Page 535 - The Golden Age of Chinese Archaeology: Celebrated Discoveries from the People’s Republic of China

A R C H A E O L O G Y O F T H E D I S T A N T R E G I O N S
The Xia, Shang, and Zhou dynasties held sway only within their respective territories. Beyond
their borders, the "distant regions" were populated by several important cultures, in particular,
the Lower Xiajiadian and the Yueshi cultures — contemporaries of the Xia — in Liaoning
province and the Inner Mongolia Autonomous District. 16
Sites of the Lower Xiajiadian culture have yielded a characteristic polychrome painted
pottery, as well as several bronze objects. Contacts between the Lower Xiajiadian and the Erlitou
culture are evidenced by the similarity of pottery fowl-shaped containers (yi) and tripod
beakers (jue). By contrast, the Yueshi culture of Shandong and eastern Henan provinces, 17
though contemporaries of the Erlitou, produced a completely different range of artifacts — a
great deal of red and brown pottery and numerous steamers (yan), but little corded ware, no
tripod vessels (li), and very few bronzes.
During the Shang period, several important cultures coexisted in remote regions outside
of the dynasty's borders. In the north was the Zhukaigou culture, in the west, the predynastic
Zhou and Xindian cultures, and in the south the Hushou, Ba, Wucheng, and Shu cultures. The
latter two are particularly significant.
The Wucheng culture in northern Jiangxi province is represented by the Great Tomb at
Xin'gan, located near Chengjiacun (Dayangzhou, in Xin'gan county) approximately twenty kilo-
18
meters east of Wucheng, the center of the culture. The tomb chamber measures forty meters
square and contained 475 bronze objects (including 50 ritual vessels and musical instruments),
100 farming and handicraft tools, 200 weapons, as well as approximately 700 jades and 100
pottery vessels. Some of these objects clearly show the influence of Shang culture from the
Central Plain; others are clearly indigenous in style. In the past, it was believed that the cultures
to the south were a backwater, but the objects from the Great Tomb at Xin'gan clearly militate
against this view and offer proof that as early as the Shang period the cultures of the south had
a material culture as advanced as those of the Central Plain.
The Shu culture was based in the Chengdu plain of Sichuan province. Sacrificial pits
found at Sanxingdui, Guanghan county, are of particular interest and have yielded a wide range
of exquisite objects. 19 The pits were found in the center of a site measuring approximately 12
square kilometers, enclosed by city walls with a circumference of between 1,800 and 2,000 me-
ters. Shang influence is evident in many of the Sanxingdui objects— bronze lei and zun vessels,
jade and stone daggers (ge), bi disks, and jade cong. But the artifacts also clearly display ele-
ments of an indigenous culture — in particular most of the pottery, the remarkable standing
bronze figures and sculptures, the bronze animal masks, and the stone spears (mao), none of
which have been found in Shang remains. Some objects seem to derive from the Shang culture
but display a clearly local style—a bronze rounded vessel (lei) f daggers with serrated or curved
blades, and a jade scepter. The fact that indigenous features predominate in these objects has

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