1. Editor's note: Prior to this talk most discussion of the evidence for early sheet metal or wrought metal centered on the ceramic skeuomorphs of the he or lihe vessel types of the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze age. La Plante's consideration of specific details on the earliest bronzes as evidence for sheet-metal models used for casting the earliest jue and jia seemed to offer fresh insights. Early China received the written version of the talk in May 1985 and the final version in June 1988. It should be noted that in Shang Ritual Bronzes in the Arthur M. Sackler Collections (1987), esp. pp. 15–16Google Scholar, Robert W. Bagley summarizes the evidence for a metalworking tradition prior to bronze casting and also points to some of the same details in his discussion of the jue and the jia, pp. 147ff. and 149ff., respectively.--N.T.P.

2. Editor's note: Bagley, Robert W., “P'an-lung-ch'eng: A Shang City in Hupei,” Artibus Asiae 39 (1977): 165–219CrossRefGoogle Scholar. La Plante's original paper was cited by Tom Chase, conservator, Freer Gallery of Art, at the Origins of Chinese Civilization Conference held June 1978 in Berkeley, California. At the conference Bag ley also reiterated some of the same points, and Louisa G. Fitzgerald Huber summarized the evidence for the relative chronology between the Longshan culture of Shandong and the Zhongyuan and for the ceramic copies of wrought metal vessels. See her “The Relationship of the Painted Pottery and Lung-shan Cultures,” in Keightley, Oavid N., ed., The Origins of Chinese Civilization (Berkeley, 1983), pp. 297–319, esp. pp. 207ff. and map 7.2CrossRefGoogle Scholar. It should be pointed out that in 1946, in “The Sites of Ch'i Chia P'ing and Lo Han T'ang” (BMFEA 18 [1946]:383–489)Google Scholar, Margit Bylin-Althin first drew attention to pottery from Qijia, Gansu, which in her opinion revealed the influence of metal vessels.--N.T.P.

3. Published in Early China 6 (1980–1981):4–30Google Scholar. [Editor's note: Barnard's original counterargument was presented at the Origins of Chinese Civilization Conference--N.T.P.]

In the discussion of early metalworking, the terms “sheet metal” and “wrought metal” frequently appear to be used interchangeably. Sheet metalt however, differs from wrought metal 1n many ways. Wrought metal is forged and pounded; sheet metal is formed cold by cutting and curving parts of the vessel, putting them together by soldering or crimping and riveting. Sheet metal may be pushed into shallow curvatures by repeated pressure from a stone, wood, or bone tool. Vessels made of sheet metal are usually angular in profile, although the sheet can easily be formed into a cylinder with a flat bottom, as in an ordinary tin cup. Lips and handles are strengthened by rolling the edges, making the finished vessel safer to use.

The wrought-metal tradition is blacksmithing, associated with permanent settlement, but the sheet-metal tradition is white-smithing, associated with less permanent settlement, such as that of nomadic peoples, itinerant craftsmen, and gypsies.

4. Xueqin, Li, The Wonder of Chinese Bronzes (Beijing, 1980), p. 4Google Scholar; see diso note 15 below.

5. Editor's note : In the “Introduction” to Chinese Ritual Bronzes, pp. 13–64, Bagley discusses in considerable detail many technical points only briefly treated in the present paper, such as the origin and development of flanges, section molds, the development of cores, and mold assembly.

6. Once the practice of mold making had reached a certain sophistication it was possible to cast vessels by carving directly into the mold material, but mold making without models could not have been the first phase for several reasons. By the Middle Shang, it was quite common to produce vessels with handles, for example, which had not existed on the model. Some ding seem to have had their legs carved directly into the mold as well. See, for example, the large ding, catalogue no. 4, in Wen Fong, , ed., The Great Bronze Age of China (New York, 1980)Google Scholar.

7. Li Chi (Li Ji) and Wan Chia-pao (Wan Jiabdo). “Yinxu chutu qingtong guxing qi zhi yanjiu” (Studies of the Bronze Ku-Beaker), Archeologica Sinica, n.s. (1964)Google Scholar.

8. Chi, Li, “Ji Xiaotun chutu zhi qingtong qi,” Zhongguo kaogu xuebao 3 (1948):1–99, and 4 (1949):1–69Google Scholar.

9. See notes 2 and 15 for discussion of ceramic copies of the metal vessels. For illustrative material see Bagley's “Introduction” in Shang Ritual Bronzes, and Huber, , “The Relationship of the Painted Pottery and Longshan Cultures,” figures on pp. 197–201Google Scholar. Some pottery from Erlitou Phase III with which the first bronze figures are associated is described by Chang, K. C. (The Archeology of Ancient China, 4th rev. ed. [New Haven, 1986], p. 312)Google Scholar as “an assemblage of wine vessels, including the characteristic ho pot, chüeh cup, chia cup, and ku cup. These are identical to the bronze vessel types bearing the same namest some found contemporaneously and others later.” The six bronze jue from Erlitou that I have examined are similar to the pottery vessels illustrated by Chang, but I cannot agree that they are identical. The tall lihe (p. 313, fig. 264) has the strap handle totally unsuited to clay. It has two spaced posts projecting from the neck to the inside of the handle for support. This is convincing evidence that even the maker of the piece saw the unnatural character of this handle produced in clay. There are other examples as well at the Archeological Field Station Museum.

[Editor's note: For the view that Erlitou III represents Late Xia culture, see the article in this issue by Louisa G. Fitzgerald Huber. Accordingly, the hypothetical sheet-metal models would date to this phase if not to the earlier Xia, Phases I and II of the Late Neolithic. In the same article, note 96, a number of small pouring vessels from Henan are cited as predecessors of the early cast bronze jue.-N.T.P.]

10. Chang, K. C., The Archeology of Ancient China (New Haven, 1963). p. 91Google Scholar.

11. Barnard, Noel, Bronze Casting and Bronze Alloys in Ancient China (Tokyo, 1961), p. 75Google Scholar.

12. Te-k'un, Cheng, Archeology in China, vol. 2: Shang China (Cambridge, England, 1961), p. 35Google Scholar.

13. Sheet-metal parts could have been joined to form vessels by either soft soldering and crimping or riveting and sealing the seams with pitch. If the pottery similarities to the details of rivets and seams are reliable, apparently crimping and riveting preceded the soldering. On the other hand what are the “design” elements of the Erlitou Phase (the horizontal “thread line” or “bowstring” and the “bosses”) if not remembrances of rivets and seams? That they appear in some vessels but not in all may indicate a chronological factor or even a geographical one. It does not necessarily indicate a simple decorative whim, as seems widely supposed.

On the use of pitch as an adhesive for copper sheets, cf. Rudenko, S. I., The Frozen Tombs of Siberia (Moscow/Leningrad, 1953: first English publication [with author 's revisions], University of California Press, Berkeley, 1970), p. 76Google Scholar, where fronts and backs of sheet-copper stamped figures of flying geese or ducks are described as being fastened together with pitch.

Pitch would have been the ideal adhesive for holding sections of a sheet-metal model together during the mold-making process. Its waterproof character would be unaffected by the damp clay, and the pitch would be consumed during the firing of the molds; thus, the model could be taken apart, section by section, after the fired molds were removed, freeing the core in one piece.

14. See notes 2 and 8.

15. See Xueqin, Li, The Wonder of Chinese Bronzes, pp. 1–7Google Scholar, and Bagley, Robert W., Shang Ritual Bronzes, pp. 15–16Google Scholar, for good summaries of the archaeological finds dated to the beginning of the second millennium. Among the metal finds there are a few copper implements, some hammered, some cast. Two cast-bronze mirrors are also found. In her article in the present issue (note 97) Louisa Huber states: “Regarding the possible influence of western metallurgy on the beginnings of the Chinese Bronze Age, it is important to note that the first find of a cast copper knife--definitely of a non-Chinese type--along with a cast copper socketed axe was made at a Qijla site in Minxian, Gansu, (Kaogu 1985.11:978, Fig. 2:10, 11)Google Scholar.” In “The Relationship of the Painted Pottery and Lung-shan Cultures,” Louisa Huber took the opposite view, stressing that there are “no signs among pottery vessels in Shantung of any metallic features …. The vessels remain firmly and wholly ceramic in character” (p. 209). In contrast, she noted that many features--imitation rivets, broad, flat handles, flat bottoms, and relatively thin walls--of the pottery lihe and he vessels from Zhongyuan and other sites are “clearly metallic in character” (p. 207). The lihe, in particular, is cited as evidence that Zhongyuan craftsmen adopted the li-leg from Shandong and adapted a Gansu pouring vessel to Zhongyuan taste.

16. K. C. Chang cites many fragments of sheet gold found at Anyang and a few others from Gaocheng, , in Shang Civilization (New Haven, 1980), pp. 157, 290–291Google Scholar. Franklin's, Ursula Martius “On Bronze and Other Metals in Early China,” in The Origins of Chinese Civilization, pp. 289–292Google Scholar, discusses gold in the context of the metallurgical traditions of China and the West.