CHINA ARQUEOLOGIA golden-age-chinese-archayeolog

76
Bronze ding tripod with five handles
Height 122 (48 Vs), diam. at mouth 83 (32 5 A)
Latter Phase of the Early Western Zhou Period
(c. 1000-975 BCE)
From Tomb i at Shijiayuan, Chunhua,
Shaanxi Province
Chunhua County Cultural Relics Museum,
Shaanxi Province
This ding, 1 weighing 226 kilograms, is the largest
and heaviest Western Zhou bronze vessel on record,
though fragments exist of even larger ones. 2 Together
with two much smaller gui vessels found in
the same tomb, it formed part of an assemblage of
ritual bronzes, now incomplete because the tomb
was looted before excavation.
Chunhua is located on the loess plateau at the
northern edge of the Western Zhou metropolitan
core. Tomb i at Shijiayuan was part of the cemetery
of an aristocratic lineage, whose members had
presumably resided at a large Early to Middle Western
Zhou settlement discovered nearby. Since no
inscribed bronzes have been found at this site
so far, the name of the lineage remains unknown.
The bowl of the ding has a slightly sagging
profile and an everted rim from which two large,
outward-bent handles rise. The three handles laterally
attached to the vessel body are a feature unique
to this specimen. They have no discernible practical
use (the ding was lifted by the rim handles), but
they enhance the object's silhouette and effectively
frame its decoration.
The principal decorative motif, repeated three
times around the vessel body, consists of a symmetrical
pair of single-legged dragons converging toward
a central flange. Raised in high relief against
a background of fine spirals, the dragon bodies are
accentuated by widely spaced sunken-line curls.
As is often the case in Shang and Early Western
231 | BRONZES FROM FENG HAO AND ENVIRONS