The Pengzhou Hoard and its Relevance to the Study of Song Dynasty Bronze Casting

• Main Authors: Jeffrey Moser, 孟絜予
• Other Authors: 陳芳妹
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2010
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/29776458245869408689

碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 藝術史研究所 === 98 === With a few notable exceptions, the study of “later Chinese bronzes” has long languished in the shadows of academic obscurity. Generally recognized as referring to those bronzes cast during the second millennium A.D., this category has yet to attract the sustained attention of scholars in either East Asia or the West. Most commentary on the subject has been content to label the bronzes “archaistic,” without delving deeply into the mentalities and agendas that motivated their distinctive stylistic features. The scholarly community has also long operated on the assumption that later bronzes were primarily or even exclusively cast using a lost wax process, without carefully assessing the degree to which the material evidence of the bronzes themselves supports this assumption. Even more serious for the purposes of art and cultural historical inquiry is the fact that the stylistic history for later bronzes has yet to be mapped in any detail, forcing most commentators to resort to vague temporal distinctions such as “Song-Yuan” or “twelfth to fourteenth centuries.” Over the past several decades, a significant amount of new archaeological evidence has come to light that can advance scholarship on this neglected subject. Much of this evidence hails from Sichuan, which for reasons not yet entirely clear has yielded more Song and Yuan dynasty bronzes than any other province in China. The most significant of these finds is a hoard of nearly seventy bronzes that was discovered in 1996 in the city of Pengzhou, located approximately fifty kilometers from the provincial capital of Chengdu. The thesis argues that a close examination of the contents of the Pengzhou hoard and related data can advance our understanding of later bronzes in three distinct respects. First, because a significant portion of the bronzes can be dated to mid-twelfth to early thirteenth centuries, the hoard significantly expands our reference material for the reconstruction of detailed stylistic chronologies. Second, the manufacture of these bronzes did not exclusively rely on the lost wax method, but also involved a distinctive piece-mold process. Third, the contents of the Pengzhou and related hoards demonstrate the existence of a discrete ritual tradition in the greater Chengdu region, and strongly suggest that the patrons of this tradition deliberately distinguished their ritual practices from those promoted by the Song court. In this sense, the hoard offers material evidence for a brand of Southern Song localism that has yet to be identified in the textual record.