Sanxingdui Bronzes
History, Characteristics, Photographs.
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Sanxingdui Bronzes
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Sanxingdui Bronzes (1200-1000 BCE)
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Sanxingdui, now seen as an important centre of Shang Dynasty Art (1700-1050 BCE) - notably monumental bronze sculpture - is the site of an ancient Chinese town near the modern city of Guanghanin, in today's western province of Sichuan. Since 1987, archeological excavations have uncovered a wealth of Bronze Age art dating back to the 12th century BCE. The culture responsible for casting this extraordinary hoard of plastic art is now known as the Sanxingdui Culture, and archeologists have associated it with the ancient Chinese kingdom of Shu. The reason why the discovery of Sanxingdui Bronzes is so important to the evolution of Chinese art, is that it contradicts the conventional narrative that the sole cradle of Chinese civilization was the central plain of the Yellow River. Because of Sanxingdui, plus other finds like the Xingan tombs in Jiangxi, historians and archeologists have begun to acknowledge the existence of "multiple sources" of Chinese civilization. Sanxingdui, a walled city on the banks of the Yazi River, occupying an area of some 3.5 square kilometres, was part of the Sanxingdui Culture, dating to about 1600 BCE, and is situated near Nanxing Township in Chengdu Prefecture, Sichuan. This mysterious Sanxingdui Culture, which spread across western and southern parts of China, was contemporary with the Erlitou culture centred on the eastern province of Henan, and the later part of the Shang Dynasty based at Anyang. What caused its demise remains unclear: likely culprits include natural disasters (evidence of massive flooding has been found), or military conquest by a rival culture. In any event, its somewhat remote geographical position meant that its influence on the evolution of traditional Chinese art - including Chinese pottery as well as bronze sculpture - was unknown until 1986, when labourers stumbled upon a number of sacrificial pits containing thousands of objects made from bronze, jade, gold and ceramic clay. |
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Bronze objects discovered in the pits at Sanxingdui featured bells, human faces, animal sculptures, dragons, snakes and birds. More revealingly, the style used in the creation of these items was completely unknown in Chinese civilization, whose aesthetics had hitherto been assumed to emanate from the eastern Yellow River cultures. Furthermore, Sanxingdui bronze sculptors used a method of bronze-making which was quite different to that used by the Shang. Of all the artifacts, the monumental bronzes aroused the greatest interest, and representative items have been exhibited around the world: Beijing (1987), 1990), Lausanne (1993), Munich (1995), Zurich (1996), London (1996), Copenhagen (1997), New York (1998), Tokyo (1998), and Taipei (1999). In 1997, the purpose-built Sanxingdui Museum was opened to house the collection, close to the original site. Sanxingdui metallurgists developed an advanced bronze casting technology. By adding lead to the traditional combination of copper and tin, they produced a stronger material that could support the creation of far larger and heavier objects. The most spectacular surviving examples of monumental bronze sculpture from Sanxingdui are the dozens of large-scale bronze masks and heads, featuring bulging almond-shaped eyes, with protruding pupils, and large ears. The exact meaning of these artifacts is not clear, but it is possible that the masks were used to represent certain supernatural beings in a variety of quasi-religious rites.
In addition to bronzes, Sanxingdui finds also included many beautiful examples of jade carving, as well as goldsmithing and precious metalwork. Archeologists also discovered a large quantity of ceramic art, much of it deliberately broken or disfigured before burial. For more information about the early art and culture of East Asia, please see the following resources: • Neolithic
Art in China (7500-2000 BCE) |
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• For more about Bronze Age arts and crafts in China, see: Homepage.
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF EAST ASIAN ART |
