Describes the Chinese Bronze Age, including the development of the Chinese state, writing, religion and architecture.

This catalog focuses on the casting techniques of archiac bronzes.

Max Loehr (1903-1988), the most distinguished historian of Chinese art of his generation, is celebrated above all for a 1953 art historical study of Chinese bronzes that effectively predicted discoveries Chinese archaeologists were about to make. Those discoveries in turn overthrew the theories of Loehr's great rival Bernhard Karlgren (1889-1978), a Swedish sinologue whose apparently scientific use of classification and statistics had long dominated Western studies of the bronzes. Revisiting a controversy that was ended by archaeology before the issues at stake were fully understood, Robert Bagley shows its methodological implications to be profound. Starting with a close reading of the work of Karlgren, he uses an analogy with biological taxonomy to clarify questions of method and to distinguish between science and the appearance of science. Then, turning to Loehr, he provides the rationale for an art history that is concerned above all with constructing a meaningful history of creative events, one that sees the intentionality of designers and patrons as the driving force behind stylistic change. In a concluding chapter he analyzes the concept of style, arguing that many classic confusions in art historical theorizing arise from a failure to recognize that style is not a property of objects. Addressed not just to ancient China specialists or historians of Chinese art, this book uses Loehr's work on bronzes as a case study for exploring central issues of art history. It will be of interest to anyone concerned with the analysis of visual materials.

One of the great breakthroughs in Chinese studies in the early twentieth century was the archaeological identification of the earliest, fully historical dynasty of kings, the Shang (ca. 1300-1050 B.C.E.). The last fifty years have seen major advances in all areas of Chinese archaeology, but recent studies of the Shang, their ancestors, and their contemporaries have been especially rich. Since the last English-language overview of Shang civilization appeared in 1980, the pace of discovery has quickened. China in the Early Bronze Age: Shang Civilization is the first work in twenty-five years to synthesize current knowledge of the Shang for everyone interested in the origins of Chinese civilization. China in the Early Bronze Age traces the development of early Bronze Age cultures in North and Northwestern China from about 2000 B.C.E., including the Erlitou culture (often identified with the Xia) and the Erligang culture. Robert L. Thorp introduces major sites, their architectural remains, burials, and material culture, with special attention to jades and bronze. He reviews the many discoveries near Anyang, site of two capitals of the Shang kings. In addition to the topography of these sites, Thorp discusses elite crafts and devotes a chapter to the Shang cult, its divination practices, and its rituals. The volume concludes with a survey of the late Shang world, cultures contemporary with Anyang during the late second millennium B.C.E. Fully documented with references to Chinese archaeological sources and illustrated with more than one hundred line drawings, China in the Early Bronze Age also includes informative sidebars on related topics and suggested readings. Students of the history and archaeology of early civilizations will find China in the Early Bronze Age the most up-to-date and wide-ranging introduction to its topic now in print. Scholars in Chinese studies will use this work as a handbook and research guide. This volume makes fascinating reading for anyone interested in the formative stages of Chinese culture.

The bronze ritual vessel, the defining artifact of early Chinese civilization, is the subject of this monumental study of Shang ritual bronzes in the Arthur M. SAckler Collections. A Comprehensive introduction, the most thorough treatment of Shang bronzes in any language, lays the foundation for 104 catalogue entries, many of which explore in greater detail specific problems in casting technology, epigraphy, vessel typology, and provincial bronze styles. COlor plates of all the Sackler bronzes are supplemented by rubbings, details, and more than 500 comparative illustrations.THroughout the book the author has made systematic use of the astonishing archaeological discoveries of the last 15 years, discoveries which include major finds of pre-Anyang bronzes and the unprecedented excavation in 1976 of an intact Shang royal tomb. NO less revealing, however, are technical studies of Chinese bronzes carried out in the West, including studies of the bronzes catalogued here, for Dr. BAgley shows technical factors to have played a crucial role in the development of the Shang artistic tradition. BY giving special attention to the formative stages of the Shang bronze industry, he is able to trace in precise detail the complex interaction of technique and design which led from modest beginnings at Erlitou to the spectacular bronzes of the Anyang period (c.1300-1030 BC). IN the spirit of Jean Bony's remark that "each moment has its right to be considered ultimate," pre-Anyang bronzes are treated not as stepping stones to the more familiar bronzes of Anyang times but as objects deserving attention in their own right. NEvertheless Anyang bronzes become at once less familiar and more intelligible when viewed in a developmental perspective, and the strict historical approach taken here calls into question current interpretations of their decoration. TEn years in the making, this book will be of interest not only to students of Chinese archaeology but also to historians of technology, to art historians interested in the process of artistic invention, and to archaeologists concerned with the comparative study of ancient civilizations.