The golden age of Chinese archaeology

National Gallery of Art [at al.]

1999

584 p.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 574-579) and index.

9780300081329

Introduction: A History of Modern Chinese Archaeology / Xiaoneng Yang -- Catalogue. The Foundation of Chinese Civilization: Late Prehistoric China c. 5000-2000 B.C.E. The Epic of the Three Dynasties: Bronze Age China c. 2000-771 B.C.E. The Flamboyance of Eastern Zhou: Chu and other Cultures c. 770-221 B.C.E. The Grandeur or Empires: Early Imperial China 221 B.C.E.-924 C.E. Afterword / Su Bai. New Understandings of Chinese Prehistory / Zhang Zhongpei. The Bronze Age of China / Zou Heng. Issues Concerning the Formation, Development, and Demise of Chu Culture / Yu Weichao. The Han and Tang Dynasties / Xu Pingfang.

In the last fifty years, archaeological discoveries have altered traditional beliefs on the formation and development of the civilization of ancient China. This book and the exhibition that it accompanies cover the period from 5000 BCE to the 10th-century C.E. presenting more than 170 masterpieces in jade, stone, ivory bone, pottery, bronze, lacquer, bamboo, gold, and silver. Together these astonishing objects demonstrate that highly advanced artistic cultures originated in and flowered throughout a vast area. Earlier generations of scholars believed that a much smaller area, the Yellow River Valley, was the principal source and locus of Chinese civilization

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