CHINA ARQUEOLOGIA golden-age-chinese-archayeolog

73
by strong modeling; the surface is otherwise undecorated.
The Sanxingdui pits contained components
of "spirit trees" — complex bronze stands as high
as 4 meters tall, festooned with branches whose tips
support perching birds. While this head is considerably
larger in scale than the spirit-tree birds, one
cannot rule out the possibility that it was a component
of such a stand or a similar object.
The "dragon" is perhaps a less arbitrary identification.
It too is a hollow tube, increasing slightly
in diameter from its open bottom to its closed top. 2
Four half-circles and holes at the base of the object
presumably served to attach it to a shaft. A large
hook mounted at the front of the tube calls to mind
the ornament on the nose ridge of the bronze mask
(cat. 69). The dragon that boosts itself onto the
top of the tube rests on its forward limbs, neck extended,
and jaws open; its elongated body extends
down the back of the tube, while the hind limbs
clutch at the sides. A billy-goat beard, small horns,
and large ears complete the head. Motifs conventionally
denominated "dragons" on Shang objects
(such as the small dragon on the lid of the owlshaped
vessel from Tomb 5 [cat. 48]) have little in
common with this creature, which anticipates later
representations of dragons. RT
1 Excavated in 1986; published: Zhao 1994, no. 47; Rawson
1996, no. 29.
2 Excavated in 1986; reported: Sichuan 1987^ 6.
other objects (if any) from these pits might in fact
be related to these ornaments.
The conventional zoomorphic identification of
the "eagle" ornament 1 is at best arbitrary, though
its large beak suggests some type of raptor. The
object is circular in cross section, with small holes
at the bottom edge that might have served to attach
the object to a shaft or other insert. The assemblage
that this head completed would presumably
have been of considerable size, assuming that the
head was scaled naturalistically with the remainder.
Its beak and large squared eyes are accentuated
223 | SACRIFICIAL PITS AT SANXINCDUI