Sanxingdui

Sanxingdui (Chinese三星堆, Pinyin Sanxingdui ) - also known locally in Sichuan Xanxingdui - is an ancient Chinese city where archaeologists discovered remarkable artifacts that according to the radiocarbon dating approximately to the time of the 12th - 11th Century are classified BC. In the archaeological site itself relics from the Neolithic period found to early Shu culture of the Shang and Zhou period, which are dated to the years 2800-800 BC.

With the name of Sanxingdui these previously unknown Bronze Age culture was designated. The archaeological site of Sanxingdui is located approximately 40 kilometers northeast of Chengdu in Sichuan Province. The site was named after the large village SANXING (三星 镇) named on whose administrative territory he was. On April 17, 2006 SANXING was dissolved and added to the territory of the greater community Nanxing (南 兴镇). Nanxing is one of today 17 large towns in the independent city of Guanghan, which in turn belongs to the administrative area of the prefecture-level city of Deyang. In Guanghan Sanxingdui is also the museum.

Discovery

1929 saw a farmer digging a well when a large amount of jade relics, many of which found their way over the years in the hands of private collectors. Generations of Chinese archaeologists searched the area until 1986, unsuccessfully, as a worker accidentally sacrificial pits (Chinese祭祀 坑, Pinyin jìsìkēng, English sacrificial pits ) found that thousands contained of gold, bronze, jadenen and getöpferten artifacts broken (perhaps ritually disfigured ) were burned, and carefully buried. The researchers were surprised to find such an ornate style, which had been in the history of Chinese art whose point of the history and artifacts of the central Chinese region around the middle reaches of the Yellow River, was completely unknown.

Ancient bronze casting

All discoveries of the culture of Sanxingdui aroused the interest of researchers, but the bronzes were the ones who enabled the world in excitement. Some researchers the finds are considered more important than the Terracotta Army in Xi'an. This amazingly well-developed bronze -casting technique in which the alloy was given greater strength to the usual combination of copper and tin by the addition of lead could thus create larger and heavier objects; as the world's oldest life-size standing human figure (260 cm height, 180 kg) and a bronze tree with birds, flowers and ornaments ( 396 cm), which was identified by some as playing the Fusang tree of Chinese mythology. The most notable finds were large bronze masks and bronze heads ( some covered with gold foil ) with angular human facial features and exaggerated slanting eyes, some with excellent pupil and large upper ears. From the shape of these heads close archaeologists that they were mounted on wooden supports or totems, maybe they were dressed. Other bronze artifacts are birds with eagle -like beaks, tigers, a large snake, zoomorphic masks, bells, and an object which appears to be a spoked bronzes to be, but rather a representation of the sun gear ( Taiyang lun ) is. Apart from the bronzes were found in Sanxingdui also jade sculptures that are consistent with those from earlier Chinese neolithic cultures, such as cong and zhang.

Possible influences

The Sanxingdui Culture was a civilization in Southwest China on the territory of the old state Shu at the time of the Shang Dynasty. She is still little explored. Although they used a different method from that of the Shang bronze production, was never reported this culture of Chinese historians. The development of the Sanxingdui culture is one of several phases divided before. The first may have been independent, while the later stages merged with that of Ba, Chu and other cultures.

In addition to Sanxingdui show all other archaeological discoveries in Sichuan, including the Baodun culture and the Jinsha culture that civilizations in Southwest China look back on at least 5000 years history. This evidence for independent cultures in different regions of China refutes the traditional theory that the Yellow River, the sole " cradle of Chinese civilization " (cradle of Chinese civilization ) was.

Exhibitions

The first exhibitions of Sanxingdui bronzes were in Beijing (1987, 1990) and the Olympic Museum of Lausanne ( 1993). Sanxingdui exhibits traveled around the world and found everywhere, unsurprisingly, from the Kunsthalle of the Hypo Cultural Foundation, Munich (1995), Cultural Foundation Ruhr Essen, Villa Hills (1995), the Kunsthaus Zurich (1996 ), the British Museum in London ( 1996), the Danish National Museum in Copenhagen ( 1997), the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York ( 1998), several museums in Japan ( 1998), the National Palace Museum in Taipei (1999 ) to the Asian Civilisations Museum in Singapore ( 2007).

In 1997, the Sanxingdui Museum, which opened near the original archaeological site.

The site is since 1988 on the monuments of the People's Republic of China ( 3-200 ).

Some objects and their Chinese names

• Standing bronze figure ( Qingtong lìrénxiàng青铜 立 人像)
• Human heads ( réntóuxiàng人 头像)
• Dragon -shaped artifact ( lóngxíngqì龙 形 器)
• Tiger shaped artifact ( hǔxíngqì虎 形 器)
• Kneeling human figure ( guìzuò Renxiang跪坐 人像)
• Gold Bar (more precisely, a stem ) ( Jinzhang金 杖)
• Golden tiger shaped ornaments ( jīnhǔxíngshì金虎 形 饰)
• Large Bronze Tree ( Qingtong or ST青铜 神 树)
• Large bronze sun ( Qingtong Taiyang LUN青铜 太阳 轮)
• Bronze Serpent ( Qingtong shé青铜 蛇)

Literature in Western languages

• Zhao Dianzeng: " mediator between heaven and earth: The finds from Sanxingdui ," in Ancient China: People and Gods in the Middle Kingdom 5000 BC to 220 AD Munich: Hirmer 1995, ISBN 3-7774-6640 -9
• Liu Yang and Edmund Capon (ed.): Masks of Mystery: Ancient Chinese Bronzes from Sanxingdui. Sydney: Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2000, ISBN 0-7347-6316-6
• Bagley, Robert ( ed.): Ancient Sichuan: Treasures from a Lost Civilization. Princeton, NJ: Seattle Art Museum and Princeton University Press 2001, ISBN 0-691-08851-9 (meeting )
• Bibliography in Western Languages ​​(PDF file, 2.26 MB )
• Jay Jie Xu: The Sanxingdui site: Art and Archaeology

Chinese Literature

• Li Shaoming, Lin Xiang and Zhao Dianzeng (ed.): Sanxingdui Ba Shu yu wenhua. [ Sanxingdui and the culture of Ba and Shu ] Chengdu: Ba Shu Shushe, 1993
• Zhongguo qingtongqi Quanji Bianji weiyuanhui (ed.): Ba Shu [Ba and Shu ], vol 13, in: Zhongguo qingtongqi Quanji, Beijing: Wenwu chubanshe, 1994
• Sichuan Guanghan Sanxingdui Yizhi [ The Sanxingdui site of Guanghan, Sichuan Province ]. Beijing: Wenwu chubanshe, 1994 ( Zhongguo Wenwu kaogu zhi mei)