Erlitou culture

The Erlitou culture (Template:Zh) was an early Bronze Age society and archaeological culture. It existed in the Yellow River valley from approximately 1900 to 1500 BC.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn A 2007 study using radiocarbon dating proposed a narrower date range of 1750–1530 BC.Template:Sfn The culture is named after Erlitou, an archaeological site in Yanshi, Henan. It was widely spread throughout Henan and Shanxi and later appeared in Shaanxi and Hubei. Most archaeologists consider Erlitou the first state-level society in China.Template:Sfn Chinese archaeologists generally identify the Erlitou culture as the site of the Xia dynasty, but there is no firm evidence, such as surviving written records, to substantiate such a linkage,Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn as the earliest evidence of Chinese writing dates to the Late Shang period.

Erlitou site

File:二里头文化遗址分布图.svg

Map of discovered Erlitou culture sites; important sites are underscored with a green line

File:Yue (weapon) inlaid with cross pattern. Shanghai Museum.jpg

Bronze ceremonial axe (yuè 鉞) with pattern of crosses inlaid in turquoise, dated between 1800 and 1500 BC

The Erlitou culture may have evolved from the matrix of Longshan culture. Originally centered around Henan and Shanxi province, the culture spread to Shaanxi and Hubei provinces. After the rise of the Erligang culture, the site at Erlitou diminished in size but remained inhabited.Template:Sfn

Discovered in 1959 by Xu Xusheng,Template:Sfn Erlitou is the largest site associated with the culture, with palace buildings and bronze smelting workshops. Erlitou monopolized the production of ritual bronze vessels, including the earliest recovered dings.Template:Sfn The city is on the Yi River, a tributary of the Luo River, which flows into the Yellow River. The city was ; however, because of flood damage only are left.Template:Sfn

The Erlitou Site Museum of the Xia Capital, located in Luoyang, Henan province, which has more than 2,000 items excavated from the Erlitou site in its collection, opened in October 2019.

Phases

File:二里头一号宫殿平面图 zh hant.png

Architectural layout of palace 1 (phase III)

The site's growth is divided into four phases.Template:Sfn

During Phase I, covering , Erlitou was a rapidly growing regional center with an estimated population of several thousand people,Template:Sfn but not yet an urban civilization.Template:Sfn

Urbanization began in Phase II, expanding to with a population of around 11,000.Template:Sfn A palace area of was demarcated by four roads. It contained the Palace 3, composed of three courtyards along a 150-metre axis, and Palace 5.Template:Sfn A bronze foundry was established to the south of the palatial complex and was controlled by the elite.Template:Sfn Tracks of vehicles were discovered near the palace. This is the earliest example of the usage of wheeled wagons in China.Template:Sfn

The city reached its peak in Phase III, and may have had a population of around 24,000.Template:Sfn The palatial complex was surrounded by a two-meter-thick rammed-earth wall, and Palaces 1, 7, 8 and 9 were built. Palace 1, the largest, had an area of .Template:Sfn Palaces 3 and 5 were abandoned and replaced by Palace 2, measuring , and Palace 4.Template:Sfn

In Phase IV, the population decreased to around 20,000, but building continued. Palace 6 was built as an extension of Palace 2, and Palaces 10 and 11 were built. Phase IV overlaps with the Lower Phase of the Erligang culture (1600–1450 BC). Around 1600 BC, a walled city was built at Yanshi, about northeast of Erlitou.Template:Sfn

Production of bronzes and other elite goods ceased at the end of Phase IV, at the same time as the Erligang city of Zhengzhou was established to the east. There is no evidence of destruction by fire or war, but, during the Upper Erligang phase (1450–1300 BC), all the palaces were abandoned, and Erlitou was reduced to a village of .Template:Sfn

Bronzeworking

The Erlitou culture is the earliest large-scale bronze producing culture in China, with the new-fashioned section-mold process there to produce ritual vessels and other bronzes.

Although the remains of bronze have been found in the Qijia and Siba Cultures, Erlitou bronzes are significantly more advanced and prolific. The Erlitou culture not only has bronze tools and bell musical instruments, but also bronze weapons and unique animal-faced plaques, especially more than ten kinds of bronze vessels have been unearthed. This shows that the bronze casting of Erlitou is diverse and systematic.

There are no copper resources in the Luoyang Plain. It has been suggested the Eridou culture acquired the ore in the Zhongtiao Mountains of southern Shanxi, the same place they probably acquired salt.Template:Sfn

Erlitou bronzes have obvious features imitating pottery, with plain surfaces or simple geometric patterns. In the third phase of the Erlitou culture, the perforated decoration that was very popular throughout the Erlitou culture appeared on the bronze jue.

Many archetypal Chinese artifacts were first found in Erlitou culture sites. The earliest bronze ding in China were found in the fourth stage of the Erlitou culture, decorated with striped grid patterns. The earliest metal bells, with one found in the Taosi site, and four in the Erlitou site, dated to about 2000 BC, may have been derived from the earlier pottery prototype.Template:Sfnp The first bronze dagger-axe or ge appeared at the Erlitou site,Template:Sfnp where two were found among over 200 bronze artifacts (as of 2002) at the site.Template:Sfnp Three jade ge were also discovered from the same site.Template:Sfnp

• Bronze jue goblet
  Bronze jue goblet
• Bronze jue goblet
  Bronze jue goblet
• Ornamental bronze plaque inlaid with turquoise pieces
  Ornamental bronze plaque inlaid with turquoise pieces
• File:Turquoise-Inlaid Plaque with Stylized Animal-Mask Decoration and Elongated Extension, 1900-1350 BC, Neolithic to Shang period, Erlitou culture, China, bronze with turquoise inlay - Sackler Museum - DSC02630.JPG
• Bronze ding cauldron
  Bronze ding cauldron

Jadeworking

Like other contemporaneous cultures in China, jade was worked into ritual objects at Erlitou sites. These included ceremonial blades (zhang) as well as ritual dagger-axes (ge).

• Jade ritual blade with seven holes
  Jade ritual blade with seven holes
• Jade ritual blade with ornate edges
  Jade ritual blade with ornate edges
• Jade ritual dagger-axe (ge)
  Jade ritual dagger-axe (ge)

Symbols

Symbols on ceramic pieces have been found at Erlitou culture sites, leading to speculation about possible connections with early Chinese characters, which appear several centuries later in the same region. However, no clear linkage has been proven yet, thus the symbols are currently considered markings or proto-writing.

• Early symbols appearing on ceramics; from the site of Yanshi
  Early symbols appearing on ceramics; from the site of Yanshi
• File:二里头遗址三期陶纹.png
• File:Characters from Erlitou Culture, Yanshi, Henan (10185242295).jpg

Relation to traditional accounts

File:Erlitou sites and Xia capitals.svg

Erlitou sites (black) and Xia capitals identified in traditional sources (red, with numbers for those from the "current text" version of the Bamboo Annals)

A major goal of archaeology in China has been the search for the capitals of the Xia and Shang dynasties described in traditional accounts as inhabiting the Yellow River valley.Template:Sfn These originally oral traditions were recorded much later in histories such as the Bamboo Annals (c. Template:Trim) and the Records of the Grand Historian (1st century BC), and their historicity, particularly regarding the Xia, was challenged by the Doubting Antiquity School of Chinese history.Template:Sfn The discovery of writing in the form of oracle bones at Yinxu in Anyang definitively established the site as the last capital of the Shang, but such evidence is unavailable for earlier sites.Template:Sfn

The Erlitou culture is found in broadly the same area (southern Shanxi and western Henan) and same period (early second millennium BC) as the received texts indicate for the Xia, leading many scholars, especially in China, to identify the Erlitou culture as the material residue of the Xia, with Erlitou as its capital.Template:Sfn

When Xu Xusheng first discovered Erlitou, he suggested that it was Bo, the first capital of the Shang under King Tang in the traditional account.Template:Sfn Since the late 1970s, archaeologists in China have tended to identify the site with Zhenxun, the last Xia capital.Template:Sfn The traditional account of the overthrow of the Xia by the Shang has been identified with the ends of each of the four phases of the site by different authors. The Xia–Shang–Zhou Chronology Project identified all four phases of Erlitou as Xia, and the construction of the Yanshi walled city as the founding of the Shang.Template:Sfn As the period indicated by the Bamboo Annals was longer than the span of the Erlitou culture, the project also assigned the later phases of the Wangwan III variant of the Longshan culture to the Xia period.Template:Sfnp Other scholars, particularly outside China, point to the lack of any firm evidence for such an identification, and argue that the historiographical focus of Chinese archaeology is unduly limiting.Template:Sfn

Archaeological evidence of a large outburst flood at Jishi Gorge that destroyed the Lajia site on the upper reaches of the Yellow River has been dated to about 1920 BC. This date is shortly before the rise of the Erlitou culture in the middle Yellow River valley and the Yueshi culture in Shandong, following the decline of the Longshan culture in the North China Plain. The authors suggest that this flood may have been the basis for the later myth, and contributed to the transition of cultures. They further argue that the timing is further evidence for the identification of the Xia with the Erlitou culture. However, no evidence of contemporaneous widespread flooding in the North China Plain has yet been found.

See also

• List of Neolithic cultures of China
• Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors

References

Works cited

• Original article in Kaogu 2007.8: 74–84.

External links

• Bronze Age China, The Golden Age of Chinese Archaeology: Exhibition brochure, National Gallery of Art.
• Erlitou Site, Erlitou Site – Relics of the Capital of the Xia Dynasty, Cultural China