These two studies are very different, and they tackle their respective topics with contrasting methodologies. While Corinne Debaine-Francfort surveys in great detail a geographical area of China, Maud Girard-Geslan describes the collection of Chinese bronzes in the Musee Guimet in Paris. The boundaries of the topics are both arbitrary. However, they both illustrate the important issue of the origins and development of an important Chinese tradition: bronze working.
The ancient Chinese cast large bronze vessels for food and wine, an extravagant use of a material essential for weapons and tools. Nowhere else in the world was cast bronze used in this way. Even in China, the vessels are specific to one region, being products of the Shang culture (c.1500 -c. 1050BC) on the Yellow River and its successor on the Wei, under the Zhou dynasty (c.1050-771BC). So idiosyncratic is this casting practice, both in its technology and in its products, that a conflict has been inevitable between those scholars who see bronze casting as indigenous and those who seek an impulse from beyond China, looking to the northwest.
Debaine-Francfort's study of the northwestern culture of Qijia embraces this issue of the origins of bronze, or rather copper, working within a much larger remit. This is a highly academic work, based upon detailed archaeological reports and illustrated with many drawings and tables. Each site is discussed, and its structure and products illustrated. This is not an analysis of the origins of metal working, but of the contribution of an area to both the evolution of central Chinese culture and to a developing relationship between central China and the people on the borders. Such a discussion is essential to the question of where Chinese civilisation came from and where its boundaries lay. The question of the sources of metallurgy are part of this debate. I side with the view that the weapons and mirrors found in the northwest are examples of a local technology, and that metal working in China proper may have been the outcome not of a single impetus, from the West, but as the result of a number of different local endeavours.
The catalogue of Chinese bronzes in the Musee Guimet in Paris is in a different style, arranged as a sequence of commentaries on individual pieces, each one sumptuously illustrated. In a sense the two books mirror the situation of bronze making in China. Early metal work was simply one trait among many of the Neolithic peoples of the northwest. Copper and later bronze was initially insignificant within the diverse material cultures of the northwest. Bronze ritual vessels burst upon our awareness with their sophisticated techniques and designs already in place. This sudden ebullience cannot be a true reflection of the historical development, but as yet we lack the missing pieces that would fill the gap, a gap symbolised by the contrasts between these two volumes.
The collection of the Guimet was formed over the past 50 years and is one of the great collections of Chinese bronzes in the western world because it contains some very unusual pieces. Best known is a large wine vessel in the shape of an elephant. This single dramatic sculptural piece yet again poses the question, how did such bronze casting develop? We know today from excavations that elephant-shaped bronzes are typical of southern China, especially of the province of Hunan, south of the Yangtse River. This creature in bronze is both a utilitarian wine vessel and a vividly realistic sculpture. The sculptural aspect is unlike anything seen in the central China along the Yellow River, the heart of the ancient territory of the Shang and the Zhou dynasties (c.1400-800BC). So here we have two outlying traditions - the early metallurgy of the northwest and the dramatic, highly evolved sculptural bronzes of the south. In between lies the Yellow River, whose bronze culture is regarded as the heart of ancient China.
Excavation and study have now revealed that ancient China was not a single culture, but a mosaic of many. This conclusion is so trite it hardly needs saying. Yet most secondary writing on ancient China over the past half century has accepted the Sinocentric view: that one principal culture dominated China from the second millennium BC. Such a view has become increasingly implausible, as excavations reveal a multitude of highly sophisticated Neolithic cultures across the whole of the land mass now designated as China. What is more, the discoveries indicate an extension of this mosaic into what we might call the Bronze Age. The Shang and their predecessors were not the sole civilised inhabitants of this great land mass. Many peoples cast or worked metal and made fine vessels in ceramic and ornaments of jade. The intriguing question is no longer where did bronze casting originate? Our picture is now of many developed societies, all using metal.
A pressing issue is how did the Shang come to dominate the record and the consciousness of later historians and archaeologists. There seem to be two main reasons. First, the Shang made superlative objects that were collected from a very early date. Chinese scholars paid careful attention because they carried inscriptions, some of the earliest surviving records. Second, the Shang were followed by a rather obscure people, known as the Zhou, who gave great emphasis to the lineage in which they wished to see themselves. It was in their own political interest to present themselves as the single legitimate successors of the Shang. Thus past and present have conspired to give emphasis to the Shang and the Zhou, ignoring their equally sophisticated contemporaries. The Guimet collection and its catalogue continue in this tradition. Fine and detailed photographs show the superlative craftsmanship of the vessels. The text is brief and raises few questions. The consistent and beautiful presentation makes little distinction between the vessels of the mainstream and the highly unusual pieces that the Guimet is fortunate to hold. Other rarities include a pair of basins on elaborate bases. Here the inscriptions form part of the Zhou propaganda that has misled later generations. For the Zhou used inscriptions within their ritual vessels to report honours and benefits to their ancestors. Such inscriptions collected by later generations confirmed their prejudices by underlining the status and achievements of the central rulers at the expense of those to the west or south, who did not leave written records.
The catalogue redresses some of the balance by including a few weapons and chariot fittings. We know from burials that these, together with the ritual vessels, were also valued by their owners. The dead were expected to use in the after life the major categories of bronze: vessels, weapons and chariots. Ancient China must have had a very strong military component. Only now are the strengths of the early societies becoming known. Only now do we realise that the peoples who troubled the Shang and Zhou were often as powerful and imposing as these great dynasties.
Jessica Rawson is warden, Merton College, Oxford.
Du Neolithique à l'âge du Bronze en Chine du Nord-Ouest, la Culture de Qijat et ses Connexions
Author - Corinne Debaine-Francfort
ISBN - 2 86538 2524
Publisher - Edition Recherche sur les Civilisations, Paris
Price - FF363
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