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2 results

  • Asking different questions: highly radiogenic lead, mixing and recycling of metal and social status in the Chinese Bronze Age

  • Part of
  • Ruiliang Liu, A. Mark Pollard
  • Journal:
    Mineralogical Magazine / Volume 86 / Issue 4 / August 2022
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    18 April 2022, pp. 677-687

  • The provenance of raw materials and finished objects is one of the most intriguing problems in archaeology. It is significant for the discussion of inter-regional cultural communication. Many of the methods used to determine provenance employed by archaeologists are shared with geologists or geochemists, among which the use of lead isotopes is probably one of the best-known. However, geologists and archaeologists do not always ask the same questions. Because of many and various human choices, it is not always possible to apply geological methods directly to archaeological objects. Specifically, the potential existence of mixing and recycling of metals challenges all the provenance studies of metal objects. In this paper, using Bronze Age China as an example, we suggest that by using geochemical techniques such as lead isotopic analysis and trace-element analysis of bronzes, but by asking slightly different questions, one can throw new light on the way in which important resources were managed by consumers of different social status within early dynastic China.

  • 24 - Regional study: trans-Saharan trade

  • from Part II - Trans-regional and regional perspectives
  • Edited by Craig Benjamin, Grand Valley State University, Michigan
  • Book:
    The Cambridge World History
    Published online:
    05 May 2015
    Print publication:
    16 April 2015, pp 662-686

  • Summary

    The written Chinese language played a critical role in shaping the emergence of a distinctively East Asian cultural zone. The development of writing in Bronze Age China is thus fundamental to both Chinese and East Asian civilization more broadly. Although tantalizing examples of markings that seem to resemble writing have been discovered from earlier periods, the first unmistakable examples of written language in China appear on the 'oracle bones' that were used for divination at the late Shang court. During the fourth and early fifth centuries, Xianbei bands in the northeast established a series of dynasties in the area of southwestern Manchuria and northeastern China proper. In the early sixth century, there was reportedly a steady flow of merchants from the remote west arriving in the Northern Wei dynasty capital at Luoyang, in north-central China. Buddhism was then introduced to Paekche by a Central Asian monk, Malananda, coming from Southern dynasty China in 384.