This set is the second installation in a three-volume catalog of the Sackler collection of ancient Chinese bronzes at Harvard University, undertaken by some of the premier scholars in the field. Robert W. Bagley's Shang Ritual Bronzes in the Arthur M. Sackler Collections (Arthur M. Sackler Foundation, 1987) and Jenny F. So's forthcoming Eastern Zhou Ritual Bronzes from the Arthur M. Sackler Collections complete the set. Rawson's contribution starts with Volume IIA, a survey of Western Zhou (c.1050-771 B.C.) bronze types, with more emphasis on dating of shapes and designs than on the use or meaning of the vessels. A wealth of appendixes include information on archaeological sites, inscriptions, and detailed laboratory analyses of bronze samples. Volume lib is the catalog itself, with a full-page color photograph of each vessel followed by a detailed description and comparisons with relevant pieces from other collections. Although probably not of much interest to the general public, this work gathers a tremendous amount of information for specialists and researchers.

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.

The book shows how the kings of the Western Zhou period used ritual to create and hold onto their power.

The supreme art form of ancient China was the bronze ritual vessel. Kings and nobles offered food and drink to their ancestors in spectacular cast bronze containers which served to advertise the owner's wealth and power no less than his piety. Many of the bronzes eventually found their way into the tombs of their owners, where they lay undisturbed for centuries or millennia until accidental discovery or the archaeologist's spade brought them once more to light. The vast collection of Chinese bronzes formed by the late Dr. Arthur M. Sackler ranges over the entire Bronze Age. The bronzes of the Eastern Zhou period, 8th to 3rd century BC, are the subject of this third and concluding volume of the comprehensive catalogue of the collection. In a thorough and up-to-date introduction, Dr. Jenny So, Assistant Curator of Ancient Chinese Art at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, gives a detailed account of the history of Eastern Zhou bronzes. Particularly valuable is Dr. So's systematic use of the latest archaeological discoveries to trace regional and chronological developments and to study the political context in which bronzes were made and used. An especially valuable supplement to the volume is a major study of bronze bells coauthored by an archaeologist and an acoustical physicist, Professor Lothar von Falkenhausen of UCLA and Professor Thomas D. Rossing of Northern Illinois University. The Sackler Collection includes twenty-one bells, which were employed in the same offering rituals as the bronze vessels. Ninety color plates provide full documentation of the Sackler bronzes and over 560 black-and-white comparative illustrations help to set them in the context providedby archaeological research. Scholarly appendices report elemental composition data on the bronze alloys, lead-isotope ratios, and thermoluminescence dating tests of clay core material.

The Cambridge History of Ancient China provides a survey of the institutional and cultural history of pre-imperial China.

This unique book brings a fresh interdisciplinary approach to the analysis of ancient Chinese history, creating a historical model for the emergence of cultural mainstays by applying recent dramatic findings in the fields of neuroscience and cultural evolution. The centrality in Chinese culture of a deep reverence for the lives of preceding generations, filial piety, is conventionally attributed to Confucius (551-479 B.C.), who viewed hierarchical family relations as foundational for social order. Here, Porter argues that Confucian conceptions of filiality themselves evolved from a systemized set of behaviors and thoughts, a mental structure, which descended from a specific Neolithic mindset, and that this psychological structure was contoured by particular emotional conditions experienced by China’s earliest farmers. Using case study analysis from Neolithic sky observers to the dynastic cultures of the Shang and Western Zhou, the book shows how filial piety evolved as a structure of feeling, a legacy of a cultural predisposition toward particular moods and emotions that were inherited from the ancestral past. Porter also brings new urgency to the topic of ecological grief, linking the distress central to the evolution of the filial structure to its catalyst in an environmental crisis. With a blended multidisciplinary approach combining social neuroscience, cultural evolution, cognitive archaeology, and historical analysis, this book is ideal for students and researchers in neuropsychology, religion, and Chinese culture and history.

Sullivan has thoroughly revised this classic history of Chinese art which covers the period from Neolithic times to the 1990s. 224 photos. 164 color illustrations. 14 maps.