Central Plains Late Western Zhou Bronze Decoration In Geometric Study

There are numerous bronzes with geometric patterns in the medium term of the Western Zhou Dynasty, which are simple, plain and quite popular. Geometric patterns became the mainstream of ornamentations on bronze in the medium term of the Western Zhou Dynasty, especially in the central plains. The appearance of geometric patterns means not only the establishment of a typical culture of the Western Zhou Dynasty, but also an important symbol of the change of Zhou dynasty people’s aesthetic viewpoint. The emergence, development, and change of geometric patterns, to a certain extent, reflect the social politics, economy and culture at that time. Due to the variety of geometric patterns is simple, not enough change beings and other reasons, people did not pay much attention on geometric patterns for a long time. With the deep development of the research on the bronze ornamentation, geometric patterns gradually got the attention of the academia and the research of the bronze ornamentation has entered a more systematic stage.In this paper, four kinds of geometric patterns have been selected as objects of study which appear in the medium term of the Western Zhou Dynasty, they are huandai design, waleng design, chonghuan design, and qiequ design. We will use statistics methodology to collect the bronzes with geometric patterns, and use the method of archaeological typology to do form division and period dating on geometric patterns during the Western Zhou Dynasty in the central plains in order to reveal its evolution rule and the period features, which based on previous research achievement. Moreover, combined with politics, culture, religion, and other aspects it will explore the cause of occurrence and the development process of geometric patterns in the medium term of the Western Zhou Dynasty. There are five sections which are as follows:Section one gives a review on previous studies by senior scholars on geometric patterns and illustrates purpose, methods and significance of this research.Section two does a typology analysis for four kinds of geometric patterns. First, it summarizes and compares research achievements on four kinds of geometric patterns by senior scholars, then does a typology analysis for them to explore the popular era of four kinds of geometric patterns and summarizes their characteristics. Section three does a period dating on geometric patterns based on the typology analysis to give the evolutionary traces of geometric patterns and the epoch feature of bronzes.Section four analyses the matrix of four kinds of geometric patterns to the controversy in the academia and discusses the relationship between the origin of geometric patterns and animal designs.Section five analyses feature of geometric patterns, including the position of geometric patterns on bronzes, the coexistent situation of four kinds of geometric patterns.Section six does an analysis on the relationship between geometric patterns and politics, religion, culture during the Western Zhou Dynasty. It explores the vicissitude of politics, culture and religion of the Western Zhou Dynasty from the evolutionary traces of geometric patterns to reveal out that geometric patterns are a very important part when we do a research on the society of the Western Zhou Dynasty.Through the discussion of the six chapters above, this article will analyze geometric patterns in Western Zhou Dynasty from doing form division, period dating and the matrix. We hope to do something for deep research on the geometric patterns of Western Zhou Dynasty.