Early China Seminar & The Center for Archaeology

Dr Qingzhu Wang
Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures
and the Tang Center for Early China, Columbia University

Copper Mining and Bronze Production in Shandong Province:
A New Perspective on the Political Economy of the Shang State

18th February 2022

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Abstract: As highly valued products and materialized ideology, bronze objects in the Shang period embodied sacred power and were used by elites as ritual paraphernalia to communicate authority and legitimate elite positions. Many scholars have assumed that elites in the Shang capitals controlled the production of bronze objects to gain prestige and maintain power. This presentation provides a case study about the possibility of bronze production in the Daxinzhuang site in Shandong, regarded by many scholars as a peripheral area of the Shang state. I offer an alternative to the common centralization model by emphasizing the agency of local elites and the broader social networks and institutions that structure social interactions and internal state organization.

Biography: As an archaeologist and archaeometallurgist, Qingzhu Wang studies bronze objects and metallurgical remains to investigate the process and nature of bronze production in early states. Funded by the National Science Foundation (2018), his dissertation research focuses on the role of bronze production, distribution, and consumption in the Shang (ca. 1600-1050 BCE) period of Bronze Age China, examining state organization and political economy from a regional perspective. In his dissertation, he used a multi-proxy research approach, including analyses of bronze objects for their styles, inscriptions, casting methods, chemical compositions, and lead isotope ratios. He also conducted scientific analyses of metallurgical remains related to bronze production. His research revealed significant changes in bronze production and circulation during different periods of the Shang state, providing a new understanding of the operation and development of the Shang state. He has participated in excavations and research projects in China, the Andes, and Africa. His postdoctoral project at Columbia will place bronze consumption in the larger framework of colonialism to investigate how Shang elites in the capitals attempted to integrate Shandong into the state order.