Study Of Bronze Vessels Of The Shang-Zhou Period In Anhui Jianghuai Region

The Origin of Chinese civilization is different from that of Central Plains culture. Although the civilizations of three generations (Xia, Shang and Zhou) were more intensively formed in the Yellow River Basin, the southern and eastern regional culture in the same period, however, also belong to Chinese earlier civilization. They also play an important role in Chinese culture. Bronze is one of the prominent features of ancient Chinese civilization, and therefore it can tell us the exchange and integration between different cultures. Since the 1920s, there were great number of bronze vessels unearthed from Shang and Zhou tombs in Anhui Jianghuai Region, including 486 pieces from Cai Hou Shou Shen tomb and 387 pieces from Shuangdun the 1st Spring tomb and so on. Prior to these archaeological data unearthed, the fundamental understanding of the Shang-Zhou history of Anhui Jianghuai Region were from the "Zuo Zhuan", "Spring and Autumn Annals" and other literature in scattered records. The Lack of information results in a shortage of the ancient history of the region. The continuous emergence of new archaeological data will help us to study the early history and culture of this area.The bronze vessels in Jianghuai Region are characterized by complex cultural features. The bronze civilization in this area originates in the period of Er'litou Culture, with the discovery of bronze vessels in Yin Ruins Period in large quantities. Most of the bronze vessels in the Shang Dynasty, however, were not casted in Jianghuai Region but were brought by the adherents of former Shang Dynasty when they migrated to the south. It is therefore doubtful whether there existed a comparatively developed casting center of bronze or bronze civilization in the Shang Dynasty. The cultural features in the central and western part of the Jianghuai Region during the late period of the Western Zhou Dynasty and the early and middle period of the Spring and Autumn Period began to reach the sameness and formed the unique bronze civilization. With the commencement of the Chu Culture during the late Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, the features of bronze vessels experienced another great change. Despite the fact that the overall development of the bronze vessels of the Shang and Zhou Dynasty in Anhui Jianghuai Region is consistent with that in the Central Plains, the development of bronze civilization within the area is not a balanced one, with apparent regional differences.The paper mainly studies the time series and cultural features of bronze vessels of Anhui Jianghuai Region in the Shang and Zhou period, so we can get an image and outlook of the development of bronze vessels in this area. The thesis is divided into seven chapters:Chapter one introduces the research background, methods, and previous studies; the second chapter gives a comprehensive background of the area, including geographical environment, historical records and archaeological and cultural profile; the third chapter, based on previous studies, investigates the characteristics of the bronze vessels in the area; Chapter Four gives a chronological study on the basis of Chapter Two and finally establish the time series of the development of the region's bronze vessels; Chapter Five studys the cultural connotation of bronze vessels, which explain the reason of the developments in the region; Chapter Six not only compares with Shang-zhou bronzes in Southern Anhui, also explores an ethnic and cultural intermingling between groups of different ethnicities; the last chapter talks about the main findings of this paper.