Page 227 - The Golden Age of Chinese Archaeology: Celebrated Discoveries from the People’s Republic of China

75
Incised gold sheath

Length 142 (55%), diam. 2.3 (7s)
Late Shang Period (?) (c. 1300-1100 BCE?)
From Pit 2 at Sanxingdui, Guanghan,
Sichuan Province

Sanxingdui Museum, Guanghan, Sichuan Province

Carbonized fragments of wood found within this
1
unalloyed gold tube suggest that it served as the
sheath for a wooden staff; a dragon ornament
found near in the pit may have also been a part
of the original assemblage. The material itself sug-
gests that this staff was associated with an individ-
ual of high status among the people of Sanxingdui
— a king, a chief, or a shaman.
The sheath carries incised decoration at one
end: a terminal ring of "happy faces" beneath which
fish (whose scales are carefully detailed) and birds
are skewered by two bands of arrows. Bird imagery
appears in the spirit trees from Pit 2; the arrows
and fish, however, are uncommon in decorative
repertoires known from the Sanxingdui site. The
faces may have an association with human figures
displayed on several stone scepters from Pit 2,
motifs that might themselves be shorthand repre-
sentations of the standing figure or its ilk.
Gold was an important resource of the south-
west, so it is not surprising that the community
at Sanxingdui utilized this precious metal. Shang
centers of the north, by contrast, have yielded
very few gold artifacts. RT

i Excavated in 1986; reported: Sichuan 1987!}, 4.