Page 260 - The Golden Age of Chinese Archaeology: Celebrated Discoveries from the People’s Republic of China

rately, with many lifelike features. The head strains shaped bronzes links south and north, it does not
forward, the ears are folded back against the ani- define their significance to their owners in either
mal's body, and the crouching legs almost conceal region. JR
the oval ring foot. Cast relief roundels on the ani-
mal's flanks are decorated with fine, spiraling in- 1 Excavated in 1992 (M 8:20); reported: Beijing 1994.
2 For a brief report on the excavation of the tombs, see
taglio lines. The vessel is heavily patinated and Beijing 1994.
corroded and shows signs of repair. It was found 3 For a description of Shang animal-shaped bronzes, see
together with two cast hare-shaped boxes of simi- 4 Bagley 1987, 30-36.
Fong 1980, nos. 29, 30.
larly lifelike design. 2 5 Rawson 1990, no. 119.
Animal-shaped containers were not typical of
the Yellow River ritual bronze tradition. During the
Shang period, peoples inhabiting the south, partic-
ularly along the Yangzi River and in Hunan prov-
ince, employed vessels in the shapes of animals;
famous pieces include a boar, an elephant, and two
3
addorsed rams. It would seem that, from time to
time, these animal-shaped bronzes were exchanged
or traded, from south to north, perhaps by way of
the tributaries of the Yangzi River. Very elaborate
versions of such animal vessels seem to have been
made around 1200 BCE at the Shang precursor to
the present-day city of Anyang in Henan province,
for high-ranking members of the Shang court. Fu
Hao, the consort of one of the most powerful Shang
kings, Wu Ding, had a pair of bird-shaped vessels
and a pair of vessels in the shape of strange imagi-
nary animals. 4
During the Early Western Zhou period, animal-
shaped bronzes became known to the Zhou inhab-
iting the region of the Wei River. Bronze creatures
have been found both near the capital at Xi'an and
5
further west at Baoji, and this hare-shaped zun
appears related to pieces imitative of Yellow River
animal bronzes. The fact that this bronze has un-
mistakable elements of contemporaneous bronze
ritual vessels, "obscured" by the figure itself, sug-
gests that these hares were not ancient pieces
handed down through several generations but that
they were cast in the Middle or Late Middle West-
ern Zhou period. It is likely that they were made
in some part of the Zhou territory or within the
confines of the Jin state, but their shape and their
style suggests that they are older than the ninth-
or even early eighth-century bronzes found with
them in Tomb M 8. While the typology of animal-

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