i need to know more about sanxingdui

kong, you might want to provide a little more information about what this is. Is it a weapon or just a military tool ? Which dynasty was it from ? If you don't have such info, could you at least provide a chinese characters of what 'sanxingdui' means.

Sanxingdui is a Shang archaeological site in Sichuan. I don't think the question has much to do with weapons, so I'm moving it to the Archaeology section.

Read about Sanxingdui here: http://www.nga.gov/education/chinatp_san.shtm

http://www.sanxingdui.com/e-index.htm

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2...tent_328600.htm

Here are the two most famous artifacts from there:

http://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/china1999/full/134_065.jpg

http://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/china1999/full/137_067.jpg

Here are a number of artifacts that the website owner (a Singaporean) claims are owned by private collectors: http://www.sanxingdui.com/thejade.htm
(would appreciate some comments on their authenticity)

Try a google search for a start.

It is a very interesting site because it is a bronze age culture outside of the Shang cultural sphere and contests the idea that the south of China is somehow backward. In the Shang dynasty there were still commonly used bone arrowheads and so the presence of bronze cultures south of the central plains suggests both the technical know-how & a central authority under which bronze is made (it require the mining of copper & tin & lead).
The meaning of the heads is contentious, and although one author has suggested the site implies contact with the Shang bronze culture of the north. Due to the unique religious imagery, the lack or Shang ritual vessels (as ritual vessels are universal in ancestor worship in the Zhou period states) and the odd sacrificial pit contents, bronze masks & elephant tusks (no human sacrifices) I see no reason to credit a connection to the Shang.
Bronze cultures seem to have existed at the same time in ancient Thailand and may be just as likely a source of bronze knowledge.

The 'dieties' are explained in one opinion to represent spirits to be implored by the society, hence the large ears to 'hear' the prayers. Another explanation is that some of the 'heads' (as opposed to statues) are substitutes for human sacrifices. Without any writing there is no way to know and the culture to my knowledge has not yielded another site for investigation.
...the is some similarity to jade figures with grotesque features found in jade on Chinese neolithic sites of the central plains. The site seems unique however.

Yun,
Such jades are certainly fake although they are deliberately in the same 'style' (although often distorted).
The fakers typically copy the Sichuan pit finds artefacts, both in bronze and jade. The jade copies exist in great variety and I find them silly but some people take them seriously and continue to buy them and insist they are real.
In any market selling artefacts' you can find the bulging eyes and big eared heads, or sometimes bodies with the heads atop or even straight copies of the masks. These style seem commonly copied despite the culture being elusive and little known.
The fakers look at the same books we do and copy these thing endlessly.
A fool and their money are soon parted. When people post them as real like this then they just cause confusion.
If you do a search on e-bay or a few jade retailers then you could pick up a collection like on the link in a space of a few months if you wanted to spend the money.
Personally you shouldn't pay much more than $10-50 for a fake like this since they are often not even a true jade and they are made with high speed power tools.
It really beats me how some people just refuse to believe they are being conned.




If he makes such a comment I expect people have already warned him. I have met these types before. Absolutely disinterested in what the jades in Chinese museums or archaeological digs look like and with a strong distaste for what they consider 'academia'.
People who don't heed warnings, apply a little common sense or have an interest in comparing to authentic items of course can build huge collections of fakes.
Many look like the typical market forgeries and note that one of the 'jades' is an exact copy of the large bronze statue excavated, and funnily enough the hands are still made to grip a mystery object that the bronze stature held. The faker doesn't know what it held so they leave the same hole. Just like the neolithic small pendants where the fakers blow up to the size of watermelons but they unimaginatively still put a drilled hole for suspension like the tiny suspension version.
I have seen some really stupid fake jades over the years....some Chinese jade swords were the best.
Once person just wasn't convinced their Zhou sword was fake even though it was clearly a curved Indian 18th century ceremonial sword called a 'rajput sword' based on the prophets swords and nothing like ancient Chinese...yet they don't believe it because they were told it comes from Zhou tombs at Xian.

(edited for terrible spelling)

Sorry, but strictly speaking that is a misnomer. "Shang" is not just a label for a time period. Sichuan was simply not a part of the Shang domain. Sanxingdui was a seperate and distinct civilisation from the Huaxia civilisation of the central plains.

Strictly speaking Sichuan did not become a part of China until the armies of Qin conquered the states of Ba and Shu during the Warring States Period.

You're right about that. Thanks for pointing this out. I was only looking for a way to indicate the general time period.

I saw a documentary series on Sanxingdui a year ago. I also visited the Sanxingdui museum in Chengdu quite recently. Fascinating, very impressed.
However, I think they isn't a current explanation as to who the Sanxingdui people were when they lived 4,500-5000 years ago.
Were they migrants from the Shang kingdom? What destroyed them? Who are their likely descedants today?
I hope I can get the latest findings and views.

Merged with an earlier thread.

The sites are very ancient, but not as ancient as you just made them out. If you want to learn about the culture the first point would be at least fit them into the right period of history.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanxingdui

The particular site being discussed here is contemporary to the Shang, and radiocarbon dating puts this at around 3,100-3,200 years ago. When you ask of who they were 5,000 years ago, this is the neolithic period and there is always difficulty in proving lineage. The mystery is the fact it is a bronze culture more so that what they did 1,500-2,000 years before this when they would have been limited to stone and early ceramics.


The culture was unknown before this sacrificial pit find, and challenges some concepts of bronze age 'China' in the broadest sense.
Ancient Chinese culture is percieved, largely correctly, as explanding from the central plains, or being 'Zhong Guo ren' and the outside of this 'barbarian' of various titles and so who these people were and where the bronze working came from so early is not known. There are allegedly some very early bronze working cultures in Thailand too, so the technology need not come from only one direction assuming the concept of metallurgy was learnt.
According to the Wiki article the 'Chenggu' (sic?) site is intermediate to Shang and the Sanxingdui culture.
Just how this is concluded is not explained. A mixture of artefact styles and motifs would be expected if this were true.

There will be a talk on it in the Asian Civilization Museum in Singapore on 16 January 2007, 7.00 to 9.30pm. Might like to check it out, could go as a group from CHF.

http://www.acm.org.sg/exhibitions/eventdet...asp?eventID=154

Have been to Sanxingdu, the whole place is a mystery and it's very exciting. Wished had visited the Chengdu later this year instead of last year, Jinsha, the sister site of Sanxingdui would also be open then. It would be great to be able to compare the artifacts found there with Sanxingdui.

http://www.travelchinaguide.com/attraction.../sanxingdui.htm

http://www.chinaculture.org/gb/en_chinaway...ntent_87105.htm

From reading a little on your above sites the two obvious links in terms of artefacts are the gold masks, as found on both sites (the Jinsha version on the last link compares to the Sanxingdui bronze heads with similar applied gold foil atop) & the use of ivory/elephant tusk which were found in large quantities at both, supposedly sacrifical pits in the Sanxingdui find.
These are both common features. I wish they would show more of the Jinsha jades. Those jades are pretty well refined jade-culture examples, the tsong tube and the long jade blade are both suggestions high level of artisanship & presumably too the ritual use of these jades as in other developed jade cultures (the Sanxingdui jades shown on the link were after all more utilitarian forms like chisels and adzes to my eye)
The Jinsha site is slightly later, being late Shang and into the Western Zhou period, but in this there is an artefact link to suggest some continuity in the art and possibly ritual to Sanxingdui.
Tsong tubes were less common in the Shang. Thin blades of jade occur in the Erlitou/Shang. Both had existed since the stone age, the Tsong tubes most linked to the Liangzhu neolithic culture of the coastal provinces Jiangsu/Zhejiang.
Some archaic styles might linger on in different parts of ancient 'China' after they had dropped out of common use elsewhere so contact via trade may have connected seperated groups in ancient times.
In NZ there are several types of stone that were traded many hundreds of kilometres from the source, and I have found examples of different types at coastal sites that show some are moving about 900km from the quarry. Even if the items traded hands person to person as material there is a likelyhood that some types of portable art or even techniques like bronze working would gradually diffuse via trade networks between groups in China in this way.
In ancient China even the movement of cowries or jade (nephrite) shows that before the bronze age some resources must be transported across distances. The appearance of these jades at Jinsha would suggest links to & between central plains style jade cultures and imply that bronze working knowledge may also come from this direction also, as opposed to local invention or a Southeast Asian link.
Just a hunch based on those items on the links.

It seems pyramidiots are universal.

I went looking for info on Sanxingdui and found: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSdAU6Eureo
I turned the sound off after about 5 minutes...and the trepanning bit! What's with that?

This was one of the seasick nature, and the screaming kid made me turn the sound off again, but I was happy to see inside the museum: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sqcsr38rQs

What is the relationship between this culture and the later Daixi of the same region?