Page 157 - The Golden Age of Chinese Archaeology: Celebrated Discoveries from the People’s Republic of China

ing upward to form the taotie's "crest." The alert down. The niche also contained other vessels and
and menacing appearance of the face suggests that traces of red lacquer, jade and stone ornaments,
the image was probably apotropaic. cowrie shells, and pigs' feet. The skeleton, estimated
The taotie, moreover, is accompanied by other to have been about forty years old, was poorly pre-
creatures. Lower down on the right side is another, served; but a staff point and thirteen bone arrow-
more attenuated face, found amid the swirling, heads unearthed nearby indicate that it was a male.
vaporous lines that fill the surface. Two sweeping Across his shinbones was found a lacquer gu vessel
S-curved shapes form the face, one the mirror- inlaid with turquoise. In the fill above the tomb
reverse of the other, with narrow, slanted lines rep- chamber were the remains of several dogs and pigs,
resenting the eyes. A second face of the same kind including one pig with an arrow lodged between its
appears below, to the right. This particular type cervical vertebrae and its shoulderblades. 7 LF-H
of face is also seen on one other vessel recovered
from the same tomb as the lei. 3 1 Excavated in 1976 (M 371:10); published: Zhongguo 1996,
105, fig. 54:1; pi. 11, fig. 3.
To the left of the taotie can be discerned a final 2 The only other taotie to vie in age with the one on the
figure, which reaches to the bottom of the painted Dadianzi lei is a fragmentary image carved in lacquered
register. The head is rendered only as a horizontally wood from Erlitou (Zhongguo Erlitou 1983, 203, fig. 9:9).
Related images are seen on other Dadianzi vessels; for
placed C-shape with a point at the center, but the example, Zhongguo 1996,105, fig. 54:3.
rest of the form seems humanlike, with pointed 3 Zhongguo 1996,105, fig. 54:4; pi. 5:1.
4 A figure of the same type shown in profile occurs on an
shoulders, its arms bent to the chest, and a long
Early Shang bronze fitting from Xiaoshuangqiao accompa-
spinelike body, with what at the bottom resemble nied by a serpent and a tiger; see Henan 1993, 247, fig. 7:2.
legs drawn up as if the figure were squatting. Wing- 5 Compare Mou 19893, 91, fig. 119.
like appendages are apparently hinged to its arms. 4 6 Zhongguo Erlitou 1984, 38, fig. 5:1; pi. 4:1; Zhongguo
Erlitou 1986, 321, fig. 6, top; pi. 7:1.
This figure, no less cryptic than the taotie and the 7 Zhongguo 1996, 56; 57, fig. 30.
other faces, seems to be presented as the apparition
of a mysterious, almost dreamlike world.
The taotie on the lei is reminiscent of the
demonic faces with large eyes seen on the slightly
5
older Liangzhu jades. The two faces on the right
side, on the other hand, compare with those on the
turquoise-inlaid bronze plaques from the contem-
6
porary site of Erlitou (cat. 38). While a link almost
certainly exists between these images, the story
behind their transmission from one culture to an-
other remains sketchy. A satisfactory explanation is
also needed for the apparent relationship between
the endlessly twisting convolutions forming the
context for the figures on the lei and the curvilinear
patterns associated with the Bronze Age taotie and
other images, which by Anyang times become com-
pressed to form the leiwen.
This lei f in contrast to the other Dadianzi ves-
sels exhibited here, comes from the burial M 371.
It was found in a niche cut into the wall of the
tomb almost two meters above the foot of the coffin.
Placed on top of it was a // vessel resting upside

156 | B R O N Z E ACE CHIN A