at a distance. We cannot know from archaeology why it made sense to
execute a prisoner with a volley of arrows rather than simply dispatching
the person with a hand weapon. We also do not know the social status of
those executed. Were they important people killed in a manner that
emphasized their status, or were they ordinary people slain by archery
for some ritual or otherworldly reason? Many high-status Shang tombs
included the skeletons of sometimes hundreds of sacrificial victims. Ritual
death by archery seems to have disappeared by the time of the Shang,
however, at least around high-status tombs. Funerary sacrifice of humans
continued through the Zhou dynasty and even into the Han dynasty,
though not apparently by archery.^5 Archery continued to fulfill an impor-
tant ritual function through highly formalized competitions for the aristo-
cratic and knightly class. The Zhou construction of formal archery would
resonate throughout the rest of imperial Chinese history as a spiritual and
social act demonstrating self-cultivation. This point will be taken up more
fully in the following chapter, when we turn to Confucius and several of
the other great thinkers of the Warring States period.
Chinese and Central Eurasian bows were originally simple wooden
staves with animal gut strings, evolving later into composite recurved
bows, made of bone, sinew, and wood glued together to form short,
powerful weapons. It took considerable skill to manufacture such a
weapon, and one of the reasons for associating aristocrats with archery
in the Zhou dynasty may well have been the expense of the bow.
Economic, and thus social, status may have dictated the kind of bow,
and even the kinds of arrows, one used in warfare. Higher-status people
used better bows and arrows, and used them more regularly outside of
warfare. Hunting became a purely elite pursuit when most commoners
became farmers, though a certain amount of low-level hunting likely
persisted in the general population in the less agriculturally developed
areas.^6 Certainly in later times, and possibly in the Shang and Zhou as
well, the government was careful to control the manufacture and posses-
sion of weapons. By the Warring States period ( 475 – 221 bce), a military
storehouse was one of the three necessary facilities of a ruler’s palace.^7
The association of archery with warfare and hunting also connected it
to manliness and virility. On one occasion, when two men sought the hand
of the same woman, it was agreed that the woman would decide. Thefirst
man presented himself infine clothes and made proper ritual presents of
jade and silk. The second man chose, instead, to demonstrate his prowess
as a warrior by driving up in a chariot, leaping out,firing his bow in either
direction, and then leaping back on his chariot and departing. This second
Archery 17