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The six recipes of Zhou: a new perspective on Jin (金) and Xi (锡)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 August 2022

A.M. Pollard  and
Ruiliang Liu Open the ORCID record for Ruiliang Liu [Opens in a new window]
A.M. Pollard
Affiliation:
Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art, School of Archaeology, University of Oxford, UK
Ruiliang Liu*
Affiliation:
The Department of Asia, British Museum, London, UK
*
*Author for correspondence ✉ rliu@britishmuseum.org
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Abstract

Knowledge of alloying practices is key to understanding the mass production of ancient Chinese bronzes. The Eastern Zhou text, the Rites of Zhou, contains six formulae, or recipes, for casting different forms of bronze based on the combination of two components: Jin and Xi. For more than 100 years, the precise interpretation of these two components has eluded explanation. Drawing on analyses of pre-Qin coinage, the authors offer a new interpretation, arguing that, rather than pure metals, Jin and Xi were pre-prepared copper-rich alloys, in turn indicating an additional step in the manufacturing process of copper-alloy objects. This result will be of interest to linguists, as well as archaeologists of ancient Chinese technology.

Keywords

ChinaBronze Agemetallurgyalloying practicessix recipesancient Chinese texts
Type
Research Article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 96 , Issue 389 , October 2022 , pp. 1200 - 1213
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Antiquity Publications Ltd.

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