248 Part IV: East Asian Civilization
pits a cross shape. A wooden chamber was built at the bottom with the coffin,
also of wood, in the center. Most of the wood has disintegrated, along with the
bodies of the kings, but other materials remained. The kings were buried with
sacrificial victims, often decapitated and laid out in rows, with their heads
arranged tidily elsewhere. Sacrificed dogs protected the entrances along the
ramps. Some tombs were better protected; at Royal Tomb 11, eight chariots
complete with two horses and two armed charioteers each were interred on the
ramps. This king was accompanied to the afterlife by 160 decapitated victims.
In 1976 a new royal grave was discovered, the first one that had never pre-
viously been plundered. It was the final resting place of Fu Hao, the favorite
consort of the second Anyang king, Wu Ding, in the thirteenth century B.C.E.
Lady Hao’s name was already known from oracle bone inscriptions, one of
which asked whether she would be in good health after giving birth to her baby.
That is typical enough, but Wu Ding also wants to know whether he will have
success against the Qiang tribes when he sends Fu Hao at the head of the army.
This extraordinary thirteenth-century B.C.E. woman was surrounded by 440
bronze ceremonial vessels, mirrors, bells, and weapons; 590 jades; 560 objects
of bone; 7,000 cowry shells, which were probably used as currency; 16
humans; and six dogs.
At the end of the 1936 digging season, archaeologists stumbled on a trove
of inscribed tortoise plastrons, though so compacted after millennia under-
ground that they could not be removed one by one without damaging them.
Instead, they were removed en masse—a three-ton block of 17,096 shells so
well preserved that the vermilion sketches put on before they were incised
could still be plainly seen. This was the vast official archive of Wu Ding’s reign.
These finds, together with nearly 100,000 written texts from the oracle
bones, enable us to know a great deal more about ancient Chinese civilization
than we know about Indus Valley civilization, whose script remains undeci-
phered, not a single name known, and only a few elusive clues about the nature
of their society and religion inferable from the excavations.The Uses of Bronze
Surely it is appropriate to use the terms “state” and “civilization” to
describe the Shang period. The consolidation of power in a single authority, the
elimination or absorption of competing polities, and the extraordinary works
of art and wealth monopolized by the nobility are evidence of this. The Shang
state consisted of numerous walled towns, called yi, controlled by the great
clans of the nobility. The state (guo) consisted of a hierarchy: the royal city, the
walled towns of the nobility, and the unwalled hamlets of common folk carry-
ing on from the earlier Neolithic pattern of life (Keightley 1982). Meanwhile,
Shang rulers systematically expanded their domains and founded new towns
by sending out populations to settle and begin farming the new regions.
Extreme variations of wealth are apparent in tombs and homes, from the
palatial residences of great kings to the humble quarters of commoners. Bronze