CHINA ARQUEOLOGIA golden-age-chinese-archayeolog

FIG. i. Cat 38: inlay
and cross section. After
Zhongguo Erlitou 1984,
38, fig. 5.1.
by large ears or horns (fig. i). Eyes on these plaques
come in two shapes, either unframed circles (as
here) or circles within pointed sockets. The upper
"horns," however, vary in every example. If the image
anticipates the motifs that play so large a role
in later bronze decoration (for example, the fangding,
cat. 46), and for which the anachronistic term
taotie has been employed since premodern times,
it nonetheless differs in a number of respects. No
consensus has emerged as to the significance of
such motifs, but their ubiquity in so many media
(bronze, stone, lacquer) and varied contexts — even
as early as the Erlitou culture — makes the question
worth pursuing.
Two plaques have been recovered at the Sanxingdui
site in distant Sichuan province. 3 They may
be roughly contemporaneous in date, a fact that
would point to the possibility of exchanges between
the bronze-using cultures of northern China and
the upper Yangzi River region in the early second
millennium BCE. Since hardstones also suggest
this possibility, the character of such exchanges
deserves attention. RT
1 Loehr 1965, no. 19 and Poor 1975, no. 13.
2 Excavated in 1981; reported: Zhongguo Erlitou 1984,
37-40, and pi. 4.
3 Zhao 1994, nos. 63 - 64.
147 I ERLITOU CULTURE AT YANSHI