CHINA ARQUEOLOGIA golden-age-chinese-archayeolog

55
Inscribed bovid scapula
Height 40.5 (i5 7 / 8 ), width 22.5 (87s)
Shang Dynasty, twelfth century BCE
From Xiaotun, Anyang, Henan Province
The Institute of Archaeology, CASS, Beijing
In December 1971 Chinese archaeologists found
a group of twenty-one complete bovid scapulas in
a test trench some 160 meters west of Xiaotun.
This scapula 1 bears twenty-two preparatory hollows
on the lower front surface and over thirty hollows
on the upper back surface. 2 After the divinatory
crackings had been performed, the Shang engravers
recorded eight inscriptions on the front
of the bone.
One of the longest divination charges is recorded
in seventeen characters that, starting at
the top, form the far-left column on the bone (ten
characters) and then, at the bottom of the column,
run to the right (seven more characters). It may
be tentatively translated as follows: "In performing
the lustration ritual for the Herdsmen [officers],
to Ancestress Yi offer a fine [?] pig, to Ancestress
Gui a boar, to Ancestress Ding a pig, to Ancestress
Yi a pig." Another charge (recorded as the last
eleven characters of the third column from the
right edge of the bone) was addressed, by contrast,
to the ancestors: "In performing the lustration
ritual, to Ancestor Gui offer a pig, to Ancestor Yi
a boar [?], to Ancestor Wu a pig." 3
The other six charges on the scapula involve
other offerings, mainly of various kinds of pigs
(also of a dog), and lustrations to various ancestors
and ancestresses. Curiously, the engravers erased
the heads of all the "pig" characters, a practice
(found occasionally on other bones) that must
have had some significance. 4 The "temple names"
of the ancestresses (Yi, Gui, and Ding) and ancestors
(Gui, Yi, and Wu), were conferred upon them
posthumously. The Shang selected these names
from a list of ten counters or "stems" (a later term)
that they also used to name the ten days of their
week. The Shang were thus able to schedule their
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