Kingly Crafts: The Archaeology of Craft Production in Late Shang China

Author:   Yung-ti Li
Publisher:   Columbia University Press
ISBN:  

9780231192040


Pages:   280
Publication Date:   20 December 2022
Format:   Hardback
Availability:   Out of stock   Availability explained
The supplier is temporarily out of stock of this item. It will be ordered for you on backorder and shipped when it becomes available.

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Kingly Crafts: The Archaeology of Craft Production in Late Shang China


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Overview

The site of Anyang, the last capital of the Shang dynasty, dated to around 1200 to 1000 BCE, is one of the most important sources of knowledge about craft production in Bronze Age China. Excavations of the settlement demonstrate both the advanced level of Shang craft workers and the scale and capacity of the craft industries of the time. However, over the past ninety years, materials unearthed in Anyang by different expeditions have been stored separately in mainland China and Taiwan and rarely considered as a single group, making a thorough study of this important aspect of life in Shang China all but impossible. Through a systematic analysis of the archaeological materials available in both mainland China and Taiwan, Kingly Crafts provides a detailed picture of craft production in Anyang and paves the way for a new understanding of how the Shang capital functioned as a metropolis. Kingly Crafts focuses on the craft-producing activities represented archaeologically in Anyang, including bronze casting, bone working, shell and marble inlay working, lithic working, and pottery production, and reviews the material remains, the technology, aspects of operational sequence, and the production organization of the craft industries. While the level of Shang craftsmanship can be observed from an examination of the finished products, Yung-ti Li demonstrates that it is necessary to study workshop remains and their archaeological context to reconstruct the social and political contexts of craft production. By synthesizing and contextualizing the available examples of these remains excavated in Anyang, Kingly Crafts reveals the relationships between the craft industries and the political authority of the late Shang period.

Full Product Details

Author:   Yung-ti Li
Publisher:   Columbia University Press
Imprint:   Columbia University Press
ISBN:  

9780231192040


ISBN 10:   0231192045
Pages:   280
Publication Date:   20 December 2022
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Out of stock   Availability explained
The supplier is temporarily out of stock of this item. It will be ordered for you on backorder and shipped when it becomes available.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations Acknowledgments 1. Identifying and Defining the Issues: Craft Production, Elite Culture, and Urban Centers in Bronze Age China 2. Craft Production at the Last Shang Capital 3. A Craft of Clay and Metal: Section-mold Casting Technology and the Anyang Bronze Industry 4. Bone Technology, Production Contexts, and the Bone Workshops 5. Locating the Royal Workshop and Other Crafts 6. Long Live the King: Anyang and Its Legacy Notes Bibliography Index

Reviews

I believe this work to be of great significance to the field. Nothing like it has been published for Early China in English, and it establishes the groundwork for future synthetic studies of Shang craft working and economy. Kingly Crafts will be used as an authoritative work for many years to come.--Roderick B. Campbell, author of Violence, Kinship and the Early Chinese State: The Shang and their World


I believe this work to be of great significance to the field. Nothing like it has been published for Early China in English, and it establishes the groundwork for future synthetic studies of Shang craft working and economy. Kingly Crafts will be used as an authoritative work for many years to come. -- Roderick B. Campbell, author of <i>Violence, Kinship and the Early Chinese State: The Shang and their World</i> Li Yung-ti shifts through a century's worth of archaeological data to reconstruct the most up-to-date blueprint for the Shang Dynasty's last capital as a complex and likely planned urban environment-one that integrates layers of elite and non-elite craft production precincts. His vision is fresh and clear-eyed on what the material cultural record can or cannot really tell us-unafraid to question a few of the favored historical-cultural myths. -- Constance A. Cook, author of <i>Ancestors, Kings, and the Dao</i> This is a much anticipated, synthetic study of craftworking at Anyang focusing the Kingly Crafts -especially bronze, bone, ivory, shell and marble. With masterly command of available archaeological data accumulated from 90 years of field investigation and in graceful prose, Li Yung-ti skillfully brings to life the large-scale craft workshop tradition that served the high elite. -- Katheryn Linduff, University of Pittsburgh Anyang has been excavated every year for nearly a century, and yet the last book-length study in a European language is forty-five years old. Yung-ti Li's book brings the study of the last capital of the Shang dynasty, the most important location for understanding Chinese civilization at the end of the second millennium BCE, into the twenty-first century. The political and ritual center is shown to be a unique urban nexus of an elite population. Using bronze vessels and inscribed bones, as well as jade, turquoise, lacquer, shells, and wild and exotic animals, the author reconstructs the inner-workings of Shang society as only a scholar who is also an excavator can. -- Nancy Shatzman Steinhardt, author of <i>The Borders of Chinese Architecture</i> Kingly Crafts is a rich and comprehensive study of craft and art works excavated at Anyang, the last royal center of the Shang Dynasty. Most noteworthy about the book is the variety of crafts it considers. A substantial work. -- Ying Wang, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee


Author Information

Yung-ti Li is associate professor in East Asian languages and civilizations at the University of Chicago.

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