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Study on the casting cores to identify the manufacturing place of Chinese bronze vessels excavated in the Qiaojiayuan tombs from Spring and Autumn period

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Abstract

To date, few large-scale bronze foundry sites of the Bronze Age have been found in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River in Southern China, but highly developed bronze cultures have occurred here. For instance, in Qiaojiayuan, Yunxian County, northwestern Hubei Province, on the border of Southern and Northern China, a high-level tomb cluster of Spring and Autumn period (8th–5th c. BC) has been unearthed. The location of the site is identical with the Ancient Jun 麇 State recorded in the historical documents. Thus, figuring out where these bronzes were made can shed light on the status of the Jun State and its potential links to other great powers. X-ray fluorescence (XRF) and inductively coupled plasma-atomic emission spectrometry (ICP-AES) were conducted to characterize the major elements, trace elements, and rare earth elements in the casting core residues of the Qiaojiayuan bronze ritual vessels. They are largely different from the loess in the Yellow River Basin, but very similar to the laterite in southern China. Moreover, from the chemical characteristics, the samples from Qiaojiayuan are well resembled with those from Panlongcheng and Zuozhong, but differ from the casting core residues or clay molds manufactured in Northern China, and they are not consistent with the local soil geochemical characteristics. It can be further speculated that the Qiaojiayuan bronzes were first cast and finished in the Chu State before being transported to the area of Jun.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to anonymous reviewers whose comments greatly improved the quality of the manuscript.

Funding

The research is supported by the second sub-project of National Social Science Foundation of China (No. 15ZDB056), the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (No. 2019-Y954026XX2), the Youth Innovation Promotion Association of CAS, National Scholarship Fund of China (CSC NO. 201404910198), and National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 41471167).

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Correspondence to Wugan Luo.

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Ding Ma and Wugan Luo contributed equally to the manuscript and should be regarded as co-first authors.

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Table S1

The published data of major element of casting cores and clay molds (Wt%). (DOCX 26 kb)

Table S2

The trace element data of casting cores, clay molds and raw soil materials (μg/g). (DOCX 23 kb)

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Ma, D., Luo, W., Qin, Y. et al. Study on the casting cores to identify the manufacturing place of Chinese bronze vessels excavated in the Qiaojiayuan tombs from Spring and Autumn period. Archaeol Anthropol Sci 12, 203 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-020-01169-0

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