Page 249 - The Golden Age of Chinese Archaeology: Celebrated Discoveries from the People’s Republic of China

ROYAL TOMBS OF In about 1050 BCE, the Shang state was overthrown by a people known as the Zhou. They estab-
lished their capital near the present-day city of Xi'an. A ritual center, today called Zhou yuan,
THE JIN STATE, was located in the present-day counties of Fufeng and Qishan to the west of Xi'an. Here many
aristocratic families kept sets of ritual vessels and presumably used them for offerings to their
BEIZHAO, QUWO, ancestors. Attacked and driven out of Shaanxi in 771 BCE by tribes known as the Quanrong, the
Zhou buried their ritual bronzes in pits at Zhou yuan, hoping, it would seem, to return to claim
SHANXI PROVINCE them at a later date. Modern farmers and archaeologists discovered some of these large caches.
Contemporary inscriptions on some of the bronzes provide partial histories of particular fami-
1
lies and accounts of their relationships with the Zhou king. Some textual evidence on the his-
tory of the Zhou also exists. 2
A network of kin relationships was the key to Zhou rule of an immense territory, stretching
from Baoji in western Shaanxi to beyond Beijing in the northeast. Beneath the Zhou king, his
relatives ruled as lords in the different small states. Among the remarkable features of the buri-
als of these lords is the way in which similar inscriptions (implying a shared language) and
similar ritual objects (implying shared beliefs) created coherence and order. The peoples over
whom the Zhou ruled must have had diverse languages and customs, but the sense of organized
control that the Zhou achieved through a strong elite presence was to set a model of a unified

state that endured even to the twentieth century.
The bronze ritual vessels provide a point of reference for dating these Zhou tombs. Mem-
bers of the Zhou elite from Shaanxi who controlled far-flung areas such as the Yan state near
Beijing seem to have had bronzes similar to those found in Baoji or Zhou yuan. What is more,
the vessels excavated in Zhouyuan are particularly important, as the inscriptions made it possi-
3
ble to establish reasonably reliable chronological sequences of ritual vessel development. For
instance, the early Zhou vessels follow closely, in both shape and ornament, those of their
Shang predecessors. The Zhou probably emulated the Shang in order, through their offerings,
to establish in the eyes of the spirits their political claims to rule what they saw as the world.
Some time in the early ninth century BCE, a major change in vessel types took place, almost
certainly coinciding with and reflecting some sort of greater ritual, or possibly, political
reform. 4 Large flasks for wine (hu) and sets of tripods (ding) and basins (gui) for food were the
principal components of such sets. Sets of bells also date from this period. The Jin state tombs
contained vessels characteristic from before and after the ninth century BCE.

The Jin state was established by Tangshu Yu, a brother of the Western Zhou king Cheng.
The area occupied lay in the region of present-day Houma at the bend of the Yellow River in
southern Shanxi province. Known since the 19605, this site has been extensively investigated
5
in the last decade by archaeological teams from Beijing University. A large cemetery of approx-
imately 3800 by 2800 meters revealed more than 600 burials as well as five horses and chariot
pits. The tombs are of a type standard in the Yellow River area, consisting of a deep shaft with a
coffin chamber at the bottom. Inside the coffin chambers were wooden coffins. To enable the

248 B R O N Z E A C E C H I N A