CHINA ARQUEOLOGIA golden-age-chinese-archayeolog

showing that the topic had been cracked ten times
in all.
The other divinations on the plastron concern
the chance of encountering other game, such as
pig and deer, at other locations; their intent was
to ensure that the various hunts had a successful
outcome. The inscription at the bottom left
ends with an auspicious prognostication: "The
prince read the cracks and said: 'We will encounter
[game].'" Some of these other divinations, as the
numbers indicate, were cracked four times, some
only twice. The inscriptions should probably be
dated to the time of Wu Ding, but the fact that a
prince, rather than the king, made the prognostication,
is one of several indications that, as in the
case of the scapula (cat. 55), this plastron was not
divined by the king's court diviners but by another
group. DNK
1 Excavated in 1991 (1^3:52); reported: Zhongguo Anyang
1993, 488-499, fig. n; Rawson 1996, no. 373.
2 Keightley 1988.
186 BRONZE ACE CHINA