Millet, Bronze and Kings: A Shang China Exhibit

Gallery 12: Millet, Bronze and Kings

1Welcome to Gallery 12. About 1250 BCE, a city near present-day Anyang, in northern China, was the capital of the Shang kings. The Shang ruled part of the Yellow River valley from about 1600 to 1046 BCE. Most Shang people were farmers. They grew millet, a grain that handles dry summers well, in the soft yellow soil of the region, and they raised pigs, dogs and cattle.

2Farmers worked with tools of stone, wood and bone. In good years they harvested more millet than their families could eat. Archaeologists have found many storage pits dug into the ground at Anyang, and some grain was brewed into wine for feasts and ceremonies.

3Thousands of people at Anyang did not farm. Archaeologists have found large workshops where workers cast bronze, carved bone and shaped jade. Casting one large bronze vessel took many workers: some mined and melted copper and tin, some made clay molds, and others poured the hot metal. Diviners and scribes worked for the king.

4Shang society had clear ranks. The king and his family were at the top, with nobles who led armies and took part in ceremonies. Below them were craft workers, and below them the farmers, the largest group. At the bottom were enslaved people, many of them captives taken in war. Bronze was costly, and most bronze vessels and weapons belonged to the king and nobles.

5Some materials at Anyang came from far away. Historians think much of the copper and tin came from mines far to the south. Cowrie shells, small shiny seashells, came from warm seas hundreds of miles from Anyang, and nobles treasured them.

Case Labels

1Case 1. Stone harvest knife. A flat stone blade with two holes for a cord. Farmers used knives like this to cut the heads off millet stalks.

2Case 2. Burned millet grains from a storage pit at Anyang. Fire turned the grain to charcoal, which helped it last about 3,000 years.

3Case 3. Three-legged bronze wine cup from a noble's tomb. Shang nobles poured wine made from grain from cups like this in ceremonies to honor their ancestors.

4Case 4. Clay mold pieces from a bronze workshop at Anyang. Workers carved patterns into clay molds, fitted the pieces together and poured melted bronze inside. Thousands of mold pieces were found at one workshop.

5Case 5. Oracle bone (an ox shoulder blade). A diviner heated the bone until it cracked, and a scribe carved the king's question on it: "Will we receive a millet harvest?" Shang people believed the cracks showed the answer of the ancestors' spirits.

6Case 6. Cowrie shells from the tomb of Fu Hao. Fu Hao was a wife of King Wu Ding and led armies in war. Archaeologists found her tomb at Anyang in 1976.