Page 531 - The Golden Age of Chinese Archaeology: Celebrated Discoveries from the People’s Republic of China

culture at Yinxu and thus the late Shang period. In fact, the Zhengzhou site has yielded abun-
dant Shang remains that confirm this hypothesis: architectural foundations, tomb burials,
bronzes, jades, pottery, and inscribed oracle bones. The close relationship of the Zhengzhou
structures and artifacts with those discovered at Yinxu — and the fact that they predate the late
Shang artifacts — led archaeologists to conclude that the chief characteristics of the Yinxu
culture derived from the Erligang phase at Zhengzhou. At last, one of the sources of late Shang
culture at Yinxu had been found. 4
The Shang sites at Zhengzhou cover an area as wide as that at Yinxu — a total of 25 square
5
kilometers. They contain the remains of a city with massive walls describing a circumference of
7,000 meters and covering an area of approximately 3,000,000 square meters; they represent
the largest Shang urban site ever excavated. It is noteworthy that the palace foundations in the
northeast of the city , which extend over more than 60,000 square meters, are significantly
larger than the palace foundations at Yinxu. A city of such size would undoubtedly have been a
royal capital. But to which king did it belong? After thirty years of discussion, archaeologists
have finally agreed that the city was the capital Bo, established under the reign of King Tang,
the founder of the Shang dynasty. The identification of the dynasty's early capital provided a
basis for investigating questions posed by the history of the Xia dynasty.

Another important site in the investigation of early Shang cultures was the city of Yanshi. 6
Located near the Erlitou site, to the south of the Mang Mountain along the northern bank of
the Luo River in Yanshi county, Henan province, Yanshi had developed out of an older, smaller
city. The smaller city was roughly contemporaneous with the Shang city at Zhengzhou; covering
an area of 810,000 square meters, it was a little more than a quarter the size of Zhengzhou. The
larger city was slightly later than Zhengzhou, and it extended over an area of 1,900,000 square
meters — approximately two-thirds that of Zhengzhou. Both the large and the small city were
built during the reign of King Tang. Its structure indicates that the Shang city at Yanshi was
important enough to have been commissioned by imperial authority, but that fact raises an-
other question: by whose authority? Scholars are presently divided on the issue: one school of
thought identifies Yanshi as the early Shang dynasty capital of Bo; another identifies it as an
early Shang auxiliary capital — the Tong Palace to which the King Taijia was exiled. The early
Shang capital of Bo, however, could not have been situated both at Zhengzhou and at Yanshi.
Moreover, we know from written records that Yanshi was not referred to as Bo prior to the Tang
dynasty (618 - 907 CE) and that it was much smaller than the Shang city at Zhengzhou. These
facts suggest that Yanshi was the dynasty's auxiliary capital, and that Zhengzhou should be
identified as the early Shang capital at Bo.
Three other early Shang cities warrant mention here. Two of them are located at the pres-
7
ent-day city of Panlongcheng, Huangpi county, Hubei province; walled remains in Yuanqu
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county, Shanxi province, constitute the third city. All three are fairly small. Yuanqu is approxi-
mately 120,000 square meters, and the site at Panlongcheng is even smaller— only slightly

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