Page 35 - The Arts of China, By Michael Sullivan Good Book

ho in Shantung (about 2100 B.C.), while true bronze objects, made
from a copper-tin alloy, have been unearthed in Ma-ch'ang and
Ch'ia-chia sites in Kansu dateable between 2300 and 2000 B.C. The
late Yang-shao and Lung-shan cultures, therefore, hitherto as-
signed entirely to the late Stone Age, can now be seen as the era of
the discovery and early evolution of metal-working in China, al-
though metal objects are still very rare.
In the 1950s Chinese archaeologists began to search for the be-
ginnings of a true Bronze Age civilisation in the area of northern
Honan and southern Shansi traditionally known as the "Waste of
Hsia." Their work was rewarded with the discovery of over a
hundred sites, of which the richest is at Erh-li-t'ou, between Loy-
ang and Yen-shih. There they discovered the remains of a town,
with a palace (?) on a terrace, bronze workshops, vessels, weap-
ons, and other artefacts, some inlaid with turquoise, and objects
ofjade. They divided the "Erh-li-t'ou culture period," as it is now
called, into four stages, covering the period roughly from 1900 to
1600 B.C. From the third stage comes the primitive but elegant
vessel for heating and pouring wine called a chiieh (illustrated on p.
1 1), one of the earliest ritual vessels yet discovered in China, and
ancestor ofthe remarkable bronzes ofthe mature Shang Dynasty.
Archaeologists arc now debating whether all four phases of the
Erh-li-t'ou culture should be assigned to the Hsia Dynasty, or
only the first two, in which case this vessel would be very early
Shang. But until written evidence is found, it will not be possible
to assign any site to the Hsia Dynasty with certainty.

1 3 Ritual vessel, ling. Bronze.
Excavated at P'an-lung-ch'eng. Hupct.
Middle Shang period.
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