Mysterious Kingdom: Preliminary Understanding and Interpretation of the Sanxingdui Civilization

Author: Sun Hua, Su Rongyue / Country: Mainland China
Publisher:
Publishing Time: 2003-01-01
Features: Let us broaden our perspective and go beyond the Sichuan Basin to the periphery of the basin. Then, in terms of the mineral resources available to the Sanxingdui culture, we will find that the Sanxingdui culture area is not far from the Chinese geochemical abrupt belt, especially the Huaxia-Yangtze geochemical boundary. Professor Zhu Bingquan has studied the distribution patterns of large and ultra-large ore deposits and large ore districts from a new perspective of geochemical boundaries, proposing that ultra-large ore deposits are closely related to geochemical abrupt belts, and has deduced the main characteristics and regularities of the occurrence of large and ultra-large ore deposits in geochemical abrupt belts. On Professor Zhu's geochemical provincial map, the geochemical boundary between Huaxia Province and Yangtze Province controls over 90% of the ultra-large ore deposits in southern China. These deposits include minerals such as copper, tin, lead, zinc, and gold, which were usable in the Bronze Age. The Jinsha River mineral belt and the Dongchuan-Huize large ore district in the east of the Kangdian block, both located not far southwest of the Sanxingdui culture area, may have been explored or purchased by the Sanxingdui people for raw materials.
Professor Jin Zhengyao, through the study of lead isotope ratios in Sanxingdui bronze artifacts, concluded that the lead isotope ratios of bronzes from Pits 1 and 2 of Sanxingdui are identical, indicating that their ages are not too far apart, and that they both extensively used materials from the same mineral source. Professor Jin also noted that the Sanxingdui bronzes, as well as the bronzes from the Daxiangzhou large tomb in Xinggan County, Jiangxi, generally exhibit abnormally high radiogenic lead. The Sanxingdui bronzes are particularly rich in this type of high radiogenic abnormal lead. The few known mines with this type of high radiogenic lead are all located in the northeastern Yunnan region, suggesting that the mineral raw materials of these bronzes include materials from polymetallic ore deposits in southwestern China.
According to Professor Zhu Bingquan's research, the raw materials of these bronzes with high radiogenic abnormal lead have several possible sources, among which the northeastern Yunnan region is the most likely area. These studies, if the conclusions are reliable, suggest that the activity space of the Sanxingdui culture people may be much broader than our current understanding. Because, according to the lead isotope ratio research on bronzes, the bronzes in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River during the Shang Dynasty, as well as those in the Central Plains, all have raw materials from southwestern China. In southwestern China, the only bronze culture known to be associated with the Jianghan and Central Plains Wucheng culture and Shang Dynasty culture is the Sanxingdui culture. Therefore, it is inferred that the Sanxingdui people may have played a significant role in the procurement of certain bronze raw materials for the Wucheng and Shang cultures. Of course, this speculation is still quite risky at present.
The Sichuan Basin is surrounded by mountains, and the towering mountains such as the Dabashan, Micangshan, Wu Shan, and Qinling on the eastern side of the basin have given people a great misunderstanding. Many people believe that since the founding of the Shu state by CanCong, the Sichuan Basin has been in a closed and isolated environment, until the Qin Dynasty destroyed Ba and Shu, the Shu state in the Sichuan Basin established contact with the Qin state. The legend of the Five Bods opening the road, which became widely known during the Han and Jin dynasties, is a vivid reflection of this concept. The general content of the legend is: "King Hui of Qin wanted to attack Shu but did not know how, so he made five stone oxen, placing gold under their tails, claiming they could defecate gold. The Shu king, Nuli, ordered the Five Bods to pull them, and a road was formed. Qin sent Zhang Yi and Sima Corroded to follow the road to destroy Shu, and thus it was called the Stone Oxen Road." It seemed that there was no road between the Sichuan Basin and Guanzhong until King Hui of Qin. This wrong understanding was amplified by Li Bai's poem "The Hard Road to Shu," giving people the impression that the Sichuan Basin was remote in the southwestern mountains and had little contact with the outside world in the early stages. In fact, the connection between the Sichuan Basin and the outside world was not as difficult as some people imagined, and the opening of transportation routes between Sichuan and the east was not as late as some documents claimed.
Whether from literary materials or archaeological materials, the connection between the Sichuan Basin and the central areas of China began very early. The Sanxingdui culture of the Xia and Shang dynasties had close technical, artistic, and cultural ties with the middle reaches of the Yangtze River and the Central Plains, which is very illustrative. The Sanxingdui culture's pottery guis are similar to pottery silkworms. They are also three-legged, three-bag-footed divided-vessel containers, with an overall shape resembling a bag-footed sealed silkworm, but with an open mouth instead of a closed one, and a slightly convex spout at the front of the mouth. The pottery guis are a type of complex vessel, which originated in the Dawenkou culture of Shandong, developed through the Longshan culture, and became a vessel with a soaring spout. This soaring spout, from the early to late Longshan culture, changed from slender and tall to low and short. By the Xia Dynasty, the pottery guis that had become popular in Shandong had almost disappeared in the region where they originated, while in the Erlitou culture of the Central Plains and the Jianghan Plain to the southwest, a pottery gui with an even lower and forward-leaning spout appeared. The shape of the pottery guis in the Sanxingdui culture is similar to one type of pottery gui found in the second phase remains of the Erlitou culture, but the spout no longer extends upward, becoming a flat spout gui with a semicircular small groove at the front of the rim. Its shape should be placed after the pottery guis of the Erlitou culture.
We know that in the late Longshan period of the Sichuan Basin, the Baodun Village culture and the Shao culture almost had no three-legged vessels, let alone bag-footed vessels, while the Longshan period cultures in the Central Plains all had three-legged vessels, including bag-footed vessels. The style of these pottery vessels in the Sanxingdui culture of the Sichuan Basin should have originated from the Erlitou culture of the Central Plains. The reason we infer that the bag-footed sealed guis and bag-footed flat spout guis of the Sanxingdui culture originated from the Erlitou culture, rather than the other way around or independently developed by the Sanxingdui culture, is mainly based on the following considerations. First, both the silkworm and the gui are quite complex in shape. The two types of pottery vessels in the Sanxingdui culture are not only similar in shape but also in detailed decoration to the same types of vessels in the Erlitou culture, indicating that they should not be independent creations but rather products of cultural transmission. Second, both types of pottery vessels in the Erlitou culture can be traced back to earlier Longshan period remains in the local area. They already existed in the earliest phase remains of the Erlitou culture and continued into the latest fourth phase remains of the Erlitou culture; while the Sanxingdui culture, at its earliest, was no earlier than the second and third phases of the Erlitou culture. The popularity of these two types of pottery vessels also began around this time and continued until the early stage of the Shang Dynasty's Twelve Bridge culture. The similarity in shape and continuity in popularity between the Erlitou culture and the Sanxingdui culture's guis and gui-like pottery vessels not only indicates a close relationship between the source and flow of these two types of pottery vessels but also suggests that the complex, symbolic shapes of these pottery vessels may imply a shared psychological and blood relationship between some people of the two cultures.
The Sanxingdui culture has two types of pottery dou. One is the high-stem dou, which is another typical pottery vessel closely related to the Erlitou culture. In the phase remains of the Sanxingdui culture, there are three basic forms of pottery high-stem dou: one is a shallow dish dou, one is a large shallow dish dou, and the other is a deep bowl-shaped dou. The large shallow dish dou of the phase Sanxingdui culture has sloping dish walls and a wide, flat rim. Similar pottery dou with dish shapes, although not entirely identical to those in the Erlitou culture, are only found in the second phase remains of the Erlitou culture in the form of sloping dishes and flat rims. Later, the dish of the Sanxingdui culture dou bends inward, and the rim becomes narrower; the lip of the shallow dish dou of the Erlitou culture after the third phase also gradually turns downward, and the differences in shape between the two become larger. The deep bowl-shaped dou of the phase Sanxingdui culture has slightly curved sloping dish walls and a small ring base. Similar pottery dou are only found in the late second phase remains of the Erlitou culture, such as the pottery dou that broke through the lower rammed earth of the No. 2 Palace Foundation Site, 77—78H11. Although the shape of the pottery dou is not as complex as the silkworm and gui, a few high-stem dou have also been found in the late remains of the Baodun Village culture before the Sanxingdui culture. However, the high-stem dou of the Sanxingdui culture and the dou stems of the Erlitou culture both have the same upper-swelling shape and both show a trend of becoming thicker at the top and thinner at the bottom. This peculiar similarity in detailed shape should reflect a connection in cultural transmission, indicating that the phase remains of the Sanxingdui culture and the second phase remains of the Erlitou culture should be close in age.
The bronze lei is also a large wine vessel. A standard bronze lei has a small mouth, a straight neck, round shoulders with a pair of animal-shaped ears (often with rings) that can be used to lift it, and a rear on the lower abdomen to facilitate pouring wine with a hook. During the Western Zhou period, bronze lei with self-naming were common, and it is one of the few bronze wine vessels where the name and shape are clearly related. The Shuowen Jiezi explains the character lei () as "a tortoise-eyed wine vessel," and the Guangya explains it as "a squat vessel," indicating that the lei belongs to the category of zun but differs from zun in that zun has a long neck and large mouth, while lei has a straight neck and small mouth, and zun has a high ring foot while lei has a low or even ringless foot. In the Western Zhou period's Twelve Bridge culture, bronze lei replaced bronze zun as the important sacrificial and ceremonial vessel. So far, multiple sets of bronze lei with orderly arrangements have been unearthed, such as the 8 bronze vessels unearthed in 1960 at Zhuwa Street in Peng County, including 5 lei, 1 zun, and 2 zhi; and the 4 bronze vessels unearthed in 1980 at Zhuwa Street in Peng County, all of which were bronze lei. The ages of both bronze vessel groups are Early Western Zhou. Among them, the five bronze lei in the No. 1 bronze vessel cache at Zhuwa Street in Peng County are "one large and four slightly smaller, with the four slightly smaller ones each consisting of two pairs of similar size, shape, and decoration, so they can be considered as two pairs."
The bronze lei of the Sanxingdui culture differs in shape from later bronze lei. It is more similar to a bronze zun, a type of bronze vessel that was only popular in the early Shang Dynasty in the Central Plains before the early Yin Ruins. It is chronologically directly linked to the later true lei, so although there are no bronze vessels with self-named "lei" that can confirm the name-shape relationship of this type of vessel, researchers still habitually refer to it as "lei" (it is more appropriate to call it "lei-shaped vessel" in strict terms). This lei-shaped bronze vessel appeared in the early Shang Dynasty in the Erlitou upper period and Bai Zhuang period in the Central Plains, such as the lei-shaped bronze vessel unearthed in the No. 2 tomb at Bai Zhuang in Zhengzhou and the bronze vessel cache at the Yangxin Food Factory. The earliest lei-shaped bronze vessel in the Sanxingdui culture does not appear earlier than the early Yin Ruins. Like bronze zun, the lei-shaped bronze vessel in the Sanxingdui culture should also be a imitation of the same type of bronze vessel in the Central Plains and the middle reaches of the Yangtze River. However, in the Sanxingdui culture, although the lei-shaped bronze vessel is the second most important type of bronze vessel after bronze zun, its status and role in sacrificial and ceremonial activities are far from being comparable to those of bronze zun. The rise in status and replacement of the position of bronze zun by bronze lei only occurred in the late Shang Dynasty's Twelve Bridge culture.
The people of the Sanxingdui Kingdom valued bronze zun, which is first reflected in the proportion of bronze zun in the total number of bronze vessels. There are 23 bronze vessels in the two pits of the Sanxingdui, of which 14 are bronze zun and only 6 are lei-shaped vessels. The large number and proportion of zun are unparalleled in other cultures. These bronze zun have basic shapes and decorations similar to those in the Central Plains Shang culture, but there are significant differences in overall shape and detailed features. The zun are slender and tall, with a curved rim like a dish mouth and relatively outwardly bulging walls of the ring foot. Similar bronze zun have been found multiple times in the Sichuan Basin and its surrounding areas, such as the bronze zun unearthed in Su Village and Wulong in Chenggu County, Hubei, the bronze zun at Bágutai in Jiangling County, Hubei, and the bronze zun at Dachaeng in Wushan County, Sichuan. The large number of bronze zun with local characteristics unearthed in the Sanxingdui pits indicates that the center of bronze ritual vessels in the Sanxingdui Kingdom was bronze zun.
Regarding this point, Pit 2 of the Sanxingdui culture unearthed a small bronze figure with a height of only more than 10 cm, kneeling with a top zun (catalogued as K2②:48). The lower part of the figure is a round platform-like base with openwork decorations, with a person kneeling on top. The figure's head is placed inside the ring foot of a round-shouldered animal-face-patterned zun, with both hands holding the abdomen of the zun. It looks as if it is afraid of the zun tipping over. The mouth of the zun is covered with a possible or other shaped base (Figure 3—3—1). The head shape of this top zun kneeling figure is the same as that of the numerous bronze figures and human heads found in the Sanxingdui culture. Its size is small, dressed in a common waist-belt short robe, and it is undoubtedly an ordinary person, and its identity is likely low, not comparable to the large bronze standing figure. This is a meaningful bronze figure, as it vividly reflects the fact that the ancient Sanxingdui culture and its later people regarded bronze zun as the central ritual vessel and an object of worship.