Bronze Age culture in China
34°45′14″N
113°40′34″E
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34.754°N 113.676°E
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34.754; 113.676
The
Erligang culture
(
[â?.lì.kàŋ]
) is a
Bronze Age
urban civilization and archaeological culture in
China
that existed from approximately 1600 to 1400 BC. The primary site,
Zhengzhou Shang City
, was discovered at Erligang, within the modern city of
Zhengzhou
,
Henan
, in 1951.
Major sites
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]
The culture was centered in the
Yellow River
valley. In its early years, it expanded rapidly, reaching the
Yangtze River
. The culture then gradually shrank from its early peak.
Zhengzhou
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]
Later investigations showed that the Erligang site was part of an ancient city surrounded by a roughly rectangular wall with a perimeter of about 7 kilometers (4 mi). The walls were of
rammed earth
construction, a technique dating back to Chinese
Neolithic
sites of the
Longshan culture
(
c.
3000
? c.
1900 BC
). It has been estimated that the walls would have been 20 meters (66 ft) wide at the base, rising to a height of 8 meters (26 ft). Large workshops were located outside the city walls, including a bone workshop, a pottery workshop and two bronze vessel workshops. The modern city sits on the remains of the Erligang city, rendering archaeological excavations impossible. Therefore, most of the information about the culture comes from studying other Erligang sites.
Panlongcheng
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The large site at
Panlongcheng
, on the Yangtze River in
Hubei
, is currently the largest excavated site of Erligang culture. It was discovered in 1954, and excavated in 1974 and 1976.
Since Zhengzhou lacked access to local bronze metals, sites like Panlongcheng were probably used to secure distant metal resources. A large number of bronze wares were found in Panlong City. Through carbon dating of wood samples unearthed from Tonglu Mountain in Dazhi, Hubei and Tongling Mining and Metallurgical Site in Ruichang, Jiangxi, comparisons were made between the bronze wares unearthed in Panlongcheng City and Tonglu Mountain, It was found that the mineral elements of Panlongcheng bronzes are the same as those of Tonglushan, which indicates that the copper of Panlongcheng originated from Tonglushan.
[1]
Bronze vessels
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Erligang bronzes developed from the style and techniques of the earlier
Erlitou culture
, centered at 85 kilometers (53 mi) to the west of Zhengzhou. Erligang was the first archaeological culture in China to show widespread use of bronze vessel castings. Bronze vessels became much more widely used and uniform in style than at Erlitou.
Relation to traditional accounts
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Many Chinese archaeologists believe that the ancient cities of Yanshi and Zhengzhou were among the early capitals of the
Shang dynasty
mentioned in traditional histories, and refer to the Erligang culture as early Shang. However many scholars and Western archaeologists have pointed out that, unlike the later
Anyang settlement
, no written records have been found at Erligang sites to link the archaeological remains with traditional accounts written a millennium later.
References
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]
- ^
Shi, Jiaxin (2019). "Luetan Erligang wenhua".
Wenwu Jianding Yu Jianshang
.
171
: 62.
- Bagley, Robert (1999), "Shang Archaeology", in Loewe, Michael; Shaughnessy, Edward L. (eds.),
The Cambridge History of Ancient China
, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 124?231,
ISBN
978-0-521-47030-8
.
- Liu, Li (2003), "The products of minds as well as of hands: production of prestige goods in the Neolithic and early state periods of China",
Asian Perspectives
,
42
(1): 1?40,
doi
:
10.1353/asi.2003.0025
,
hdl
:
10125/17179
,
S2CID
162278654
.
- Liu, Li; Chen, Xingcan (2012),
The Archaeology of China: From the Late Paleolithic to the Early Bronze Age
, Cambridge University Press,
ISBN
978-0-521-64310-8
.
Further reading
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Prehistoric cultures of China
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Northeastern China
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Upper Yellow River
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Middle Yellow River
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Lower Yellow River
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Middle and Upper Yangtze
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Lower Yangtze and Huai
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Southern China
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Tibet
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Xinjiang
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Taiwan
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Other
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