Material Properties, Sensory Experience, and Production Techniques in Early Chinese Bronze Casting

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Craft and Technology: Knowledge of the Ancient Chinese Artisans" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The extraordinary bronze ritual vessels of Shang- and Zhou-period China were produced by casting in multi-part ceramic molds. Laboratory analysis of casting-mold fragments has found that these molds were made from an unusual ceramic material—a paste that was quartz-rich, clay-poor, highly porous, and therefore quite unlike pottery clays in terms of its composition. A program of replication experiments has allowed this casting-mold paste to be reproduced and assessed in the laboratory. This paste possesses specialized engineering properties that would have significantly improved the reliability of the casting process. However, the handling characteristics and tactile qualities of this paste are also very different from those of familiar pottery clays. This presentation describes the qualitative, sensory characteristics of casting-mold paste and explores the ways in which those qualities likely shaped foundry workers’ interactions with this material as well as their choices regarding production techniques.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)   •
• Craft and Technology: Knowledge of the Ancient Chinese Artisans

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25269