Page 538 - The Golden Age of Chinese Archaeology: Celebrated Discoveries from the People’s Republic of China

Issues Concerning the Formation, Development, and

Demise of Chu Culture

Y U W E I C H A O | Between 1,100 and 3,000 years ago, a culture that we now recognize as Chu made significant
contributions to the cultural evolution of China as a whole and of southern China in particular.
Chu culture is known to have flourished in the middle Yangzi basin as early as the second
millenium BCE — during the Shang period—and from the fifth to the third century BCE, the
state of Chu occupied almost the entire southern half of the Chinese landmass. By the fourth
century BCE — the late Warring States period — Chu had shifted its center to the Huai River
valley, where, by the second century BCE under the Han dynasty, it survived mainly in the
region of the present-day city of Changsha, Hunan province.
The importance of Chu culture was recognized only relatively recently. In the 19205 the
Swedish engineer Orvar Karlbeck described some Chu mirrors of the Warring States period
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recovered from the Huai River valley. During the 19508 and after, many Chu tombs and the
site of the Chu city of Ji'nancheng of the Eastern Zhou dynasty were excavated at Jiangling,
Hubei province; tombs were also found at another important site — Changsha, Hunan

province. Since 1980, when the second annual meeting of the Chinese Archaeological Society
focused specifically on issues of Chu culture, Chu studies have become one of the most active
areas in Chinese history and archaeology, with scholars both in China and abroad conducting
major investigations. One of the most important of these projects seeks to establish a chronol-
ogy of the Chu tombs from the Eastern Zhou period; another is investigating the origins of Chu
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culture. While the latter remains a work in progress, much knowledge has been accumulated
from the examination of recovered Chu material that spans the period of the culture's forma-
tion to its demise; this in turn has led to a better understanding of Chu history. This exhibition
includes numerous Chu culture from the Eastern Zhou states in the Chu cultural sphere.
What follows is a general survey of the present state of Chu studies.

D E F I N I N G C H U C U L T U R E
The term "culture" has many different interpretations; here, it is used to distinguish "Chu cul-
ture" in its archaeological context — that is, the physical remains that exhibit distinctive char-
acteristics of the life and behavior of the ancient Chu people. Archaelogy treats a culture as
bounded in time and space, often with a dominant or subordinate relationship to several other

communities, which, for the most part, also exhibit distinctive cultural characteristics. As long
as Chu characteristics dominate a group of remains, it can be considered as part of Chu culture
or relevant to it, regardless of the date, sphere, or group relationship, for such cultural charac-
teristics could not have existed beyond the sphere of Chu's influence, nor after the demise of
the culture and its constituents. 3
However, the character and sphere of Chu culture underwent continuous change. Like
many cultures, Chu was composed of various elements during its formative phase, including
Cat. 94, detail influences deriving from contacts with other cultures. Its borders as well were fluid, first

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