Bronze. In ancient my country, it mostly refers to bronze wares, which were popular from the late Neolithic Age to the Qin and Han dynasties, with the Shang and Zhou dynasties being the most exquisite. The first ones that appeared were small tools or ornaments. Bronze containers and weapons began to appear in the Xia Dynasty. In the mid-Shang Dynasty, the variety of bronzes was very rich, and inscriptions and fine patterns appeared. The late Shang Dynasty to the early Western Zhou Dynasty was the heyday of the development of bronze ware. The types of bronze ware were diverse, thick and dignified, the inscriptions were gradually lengthened, and the patterns were rich and colorful. Subsequently, the bronze carcass began to become thinner and the decoration gradually simplified. From the late Spring and Autumn Period to the Warring States Period, due to the widespread use of iron tools, copper tools became increasingly rare. During the Han Dynasty, as porcelain and lacquerware entered daily life, the variety of copper containers decreased, the decorations were simple, mostly plain, and the carcass became lighter and thinner. Ancient Chinese bronze ware is the great contribution of our ancestors to human material civilization. Although judging from the current archaeological data, the emergence of bronze ware in my country is later than that of some other places in the world. However, in terms of the scale of use and casting technology of bronze ware, In terms of , plastic art and variety, there is no place in the world where the bronzes can compare with ancient Chinese bronzes. This is one of the reasons why ancient Chinese bronzes occupy a unique position in the history of world art and attract widespread attention.
From the shape of the Western Zhou bronze ware, the production method of bronze ware in the Western Zhou Dynasty is the same as that of the Xia and Shang dynasties. There is not much change. They are all made of pottery models, and each vessel is made by hand. In this way, the same pottery model cannot be cast. Therefore, in the Western Zhou Dynasty, there were no bronzes with exactly the same shape. If there were, one must be a fake, or both were fake.
From the perspective of the decorations, since they were cast in pottery molds just like the Xia and Shang dynasties, and one mold was used for each vessel, there are almost no bronzes with exactly the same decorations or inscriptions, except for a few bronzes cast in a single mold. The same decoration, but such decoration was rare in the Western Zhou Dynasty.
From the perspective of copper-iron combined casting, new archaeological discoveries in recent years prove that in the late Shang Dynasty and the early and middle Western Zhou Dynasty, the iron used in this type of copper-iron combined casting was all meteoric iron. So when did artificial iron smelting appear? This is a very important time estimation issue, because as long as this time is determined, we can know from the late Shang Dynasty to when was the time when meteorite iron and copper materials were combined to form an artifact? And when was the time when artificial iron smelting and copper combiners existed? In 1990, an iron sword with a jade stem and a copper core handle was unearthed from the late Western Zhou Dynasty aristocratic cemetery in Sanmenxia, ??Henan Province. It is a typical artifact made of copper and iron, and it is made of artificial iron. It is called "China's No. 1 Sword" and is The earliest artificial iron smelting object has been discovered in my country so far. From this, we can infer that the era of co-casting of copper and meteorite iron in Chinese history was from the late Shang Dynasty to the late Western Zhou Dynasty. The era of artificially smelting iron and copper to make vessels was technically mature by the late Western Zhou Dynasty at the latest.
Food Container (Hu amp; Fang) Pot and Francium
鬲 (Li) Lei amp; Bu (Lei amp; Bu)
ding (Ding)牉 (He)
簋 (Gui) Pan (Pan)
甗 (yan) Jian (Jian) ??
豆 (Dou) Bronze Discrimination
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Wine Vessel & Water Vessel The longest inscription in the Western Zhou Dynasty
Jia & You (Jia & You) Identification of ancient dragon patterns
Juei, Jiao & Gu (Juei, Jiao & Gu) Fuhao and Fuhao’s tomb
Fang Yi (Fang Yi) Xia Dynasty bronzes
Gong (Gong)
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