Chapter 37 Section 4 Wucheng Culture in Jiangxi

Wucheng Culture is named after it was first discovered in Wucheng, Zhangshu, Jiangxi.It is mainly distributed in the north of Jiangxi, and its age is roughly equivalent to the Shang Dynasty and Western Zhou Dynasty or later. It is a developed local bronze culture.Bronze tools include knives, axes and so on.And found 35 pieces of stone models for casting copper axes, chisels, knives, etc., which are different from the pottery models widely used in the Central Plains. In 1989, a large-scale tomb was excavated in Xingan Oceania, Jiangxi Province, with a coffin and an outer coffin in the tomb.The coffin chamber is 8.22 meters long and 3.6 meters wide.The coffin is about 2.34 meters long and 0.85 meters wide.There are more than 480 bronze wares buried in the tomb, including ritual vessels, weapons and tools.Some of the utensils are huge in shape, such as a bronze jar, which is 1.10 meters high and weighs 78 kilograms.A Dafang tripod is 0.97 meters high and weighs 49.2 kilograms.A piece of four sheep shackles, with a belly diameter of 61 centimeters.Its shape and ornamentation are similar to those of the bronzes of the late Shang Dynasty in the Central Plains, indicating that it is closely related to and strongly influenced by Shang culture.However, some artifacts, such as bronze tomahawks, daggers, single-winged arrowheads, semicircular chisels, hand axes, etc., have strong local characteristics.And tiger-shaped vertical carving decorations are often seen on utensils.In addition, more than 300 pieces of jade cong, jade bi, jade frogs, crystal rings, agate ring feather ornaments, hard pottery with geometric imprints, and primitive porcelain were also unearthed from the tomb.According to research, the age of the tomb is about the late Shang Dynasty (or later), and the owner of the tomb may be the supreme ruler of the local ancient Fang Kingdom.

A large number of symbols or characters are also found on the pottery and stone models of the Wucheng Culture. Most of them have 1-2 symbols or characters carved on each utensil, and a maximum of 12 symbols or characters are carved on a piece of pottery.According to research, the shape and structure of its characters may have been influenced by the oracle bone inscriptions of the Shang Dynasty, but most of them cannot be recognized so far, and it may be a local ancient character that has been lost.