For thousands of years, Chinese collectors have treasured antiquities both for their beauty and as venerable relics of the past. Yet little was known of the original context and meaning of ancient works of art until the introduction of archaeology in the early twentieth century. After the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1911, Chinese intellectuals and reformers embraced foreign ideas and technology, which attracted Western missionaries, explorers, geologists, and other scientists to the new Republic of China. Archaeologists from Europe, Japan, and America soon followed and launched the first scientific excavations in the country. Chinese scholars were impressed by the discoveries, and rather than leave the excavation of their past to foreigners, they embraced the new field themselves. Archaeology has flourished in China in the past fifty years, and especially in the period since the 1970s, which Chinese archaeologists now consider their "golden age." New finds have revealed the existence of regional cultures that were previously unknown and works of art that are unprecedented in style and subject.

Late Prehistoric China

Until this century, China's remote past was known mainly from historical narratives written during the Han dynasty (206 B.C.-A.D. 220). References to the prehistoric period in these texts are few, however, and include vague claims, such as the existence of a "jade age," which modern scholars considered the stuff of legend. The advent of archaeology has provided a means to distinguish fact from fiction. By scientifically excavating history's physical remains, archaeologists have filled crucial gaps in our understanding of the past and, in some cases, corroborated the historical accounts. The most significant result is a new view of the origin of Chinese civilization, which was long believed to have arisen in the Yellow River valley and spread from there throughout the country. Excavations over the past few decades have revealed that prehistoric societies also flourished along the Yangzi River to the south and at remote sites in far northeastern China, demonstrating that Chinese civilization developed not from a single source, but through the gradual blending of several distinct cultures.

The earliest excavations focused on sites along the Yellow River, which runs more than thirty-four hundred miles from the Himalaya Mountains across the northern plains to the sea. The fertile river valley encouraged the rise of farming settlements where people cultivated millet, and domesticated pigs and other livestock. By the late prehistoric period, peoples of the Yangshao culture (c. 5000-3000 B.C.) were producing distinctive ceramics painted with geometric designs and images from the world of nature, a marked departure from the plain wares in use in the previous millennium. A flask from the Banpo phase of the Yangshao culture combines one of the earliest human images in Chinese art with an elegantly abstract pattern that signals a new aesthetic sensibility (no. 3). Mysterious symbols on a large urn from the Dawenkou culture (no. 23) may be a form of picture-writing, indicating that the origins of Chinese writing reach back to the early third millennium. (Prehistoric cultures are named for the village or site where certain types of objects were first excavated; that name is then applied to other sites where archaeologists uncovered similar cultural remains.)

Far to the northeast, in the Manchurian hills, archaeologists have uncovered traces of a ceremonial center at Niuheliang associated with the Hongshan culture (4700-2920 B.C.). The remains include foundations of one of the earliest temples built in China, as well as clay fragments of statues, perhaps representing goddesses, that were twice or even three times life-size. Excavations in a nearby cemetery have brought to light more than sixty tombs made of stone and covered with stone mounds. Twenty-six contained jade objects. The coiled dragon (no. 10), found in 1984 on the chest of the deceased, is so called because the earliest known Chinese character for "dragon" depicts just such a coiled body attached to an animal head. In this case, the large snout suggests that the animal derived from a pig, a staple of the Neolithic economy.

Far greater quantities of carved jades were produced by people of the Liangzhu culture (3300-2200 B.C.), which flourished at some three hundred sites in the Yangzi River basin near modern Shanghai. It was in this warmer, southern climate that rice cultivation began some ten thousand years ago. Liangzhu tombs at Fanshan and Yaoshan have yielded more than three thousand carved jades, lending credence to ancient historians' claims that a "jade age" preceded the Bronze Age. Because jade can be shaped only by slow grinding with abrasive crystals, jade-carving is labor-intensive and requires special skills. The Liangzhu jades thus provide evidence of the existence of a stratified society in which an upper class employed workers to fashion precious goods for the elite's use in the afterlife. Later Chinese texts associate jade with immortality and purity because of its durability and translucency. The discovery of Neolithic jades in a funerary context signals that the Chinese reverence for jade, which persists even today, originated in remote antiquity.

Bronze Age China

Two achievements stand out among the accomplishments of Bronze Age cultures in China: the development of writing and the discovery of bronze, produced on a massive scale for weapons and ritual vessels used by the ruling class. This strong alloy of copper mixed with small amounts of tin and lead was heated to a liquid state and poured into clay molds that were formed in sections mirroring the different parts of the object to be cast. The first known bronze vessels were found at Erlitou near the middle reaches of the Yellow River in northern central China. Most archaeologists now identify this site with the Xia dynasty (c. 2100-1600 B.C.), the earliest of the Three Dynasties -- Xia, Shang, and Zhou -- mentioned in ancient texts. Modern scholars had dismissed the Xia as the legendary invention of Zhou historians until the excavations at Erlitou provided strong evidence for their existence.

Bronzecasting reached new heights during the Shang dynasty (c. 1600-1050 B.C.), whose kings ruled over much of northern China from their capitals at Zhengzhou and Anyang on the Yellow River. The royal tombs of the Shang were all thought to have been looted in antiquity until 1976, when archaeologists at Anyang discovered the intact grave of Fu Hao, a consort of the Shang king. Fu Hao was buried around 1200 B.C. in a tomb of moderate size that also contained sixteen human skeletons (probably sacrificial victims), ivory goblets, seven hundred jades, and more than two hundred ritual bronze vessels. Together, the bronzes weigh 1.6 metric tons, indicating that enormous wealth was concentrated in the hands of the elite. The many objects from Fu Hao's tomb in the exhibition include a wine container in the shape of a horned owl (no. 48). It exemplifies the skill of Shang bronzecasters at transforming functional objects into works of sculpture. Most of the bronzes would have been used in life, but some were probably made specifically for the grave. Inscriptions cast into the walls of the vessels show that they were intended for ritual offerings of food and wine to the spirits of ancestors.

Chinese history has traditionally been viewed as a succession of dynastic rulers whose culture was the radiating source for the entire country. Recent excavations at sites outside the Shang sphere of influence, however, reveal that Bronze Age civilization was more varied and complex than had been thought. In 1989 archaeologists digging at Dayangzhou south of the Yangzi unearthed a tomb filled with intricately patterned bronzes in imaginative shapes as well as a double-sided human mask without precedent in Shang centers in the north (no. 57). Such finds show that the long-held view of the south as a cultural backwater is no longer tenable.

Even more unexpected were finds made in 1986 at Sanxingdui, a site in southwestern China on a tributary of the Yangzi. Outside the walls of an ancient city, workers from a local brick factory discovered two large pits filled with sixty elephant tusks, more than fifty life-size bronze heads (no. 67), twenty bronze masks, gold and silver objects, ritual vessels, jades, and, astonishingly, the first and only life-size human figure known from Bronze Age China (no. 65). No ancient texts identify with any certainty this previously unknown culture, which is roughly contemporary with the tomb of Fu Hao. The pits were not graves, as they contain no trace of human skeletons. The fact that many of the objects had been burned before burial suggests that they could have been offerings to deities or ancestral spirits. Sacrificial pits filled with burnt offerings of humans and animals have been found elsewhere in China. Perhaps the figural sculpture at Sanxingdui was a substitute for actual human sacrifice. It is also possible that the statue and bronze heads are images of the spirits or deities worshiped by the people of Sanxingdui, who may have buried them to prevent their most sacred objects from falling into the hands of invaders.

The last of the Three Dynasties, the Zhou, overthrew the Shang royal house about 1050 B.C., justifying their conquest by citing the weaknesses and excesses of late Shang kings. The Zhou accused them, among other things, of overindulgence in alcohol, possibly explaining why most bronze vessels found in Zhou tombs were for preparing or serving food rather than wine. Recent Zhou finds in the exhibition include the largest and, at five hundred pounds, the heaviest Zhou food container known to date (no. 76); vessels from a hoard of bronzes commissioned by five generations of the same family; and elaborate pendants of jade, agate, and faience (no. 86) found in 1993 in tombs of the lords of Jin, a vassal state under Zhou control. Laid over the body of the deceased, these magnificent ornaments include jades dating back to the Shang dynasty, indicating that the Zhou, for all their criticism of their predecessors, admired Shang works of art.

Chu Culture

In 770 B.C., the king of Zhou moved his capital east to Luoyang; the five and a half centuries that followed, comprising two phases the Spring and Autumn period (770-476 B.C.) and the Warring States period (475-221 B.C.) are called the Eastern Zhou period. The Western Zhou kings had wielded considerable power; the kings of the Eastern Zhou period, by contrast, were largely puppet figures: several regional kingdoms exercised greater influence and waged frequent war among themselves. Despite the political turmoil, the arts flourished, to the point that the period has been called that of "one hundred flowers blooming." Archaeological excavations have revealed several thriving cultures at this time, one of which -- Chu -- dominated southern China. Its cultural richness is manifested in literature such as the Songs of Chu and in lavish, even flamboyant works of art.

The Chu state arose sometime before the sixth century B.C. near the middle reaches of the Yangzi River. Over time, through the annexation of more than forty smaller states, the territory of the Chu kingdom expanded. As a result, Chu culture is a rich mix of diverse influences. The bronze bells from the tomb at Xiasi (no. 91) reflect the Zhou (and Shang) tradition of burying the dead with musical instruments for solemn performances in honor of ancestral spirits. Yet the elaborately decorated surfaces of the bells attest to a distinctly Chu aesthetic that is also seen in bronzes from the tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng, a small state absorbed into the Chu kingdom in the fifth century B.C. His lavish tomb furnishings included ten metric tons of bronze objects, exceeding that of any ancient tomb in the world.

Early Imperial China

The word "China" may derive from Qin (pronounced "chin"), a state near the western frontier. In 221 B.C. the king of Qin united squabbling, disparate kingdoms to create China's first centralized government. The empire he established was consolidated during the ensuing Han dynasty and lasted until 1911. The grandeur of the First Emperor's ambitions and achievements is mirrored in his burial complex, discovered in 1974 outside his capital near modern Xi'an. Still only partly excavated, the complex includes three huge underground pits containing seven thousand life-size terra-cotta foot soldiers, archers, charioteers, and commanders as well as chariots and clay horses, all for the emperor's protection in the next life (nos. 123-128). The terra-cotta warriors may have been substitutes for burying sacrificial victims, a practice known from Shang times and one that Confucius had decried as wasteful in the fifth century B.C. The First Emperor himself was buried beneath a huge earthen mound that has not yet been excavated and may have been looted in antiquity.

Political unification led to cultural unity as well, as exemplified by the two jade burial suits in the exhibition. One was made for the imperial Han prince Liu Sheng, who was buried in a rock-cut tomb at the northern site of Mancheng in 113 B.C. (no. 129; fig. 8). Fashioned from nearly twenty-five hundred jade plaques knotted together with gold wire, the suit perhaps served as armor to protect the body from evil spirits and the forces of decay. Jade suits were thought to be the prerogative of the imperial family, until 1983 when a jade suit sewn with red silk was unearthed in the tomb of the king of Nanyue in southernmost China (no. 139). Made within ten years of each other but for tombs more than two thousand miles apart, these suits demonstrate that shared beliefs and burial practices linked distant parts of China.

The art of the early imperial period also reflects the results of diplomatic relations and trade with other Asian cultures, which exposed the Chinese to foreign ideas as well. The most famous trade route, the Silk Road, stretched from central China to western Asia, but other land and sea routes connected China to India and southeast Asia. Buddhism, which arose in India, reached China in the first century A.D. The Buddhist statues from Qingzhou (no. 152; fig. 9) and the gold and silver objects found in the crypt of the Famen Monastery testify to its profound influence on Chinese religious life.

Interest in the outside world intensified during the prosperous Tang dynasty (618-907), when the capital at Xi'an became the largest, most cosmopolitan city in the world. Flourishing trade with the West sparked a demand for luxury goods from Persia and western Asia. The ceramic figurines of women playing musical instruments and hunters on horseback (nos. 170-171) reflect a fascination with western Asian music, costumes, and horses, which were much larger than the ponies native to China. Found in tombs, these figures are mingqi, grave goods that magically served and entertained the deceased in the next life. A lively new spirit also pervades a painted relief from the tenth-century tomb of Wang Chuzhi (no. 175; fig. 10), excavated in 1995. It depicts female musicians performing a concert much like those Wang Chuzhi would have enjoyed during his life at court. Ever since the Shang dynasty, the Chinese had considered the afterlife unthinkable without music. In the Bronze Age, however, making music on majestic sets of bells was a solemn rite honoring ancestral spirits. The female orchestra performing for Wang Chuzhi's eternal pleasure illustrates a fundamental change that had occurred over the period covered by the exhibition. Initially focused on religious ritual, Chinese art gradually embraced the secular realm to express the worldly concerns and delights of individuals.