Page 264 - The Golden Age of Chinese Archaeology: Celebrated Discoveries from the People’s Republic of China

crats who controlled the area of the capital south of
present-day Xi'an standardized the ritual vessels
used for ancestor offerings, the lords of the Jin state
took another direction, developing ritual practices
that made use of vessels of unusual form, as well as
vessels that replicated much older shapes. Tomb
M 63, for example, contains not only innovative and
unusual vessels, but also archaizing forms, such as a
square vessel described as a fangyi in traditional
writings. It is possible that both the unusually
shaped bronzes and the archaistic vessels were
made during the last decades of Zhou rule, and that
their forms reflect contemporaneous political and
social upheaval. Similar vessels and jades have been
found in the states of Guo and Ying in Henan
province. 3 JR

1 Excavated 1993 (M 63:86); reported: Shanxi 1994)3.
2 For a discussion of the dating of the principal tombs in
the Jin state burial ground, see Xu 1996^
3 For brief reports see Henan I995b and Henan 1988.

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