CHINA ARQUEOLOGIA golden-age-chinese-archayeolog

90
Cylindrical bronze vessel with pedestal base
Height 23.1 (9 1 /*), diam. 9.3 (3 5 /s)
Late Western Zhou Period, ninth to
eighth century BCE
From Tianma-Qucun (Beizhao, Quwo),
Shanxi Province
Shanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology,
Taiyuan
This small, unusually shaped bronze vessel 1 comes
from a tomb thought to have been that of the consort
of a Jin state lord buried in Tomb M 64. While
the relative dating of the principal tombs has been
the subject of debate, 2 it is reasonably certain that
this bronze and other pieces from Tomb M 63 are
from the Late Western Zhou period or even somewhat
later.
The small, box-shaped base is supported by four
human figures topped by a lidded cylinder. A bird
stands on the lid, whose small cast-in loops are
paired with loops on the vessel's body. Within its
base hangs a pair of small bells. This decorative
feature is typical of some Early Western Zhou
period food basins (gui) in which the bell was suspended
from a loop attached to the underside of
the basin and concealed by the pedestal.
The decoration consists of narrow strips of
relief demarcated by parallel intaglio lines. The
waved-shaped motifs on the base and the body of
the cylinder are typical of the late Middle and Late
Western Zhou period, coinciding with the change
in vessel types that took place in the early ninth
century. Whether this piece had a direct connection
with the ancestor offerings associated with
other ritual vessels remains unknown, as does the
question of what it was intended to contain.
Tombs in the Jin state burial ground have
yielded both standard ritual bronzes and many
small pieces of highly individual character. The fact
that no pieces precisely comparable to these unusual
bronzes have been discovered in the Zhou
centers in present-day Shaanxi province points to
the development of an independent style in the Jin
state. Indeed, it seems that while the Zhou aristo-
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