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Horses and chariots—and the associated technology and expertise—derived from the steppe contributed to the success of the Zhou conquest of the Shang in c. 1045 BC and remained important throughout Zhou rule in ancient China. On the basis of material cultural patterns, including the style and material used in bridle cheek-pieces found in tombs of the late second and early first millennium BC, this paper points to a northern origin for Zhou horses. Important intermediaries, providing these horses, were the clans whose cemeteries have been identified on the northern edges of the Central Plains. The necessity for repeated exchanges bringing south horses from the north was a consequence of key environmental differences between the steppe and the Central Plains, including climate, geomorphology, essential soil nutrients, and land use. These created significant difficulties in sustainably breeding and pasturing horses of quality. As a result, the people of the Central Plains were bound, over millennia, to seek horses from the northwest, along a cultural corridor that also moved northern materials and technologies, such as gold-, iron- and some bronze-working, into the Central Plains from the steppes.

In place of the traditional view that raids and invasion from the north introduced new weapons and chariots to the Shang (c. 1200 BC), we argue that archaeological evidence illustrates the presence of several regional groups at or near the late Shang centre, Anyang. Here we review burial practices at Anyang dating to the late second millennium BC, and describe a substantial group of prone burials that reflect a ritual practice contrasting with that of the predominant Shang elite. Such burials occur at all social levels, from victims of sacrifice to death attendants, and include members of lower and higher elites. Particularly conspicuous are chariot drivers in some chariot pits. An elite-level link with chariots is confirmed by the burial of a military leader in tomb M54 at Huayuanzhuang at Anyang, with tools that match exactly those of chariot drivers. Given that prone burial is known to the north, in the Mongolian region that provided chariots and horses to the Shang, a route can be traced eastwards and southwards, down the Yellow River, and then through mountain basins to Anyang. Our inference is that a group originally from outside the Central Plains can be identified in these distinctive burials. This marks a first step towards understanding the heterogeneity in the central population of the late Shang.

Recent archaeological survey and excavation in China have demonstrated that large sites of the late fourth and third millennia BC were situated not on the Central Plains - where the later dynastic centres were located - but along the Yangtze and lower Yellow River Basins. Their decline in the late third and second millennia BC coincided with the growth of sites to the north of the Central Plains. Evidence for settlement size and a new chronology constructed from radiocarbon dates emphasise discontinuities in the geographic distribution of settlements, combined with continuity in cultural practices of ritual feasts and the use of symbolic jades.

“I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.” ―Charlotte Brontë,Jane Eyre During Independence of the Nation, where the country was being divided on the bases of religion, women were being victimized, oppressed and traumatized for being a ‘Woman’. This has been rendered in writings of various writers who have shown an agonizing and harrowing condition of women by citing events which occurred during partition of India and Pakistan. But this was only one side of the coin as on the other side there were women who strongly opposed the harassment being done on them or others either by killing or dying in the struggle. Amrita Pritam’s novel Pinjar has broken the stereotype image of women and shown a strong character like Puroo, who defy the social law and acts like an impregnable bird who can never be captured again in the cage of society. The aforesaid novel clearly depicts the resilience of women and enunciates the victimized as strong, powerful gender that not only suffered the geographical, mental, physical and social partition but also sacrificed their life as true martyrs. The proposed paper would highlight the resilience of Puroo, a victim of cross-religious conflict, who is abducted by a man who later marries her. She also takes up a stand on her decision of staying back with her abductor husband during the Recovery Programme of 1947. She does that only because he accepted her when her own people were not ready to do so. Puroo manifests the condition of all the women who were not allowed to come back by their family in fear of social stigma. She asserted herself by saying that after her abduction “religion had become an insurmountable obstacle; neither her parents nor her in-laws had been willing to accept her. And now the same religion had become so accommodating!” She delineates into the fact that a woman is not an object which can be exchanged on the possessors will; rather a woman has all the right to decide what she wants or whom she wants to choose. Amrita Pritam also shows Puroo as a woman who despite herself being a sufferer does not confines to her own suffering but has a panorama of the condition of women during Partition. She delves in temerarious situation while trying to save her sister-in-law from her abductor; she secretively keeps her in her house and hands over her sister-in-law to her husband. Thus she is an epitome of a strong woman who stands as a model for the society. A reading of Pinjar is a clear testimony to the fact that Amrita Pritam dared to be different and didn’t portray partition victims’ only as pathetic creatures depending for male support or shedding tears and taking pity on their painful past but as true martyrs who underwent silent sacrifice.

Ancient China is one of the most important regions for the development of agriculture in human history, contributing the two key crops millet and rice. Meanwhile, it was closely connected to the wider Eurasian network, receiving wheat and barley from the West. Because of the large isotopic differences between C3 and C4 crops, we are able to track their changing importance in different regions of China and underlying connections to their cultural and environmental contexts. We take a ‘big data’ approach, assembling the stable isotopic measurements on over 2000 ancient human bones. This is the first comprehensive meta-analysis of ancient Chinese human stable carbon and nitrogen isotope results and creates a more efficient tool for scholars to establish a fuller picture of dietary practices in ancient China. By charting their spatial-temporal variation, we can show that the primary crop facilitating the rise of the early Chinese state in the Central Plains was millet, particularly during the Bronze Age. The dominance of millet (C4), from an isotopic viewpoint, offers an opportunity to investigate the major changes in dietary practice through the proxy of δ13C, as a result of shifts between millet and other major C3 crops (rice, wheat and barley). More importantly, millet is probably one of the earliest examples for the existing local system in the Central Plains within which other imported elements (e.g. wheat) have to fit. This pattern, which has also been repetitively discovered with bronze and iron technology in later periods, starts to characterise some intrinsic features of Chinese prehistory.

The role of Panlongcheng—a walled settlement on the Yangtze River with obvious links to the Erligang capital at Zhengzhou, ~ 500 km to the north—in early Bronze Age China has been the subject of much debate. Panlongcheng is a typical Erligang site (~ 1500–1300 BC), with evidence for people of elite status, unlike any other site apart from Zhengzhou itself. The tombs and bronzes at Panlongcheng, as well as other materials, closely resemble those at Zhengzhou. Why was Panlongcheng established along the Yangtze River, and what were the Erligang elites doing there? Considering the rich copper deposits in this area, it is widely assumed that the major function of Panlongcheng was to ship metal to Zhengzhou, and in return to receive bronze vessels from Zhengzhou. The purpose of this paper is to revisit this discussion through a re-evaluation of the scientific data on the bronzes from each site. A series of differences and similarities in the chemical and isotopic compositions of the metal objects at Panlongcheng and Zhengzhou are identified, suggesting that the relationship was more complex than was previously thought. In this light, despite a close social and presumably political affiliation with Zhengzhou, Panlongcheng appears likely to have had its own metal-casting capability, rather than having to rely completely on finished objects imported from Zhengzhou. This discovery encourages scholars to re-consider the metal supply network and the underlying political landscape in early dynastic China, shifting from a linear model to a complex but probably more realistic one.

Early Iron Age pastoralists of the Eurasian steppes relied heavily on copper for weapons and ornaments, and new analysis of metal composition enables long-distance networks to be identified. Primary circulation from source areas where copper was mined can be distinguished alongside the secondary circulation of alloy types with high proportions of tin-bronze or leaded tin-bronze. The relative presence of trace elements, depleted during recycling events, provides a proxy for the flow of metal between regions. The localised seasonal movements characteristic of these mobile steppe societies underlie some of these patterns, but the evidence also indicates more extensive transfers, including the direct movement of finished objects over considerable distances.

The construction chronology of three of the earliest Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes (Caves 268, 272, and 275) has been the subject of ongoing debate for over half a century. This chronology is a crucial topic in terms of further understanding of the establishment of the Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes, early Buddhism in the Gansu corridor, and its relationship with Buddhism developed in the Central Plains. Building upon archaeological, art historical and radiocarbon (14C) dating studies, we integrate new 14C data with these previously published findings utilizing Bayesian statistical modeling to improve the chronological resolution of this issue. Thus, we determine that all three of these caves were constructed around AD 410–440, suggesting coeval rather than sequential construction.

In recent years, several research groups have concluded that traditional ‘provenance studies’ of metals, in which an object is linearly related to a single source, do not represent the reality of many archaeological assemblages. This paper sets out a new systematic approach to metal chemistry designed to characterize, using trace elements and isotopes in an assemblage of material, the underlying circulation of metal. When applied in China to the use of leaded tin bronze to cast the large and numerous ritual vessels of the Shang (c. 1500-1045 BC) and the Zhou dynasties (c. 1045-771 BC), the methodology reveals the complexity of the copper sources on which the major late Shang capital at Anyang depended for its bronze workshops. This has been recognised by many in the past, but has yet to prompt a full reassessment of the organisation of the Shang bronze industry. Here we point out the possibility of a need to transport copper from distant regions in the south, on the Yangzi, and even from far to the north, in northeast China. Using lead isotope data, presented in a new format, we attempt to enlarge the understanding of this organisation, demonstrating that, while the Zhou took over some of the range of copper available to the middle Anyang period, the lead sources exploited in early and middle Anyang phases differed from those taken up by the Zhou. The methodology enables a further understanding of the network on which the major dynasties depended for supplies of copper, lead and tin, and can thus lead us towards one of the major objectives of the new interpretational system - to give equal weight to archaeological and chemical data.

Over the last five years, excavation of a large, stone, fortified site at Shimao, on the northern edge of the Loess Plateau in Shaanxi Province, China, has radically changed our understanding of the events that precipitated the development of the first bronze casting in central China at Erlitou (Figure 1). An international conference on the Shimao site, held at Shenmu in August 2016, explored many aspects of this major discovery.

Highly coloured, lead glazed ceramic vessels of the early Tang period, known as sancai, or three colour ware, take on unusual shapes and decoration often reminiscent of earlier metalwork from Iran. The paper examines possible sources of this flamboyant and apparently outside appearance to argue that the sancai was not directly based on Iranian metal work or ceramics. Rather the wares were produced in a context in which the Tang seem to have wished to foster a cosmopolitan court that matched their political aspirations. Sancai seems to have been deliberately concocted to create an impression of contact with Central Asia and places further west, without in fact being a direct product of such relations. Sancai was produced at kilns in China. Tomb figures of horses, camels, dancers and musicians, likewise, suggested a flourishing trade with Central Asia. As both the vessels and the figures were intended for burial, it seems that the elite wished to perpetuate after death their aspirations to be affil...

Elaborately glazed Chinese pottery figures of camels and servants, dating to the Tang dynasty (A.D. 618–906), have been much prized by collectors and museums over the last three quarters of a century. They have been readily admired as a category of sculpture, but little attention has been paid to their functions within the tomb complex. An examination of the tomb of the First Emperor (d. 210 B.C.) reveals tomb figures as just one part of a large complex of structures and images. The famous terracotta warriors were an element in the elaborate burial of the Emperor, which also included ‘real’ people and animals, miniature bronze chariots, models of palaces and images of the heavenly bodies. If we are to understand the purposes of this complex of many different parts, we need to consider how the ancient Chinese viewed images of all categories. It would appear that in the eyes of the ancient Chinese, images were equivalent to the subject of the image. By creating images in bronze, pottery or in pictures, the ancient Chinese were presenting a universe for the dead Emperor. This article describes the philosophical concepts that informed this understanding of images and illustrates the discussion with archaeological finds and textual information. The archaeological discoveries of recent years have made a reassessment of Chinese tomb models necessary. The powers of these images were deemed to be considerable. The Chinese have never collected tomb figures because, in their view, such figures were the actual servants and soldiers of the dead.

In the article by Pollard et al. (2017), Figure 2 was incorrectly duplicated as Figure 5.

Human beings adapt themselves according to the environment they live in and create their own space among others for better survival in society. The geographical and societal space they acquire gives them a sense of security and a sense of belongingness. If this space is taken away by dislocating them, it leads to mental and physical vacuum which is experienced across generations. A similar problem of space can be traced back in the history of India, when the partition of the country into India and Pakistan took place. People who were living in one town from many generations were dislocated on the basis of religion they belonged to. Feeling of security and belongingness they once enjoyed was snatched from them and they became an outsider in their own country. They were forced to migrate from one place to another and were left with only alternative, to readept themselves to create their new identity. Real accounts of such vacuums caused by partition can be seen in Bhisham Sahni’s novel Tamas . Hindu and Sikh families of Small-Town province were caught in the fury of political turmoil of Partition due to religious riots that broke out leading to massacre, suicide, abduction and rape. Peace loving people who enjoyed space in their homeland were dislocated in the name of religion. Hindus and Muslims of one town who were friends and neighbors all their life turned into enemies and fought with one another to destroy the space and identity of people on the basis of petty issues. In the proposed paper the researcher aims to analyse the effect of partition in deconstruction and reconstruction of space and the strategies adopted by characters to relocate themselves in alien environments and geographical space. Keywords: Place, Space, Partition, Migration, Dislocation, Belongingness.

The great cast bronzes of China are today deservedly celebrated for their splendour and sheer size. By looking behind that surface impression, and into the characters of their find-contexts, one can - as for any class of artefact - see behind what they are for us towards what they were in their own time.

Les découvertes archéologiques récentes ont démontré que la réutilisation d'objets anciens est un phénomène très répandu dans l'art de la taille du jade en Chine à l'Âge du bronze. De plus, les tombes princières de Chine du Nord datant du Xe au VIIe siècle contiennent souvent de grandes quantités de perles en cornaline (agate rouge). À l'origine, il semble que de telles perles n'ont pas été produites en Chine, mais qu'il s'agit d'objets importés de loin, peut-être de l'Inde, en passant par l'Asie centrale ; des perles semblables, probablement aussi de provenance indienne, ont été découvertes en Mésopotamie. Au cours de la période Zhou, ces perles furent imitées par des artisans chinois en utilisant des pierres colorées d'origine locale. Dans les tombes où elles ont été trouvées, on remarque une corrélation entre la présence de perles de haute qualité et le rang social élevé de l'occupant de la tombe. L'étude approfondie de ces matériaux est encore en cours., Rawson Jessica. In Search of Ancient Red Beads and Carved Jade in Modern China. In: Cahiers d'Extrême-Asie, vol. 17, 2008. Studies in Chinese Art History — Études sur l'histoire de l'art chinois. En hommage à Lothar Ledderose. pp. 1-15.

While incense burners were well known in ancient Western Asia, they do not seem to have been used in China before the sixth or fifth centuries BC. Even then, they were rare. The paper explores the introduction to China of one particular type of incense burner, the so-called hill censer. This burner had a coni- cal cover shaped like a mountain sitting on the bowl in which the incense was placed. Such censers often had a tall stem, sometimes shaped like a strange creature, seemingly holding up the mountain. This unusual shape has often been discussed as a simple development from an earlier censer type with a low domed cover. The paper suggests that the censer in the shape of the mountain was in fact stimulated by the example of censors employed in the Achaemenid Empire. Some are known from the sculptures at Persepolis and others from silver censers from Lydia. These censers have tall conical covers on a small bowl supported on a tall stem. Importantly, the Iranian censers had small birds on the top of the covers, something also seen on the Chinese pieces. There was much exchange between the areas of present-day China and Iran by way of Siberia. Illustrations of the Achaemenid type of censer appear on textiles from Pazyryk in the Altai Moun- tains. The Chinese only adopted these exotic shapes for their censers when the practices of burning incense were already well established. That is, when they recognised the purpose of the foreign artefact. Moreover, the mountain shape and its supports were entirely Chinese interpretations and illustrate a belief that mountains were the homes of immortals. Indeed the censers may have been intended to represent the imaginary islands in the east- ern sea thought to be the homes of immortals. When humans approached the islands they disappeared below the waves. The creatures, acting as supports and holding up the mountains, may therefore have been thought to explain the way in which the mountainous isles may have appeared and disappeared., Alors que les brûle-parfums sont bien connus dans l'Asie de l'Ouest aux époques anciennes, ils ne semblent pas avoir été en usage en Chine avant les VIe ou Ve siècles avant notre ère, époque où ils sont encore rares. Cet article est consacré à l'introduction en Chine d'un type particulier de brûle-parfum dont le couvercle conique en forme de montagne repose sur la coupe où se trouvait l'encens. Généralement, le pied est haut et peut représenter une créature étrange soutenant la montagne. Cette forme peu commune a souvent été considérée comme le développement d'un type plus ancien ayant un couvercle en dôme de faible hauteur. Dans cet article, il est suggéré que ce brûle-parfum en forme de montagne a été conçu sur le modèle de brûle-parfums utilisés dans l'empire achéménide. Certains de ceux-ci sont connus par la sculpture de Persepolis tandis que d'autres exemples, en argent, proviennent de Lydie. Ils ont un haut couvercle conique fermant une petite coupe soutenue par un haut pied. Il est important de noter que des oiseaux sont perchés au sommet des brûle-parfums iraniens, une caractéristique qui se trouve aussi sur les pièces chinoises. Il y a eu beaucoup d'échanges entre les aires couvertes aujourd'hui par la Chine et par l'Iran, le lien se faisant par la voie de la Sibérie. Des représentations du type achéménide figurent sur des textiles provenant de Pazyryk dans les Altaï. Les Chinois adoptèrent ces formes exotiques pour leurs brûle-parfums une fois seulement que la coutume de brûler de l'encens y eut été bien établie, lorsqu'ils eurent reconnu la fonction de cet objet d'origine étrangère. De plus, la forme de la montagne et le support de celle-ci sont de pures interprétations chinoises. Ces caractéristiques illustrent une croyance selon laquelle les montagnes étaient des lieux où vivaient les immortels. De fait, les brûle-parfums ont probablement été conçus comme représentant les îles imaginaires de la mer orientale où l'on pensait que vivaient les immortels. Lorsque les humains approchaient de ces îles, elles disparaissaient sous les vagues. Les créatures qui portaient ces montagnes à bout de bras pourraient avoir été conçues afin de montrer comment les îles apparaissaient et disparaissaient tour à tour., Rawson Jessica. The Chinese Hill Censer, boshan lu : A Note on Origins, Influences and Meanings. In: Arts asiatiques, tome 61, 2006. pp. 75-86.

Mountainous landscapes, with massive crags and narrow fissures between rocks, through which water spouts, are among the principal subjects of paintings in China. This chapter addresses the question, why, in the first place, were these subjects chosen? It focuses on developments made during the Qin (221–207 bc) and Han (206 bc–ad 220) dynasties, from the third century bc onwards. It explores the ways in which the conditions prevailing in the Qin and Han periods moulded some aspects of the later Chinese practice. It is argued that the ways in which the Chinese from the Han period onwards viewed the cosmos determined their choice of mountains as a major subject for painted images. The chapter discusses attitudes to the cosmos and the aesthetic consequences of these views. It considers the whole range of ideas about the universe and not simply with depictions or models of mountains as representing one part of the cosmos.

The Great Bronze Age of China, an exhibition from the People's Republic of China edited by Wen Fong, New York and London: Thames & Hudson, 1980, 401 pp., 142 ills, 120 colour pls, £20 Out of China's Earth, Archaeological Discoveries in the People's Republic of China, by Qian Hao, Chen Heyi and Ru Suichu, London: Frederick Muller and Beijing: China Pictorial, 1981, 206 pp., 286 ills, mainly in colour, £25 The First Emperor of China, by Arthur Cotterell, London: Macmillan 1981, 208 pp., 73 ills, 17 colour pls, £9.95 Han Civilisation, by Wang Zhongshu, translated by K.C. Chang and others, London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982, 261 pp., 320 ills, £24.50 Art of Dynastic China, by William Watson, London: Thames & Hudson, 1981, 633 pp., 831 ills, 160 colour pls, £60

On a souvent remarqué que des changements sont intervenus dans le répertoire des vases en bronze au début des Han. Dans cet article sont étudiés certains de ces changements vus sous l'angle de l'influence que l'ancien royaume de Chu exerçait encore à l'époque Han. Un certain nombre de types de vases parmi les plus importants dérivent de laques méridionaux, y compris les coupes à oreilles pour le vin et les vases cylindriques connus sous les noms de zun et de zhi. Ces laques furent adoptés par Qin après qu'il eut conquis Chu, et progressivement englobés dans les répertoires des dynasties Qin et Han des régions métropolitaines. Trois types de vases trouvés dans les tombes Han de Mancheng, le boshanlu, le vase hu à haute encolure munie d'une anse en forme de chaîne, et des coupes jumelles cylindriques que supporte un oiseau perché sur un félin, trouvent tous une source directe à Chu. Il n'y a que peu de raisons, sinon aucune raison, de penser que ces bronzes étaient populaires à Qin. Au contraire, ils semblent avoir été adoptés par les Han, s'essayant à imiter les coutumes de Chu. En plus de ces catégories de vases, les Han semblent avoir tiré de Chu une part de l'intérêt qu'ils portèrent aux figures à caractère sculptural et servant de supports de vases, à l'usage des incrustations d'or et d'argent, à la dorure. Ces techniques qui semblent réservées au décor des vases appartenant aux types les plus importants, ont servi à distinguer ces bronzes de pièces décorées moins somptueusement. La distinction de plusieurs catégories différentes dans le répertoire même des vases en bronze reflète des soucis d'ordre religieux et social., Rawson Jessica. Chu Influences on the Development of Han bronze vessels. In: Arts asiatiques, tome 44, 1989. pp. 84-99.

One of the greatest enigmas in the study of Bronze Age China is the source of highly radiogenic lead discovered in the copper-based objects of the Shang period (ca. 1500–1046 BC). Although being relatively rare in nature, such lead contributed over half of the lead consumed across a vast area from the Yellow River to the Yangtze. Identifying its source and supply network would significantly contribute to our understanding of how China achieved the largest metal production across Eurasia. The past thirty years of research have seen various proposals for the origin of this lead, including south-western China, the middle Yangtze River valley, the Qinling and Zhongtiao mountains, and even Africa. This paper attempts to illustrate the tempero-spatial pattern of this highly radiogenic lead using the largest possible databank. Furthermore, by going beyond the bronze data and investigating lead isotopes in non-metal objects, we confirm that multiple sources of highly radiogenic lead must have been used across Chinese history. In turn, this implies the feasibility of a multi-source model for the lead in the Shang bronzes.