Page 188 - The Golden Age of Chinese Archaeology: Celebrated Discoveries from the People’s Republic of China

THE TOMB AT Descendants of the early Bronze Age cultures of the North China macroregion produced the
Shang ceremonial center at Yinxu, but the long-term cultural history of other macroregions
DAYANGZHOU, remains obscure. Cultures of the mid- to late second millennium BCE shared many of the same
material assets — pounded-earth construction, gray pottery and proto-porcelain, and bronze
XIN'GAN, metallurgy with a distinctive repertoire of vessels and weapons. In the Wei River valley of the
northwest, a people called the Zhou expanded their territory over time and eventually over-
JIANGXI whelmed the Late Shang center at Yinxu, establishing the third of the Three Dynasties. But
what of the inhabitants of the Yangzi River areas, or of more distant realms such as the Gan-
PROVINCE Yangzi macroregion (largely present-day Jiangxi province)? The development of Bronze Age
cultures in these regions is the focus of two groups of objects: those from Dayangzhou (Xin'gan
county in Jiangxi province) and those from Sanxingdui (Guanghan county in Sichuan
province).
By the 19708, archaeologists working along the Yangzi River system had accumulated
considerable evidence for Bronze Age cultures in contact with the Erligang Phase, Early Shang
culture of Henan. The first major site to be documented in this enormous region was a small
walled settlement at Panlongcheng (Huangpi county, Hubei province), north of the Yangzi
River, where the culture in evidence was in all essentials identical to that known from Henan. 1
This settlement could plausibly be interpreted as an outpost of the northern culture, possibly
an extension of the early Shang state. Its decline seemed to correspond with the settlement of

Yinxu in the north, and perhaps indicated a general retrenchment of Shang rule. Other finds
were less informative. The Middle Yangzi macroregion of present-day Hunan yielded, among
other discoveries, isolated vessels and large bells. In some cases these objects seemed to be
products from the north, but in other instances they were sufficiently distinctive to suggest
local manufacture. Thus the model of a "metropolitan" Shang culture centered in the north
and contemporaneous "provincial" outliers took shape. 2
On the heels of the discovery of Panlongcheng, however, came reports of a walled settle-
ment well south of the Yangzi River, at a site called Wucheng located west of the Gan River in
Jiangxi province. Material remains here included many characteristic Shang features mixed with
so many local variants that from the outset scholars preferred to see this as a hybrid culture,
3
possibly created through interaction of a local group with the north. It was far too distant from
Henan to sustain interpretation as a Shang dynasty outpost, and moreover the Wucheng site
flourished at the same time as Yinxu. Little evidence for bronzecasting was reported before
1989, when on the east bank of the Gan River peasants repairing dikes unearthed a quantity of
bronzes from the soil of a relic sandbar called Dayangzhou. When this find was cleared that fall,
the contents corresponded with the Wucheng type site's culture but far exceeded all previous
finds of bronzes and jades. This single discovery has revised our understanding of the archaeo-
logical context of an entire region, a body of knowledge that had taken shape slowly and hap-

hazardly over several decades.

l8/ | TOMB AT D A Y A N G Z H O U , X I N ' G A N