CHINA ARQUEOLOGIA golden-age-chinese-archayeolog

rately, with many lifelike features. The head strains
forward, the ears are folded back against the animal's
body, and the crouching legs almost conceal
the oval ring foot. Cast relief roundels on the animal's
flanks are decorated with fine, spiraling intaglio
lines. The vessel is heavily patinated and
corroded and shows signs of repair. It was found
together with two cast hare-shaped boxes of similarly
lifelike design. 2
Animal-shaped containers were not typical of
the Yellow River ritual bronze tradition. During the
Shang period, peoples inhabiting the south, particularly
along the Yangzi River and in Hunan province,
employed vessels in the shapes of animals;
famous pieces include a boar, an elephant, and two
addorsed rams. 3 It would seem that, from time to
time, these animal-shaped bronzes were exchanged
or traded, from south to north, perhaps by way of
the tributaries of the Yangzi River. Very elaborate
versions of such animal vessels seem to have been
made around 1200 BCE at the Shang precursor to
the present-day city of Anyang in Henan province,
for high-ranking members of the Shang court. Fu
Hao, the consort of one of the most powerful Shang
kings, Wu Ding, had a pair of bird-shaped vessels
and a pair of vessels in the shape of strange imaginary
animals. 4
During the Early Western Zhou period, animalshaped
bronzes became known to the Zhou inhabiting
the region of the Wei River. Bronze creatures
have been found both near the capital at Xi'an and
further west at Baoji, 5 and this hare-shaped zun
appears related to pieces imitative of Yellow River
animal bronzes. The fact that this bronze has unmistakable
elements of contemporaneous bronze
ritual vessels, "obscured" by the figure itself, suggests
that these hares were not ancient pieces
handed down through several generations but that
they were cast in the Middle or Late Middle Western
Zhou period. It is likely that they were made
in some part of the Zhou territory or within the
confines of the Jin state, but their shape and their
style suggests that they are older than the ninthor
even early eighth-century bronzes found with
them in Tomb M 8. While the typology of animalshaped
bronzes links south and north, it does not
define their significance to their owners in either
region. JR
1 Excavated in 1992 (M 8:20); reported: Beijing 1994.
2 For a brief report on the excavation of the tombs, see
Beijing 1994.
3 For a description of Shang animal-shaped bronzes, see
Bagley 1987, 30-36.
4 Fong 1980, nos. 29, 30.
5 Rawson 1990, no. 119.
259 | ROYAL TOMBS OF THE JIN STATE, BEIZHAO