Page 153 - The Golden Age of Chinese Archaeology: Celebrated Discoveries from the People’s Republic of China

found in the burials alongside the other ceramic vessels suggests their incorporation into
the ceremonial rites of burial, indicating that this interaction may have involved more than
casual trade relations. One possibility is that individuals made their way from Erlitou to the
northeast, and that the local Xiajiadian elite were sufficiently impressed by the newcomers to
emulate their vessels and the rituals for which they were designed. The quite distinctive nature
of the Dadianzi culture, however, dispels any suggestion of a wider Erlitou presence within
these communities.
A number of the gui and;/ao vessels from Dadianzi exhibit what appear to be imitation
rivets, lending support to the theory that a tradition of sheet-metal vessels may have existed
3
at Erlitou before the development of cast-bronze technology. Other metal artifacts found
at Dadianzi, however, suggest no influence from Erlitou, but point instead to cultural trans-
missions from a very different source, namely the Eurasian steppe. These artifacts include
trumpet-shaped earrings and larger annular nose rings, which have been recovered from
roughly contemporary finds scattered all across the northern periphery of present-day China,
4
from Gansu eastward to Liaoning province. Earrings of the same kind are associated with
the Andronovo and other nomadic peoples who had begun to make their way east across the
5
steppelands from as far away as Western Central Asia. Other types of metal objects from Dadi-
anzi include cast-bronze accouterments for weapons, among them finials that were secured to
wooden hafts by metal nails. Although a clay casting-mold has been recovered from a related

Lower Xiajiadian site, implying the existence of local bronze production, the ultimate prototype
for these finials is possibly to be found as far away as the Bactrian-Margiana area in what is now
southern Turkmenistan and Afghanistan. 6
These finds tell us that Dadianzi was a crossroads for cultural transmissions from very
different cultures. The site may well have been one of the important transit points from which
Eurasian metalwork was carried south to the Erlitou urban centers, where its influence is
7
especially visible in the shapes of bronze knives and other implements. In exchange, other
goods deemed of equal value were evidently transported to the north. These commodities
probably included textiles and, almost certainly, lacquerware. Evidence from the elite burials
at Dadianzi reveals that the gui and jiao ritual pouring vessels were accompanied by lacquered
wooden beakers (gu), just as they were at Erlitou, and it is fair to assume that these three vessel
types arrived in the north as a set. 8
The presence of lacquerware at Dadianzi and the likelihood that it was imported from
the south raise a number of issues regarding the painted decoration on the Dadianzi vessels
(cats. 41, 42, and 43). The pervasive syntax of these designs, based on complex interconnected
and re-curving C-shapes, as well as such distinctive designs as quasi-zoomorphic faces, are
also perceptible in the designs on the turquoise inlaid bronze plaques from Erlitou (cat. 38).
Because the pottery and the bronze vessels at Erlitou are either undecorated or embellished
only with simple striations, it is generally assumed that the decorative systems we associate with

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