Metallurgical Remains of Ancient China by Noel Bernard, Tamotsu Satō, and

Book Reviews Metallurgical Remains ofAncient China. By Noel Bernard and Tamotsu Sato. Tokyo: Nichiohsha, 1975. $99.50. The Cradle ofthe East: An Enquiry into the Indigenous Origins ofTechniques and Ideas of Neolithic and Early Historic China, 5000-1000 B.C. By Ping-Ti Ho. Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong; and Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975. Pp. xxii+440. $20.00. These two books are both concerned with the beginnings of tech­ nology in China. Both make strong claims for the indigenous origin of most of the techniques that flourished in that fascinating country and provide arguments against diffusionist views. Ho’s book, the smaller one, takes the broader view of both time and topic, dealing as it does with field agriculture, animal husbandry, pottery, language, writing, social organization, thought, and religion. Barnard and Sato in a volume of monumental and expensive format deal with a single topic, metallurgy, especially bronze casting, though with a good dis­ cussion of iron. Both books are important and should be read not only by those concerned with the Far East but also by anyone interested in the origin and transfer of technological practice and ideas. The authors are of course dependent for their basic material on reports by others—mainly archaeologists and their associated laboratories—and they both display a fondness for written sources which are, of neces­ sity, at least one step removed from the real technology that is dis­ cussed. Almost half of the Metallurgical Remains is taken up by a massive table of archaeological sites at which metallurgical artifacts or work­ shop remains have been excavated. The information was gathered from Chinese publications, mainly those of the People’s Republic, though the work of the Academia Sínica now operating in Taiwan is by no means slighted. Eighteen different classes of artifact are sepa­ rately noted, and the list will provide those who read Chinese with an invaluable index to the literature during the decade ending in 1964, during which so many exciting finds were reported. One cannot help but feel that its publication in such a lavish form is somewhat inap­ propriate. A cheap photocopy of the manuscript issued ten years ago would have better served scholarship and the funds so released could have financed more research. As it is the book is beautifully printed and bound, and one can admire the printer’s diligence in having special characters carved. The volume is a real joy to look at, though 80 technology and culture Book Reviews 81 hardly to handle, for it measures 39 x 31 x 3.7 centimeters and weighs 4 kilograms! The material in the table is used as the basis for the construction of twenty-three large maps and innumerable smaller ones showing the locations of sites where each of eighteen classes of objects was found, divided into various historical periods from the earliest Shang times (ca. 1850-1650 b.c.) through to late Han (ca. a.d. 100), shown both individually and collectively in superposition. Both the information and the manner of its presentation are enormously impressive. Most earlier studies have overemphasized ceremonial vessels. Barnard and Sato list things from gold jewelry to bronze bells and objects of many types, such as iron in castings and forged into nails and other forms, and they examine workshop remains. The maps show most graphically the spread of objects through time and, by inference, knowledge of the techniques for making them. In their map lg, the locations of all types of bronze objects are superim­ posed, with isochrons and distinctive shadings which show most dynamically the centrifugal pattern of diffusion from the nuclear area. The authors offer this as substantiation of their view that bronze metallurgy was invented independently in China and that there was no transmission from the much earlier metallurgical industries in nearby Thailand or in the West. Even the aeneolithic copper industry in the Kansu province in southeastern China itself died out and left no evidence of connection with the advanced bronze casting opera­ tions that appeared later farther north in the Shang capital of Anyang in Honan. It is clearly true that metallurgy did not creep slowly and continu­ ously into

Ancient history · Archaeology · China · Indigenous · Pottery · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies · Chinese history and philosophy · Classics · History · Metallurgy and Cultural Artifacts

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