese Archaeology: Celebrated Discoveries from the People’s Republic of China

Yangzi River (cats. 65-75) and Dayangzhou (Xin'gan, Jiangxi province) along the middle Yangzi
River (cats. 57-64) are testimony to the extensive development of Bronze Age cultures all over
China proper.
The artistic achievements of the southern Bronze Age cultures parallel those of the Shang
dynasty. Certainly, the Sanxingdui and the Dayangzhou cultures adopted a tradition of bronze
ritual vessels from the Shang (cats. 59-62, 74), but bronzes from these southern Chinese cul-
tures also display local, indigenous features. The Sanxingdui human, animal, and mythical
sculptures, for example, contrast sharply with the northern dynastic tradition (see cats. 65-73).
Bronzes from Dayangzhou contain local features, but these are often manifested in minor ways
— in the animal ornaments on the handles of objects or in certain decorative patterns (cats. 59
-62). Its musical instruments, such as the bronze bo bell (cat. 64), nevertheless demonstrate
salient regional characteristics. On the other hand, cultural exchanges were mutual. These dis-
coveries have proved that advanced bronze cultures inhabited both the south and the north of
China; the long-held prejudice among scholars that the south was a backwater is no longer
tenable. No writing from Shang period China has been discovered in the two southern cultures
(except pictographs and dedicatory inscriptions in the Shang dynastic style from the Hunan
provincial area); whether that fact reflects differences between the northern dynastic culture
and the bronze cultures of the south is a question that remains to be answered. XY

1 See, for example, Sima Qian, "Xia ben ji" in the Shi ji 3 For achievements of the early-stage investigations, see
(Records of the historian). Zhongguo 1965^
2 For the history of the early Anyang excavations, see Li ji 4 Henan 1959.
1977.

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