Page 252 - The Golden Age of Chinese Archaeology: Celebrated Discoveries from the People’s Republic of China

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Jade and hardstone face covering choice of a material that was traditionally employed
for highly valued objects suggests that these cover-
Late Western Zhou Period, ninth to
ings were, in themselves, intrinsically important.
eighth century BCE
The emphasis on the features of the face suggests
From Tianma-Qucun (Beizhao, Quwo),
that they were intended to protect the person in
Shanxi Province
the afterlife by creating a sense of awe in those who
Shanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology, might approach the wearer, whether living people
Taiyuan or spirits. In combination with the complex array
of beads and arcs distributed over the body, the
These seventy-nine plaques, which were combined plaques may also have been intended to suggest the
with agate or faience beads to form a schematic rank and power of their owners.
face, covered the head of the person buried in It has been argued that these face coverings,
Tomb M 31 (possibly the consort of the Jin ruler together with their associated tiered arrangements
buried in Tomb M 8; see cats. 129-137). l It is likely of plaques and beads, were predecessors of Han
that the individual plaques were sewn onto a textile period jade shrouds (see cats. 129 and 139), but an
to form a complete covering. unbroken continuity between the two forms of
The plaques include a variety of different forms. burial apparatus is unlikely. The use of jade face
Small pieces — triangles alternating with three- coverings came into being and then declined and
pronged shapes — form a circular or rounded rec- indeed almost disappeared well before the Han
tangular border. The jade is cut to imitate the period. For that reason, it is more likely that the
features of the face (mouth, nose, eyes, eyebrows, jade ornaments of the Jin state constitute a tradi-
and ears), and plaques fill the spaces between the tion peculiar to the Late Western and Early Eastern
strongly carved eyebrows and areas below the eyes, Zhou periods in this part of China. The convention
at the cheeks, and around the mouth. The varied of linking tiers of jade plaques with agate and
carving on the plaques, some of which were clearly faience beads (see cat. 85) may have been intro-
broken or cut for their new function, is evidence of duced to the Zhou area by peoples who lived on the
reuse; it is likely that jade was scarce and that every western and northern peripheries of the Yellow
available piece was precious. River system. JR
The tombs at Tianma-Qucun are remarkable for
1 Excavated in 1993 (M 31:73); reported: Shanxi 19943.
the large number of jades that they contain. This 2 See Zhang Changzhou 1993, pi. 6:3.
face covering is one of a number of similarly com- 3 For a discussion of the sources of jade pendants, see Sun
plex jade compositions, which seem to have been a Ji 1998.
speciality of this area. While earlier examples may
be recognized in jades found at Chang'an, at sites
in Fengxi, south of present-day Xi'an, none of those
jade groups is as elaborate as the face coverings
from the Jin state tombs. 2
The face coverings were accompanied by
arrangements of beads and arc pendants (huang),
many of great complexity (see cats. 85, 86); the
pendants seem to have come into fashion in the
ninth to eighth centuries and were undoubt-
edly important components of burial costumes,
esteemed both for the value of the material and
3
for the properties ascribed to jade. Certainly, the

251 | ROYAL TOMBS OF THE JIN STATE, B E I Z H A O