Kent Cao

This dissertation seeks to jump outside the traditional historiography centred on the Yellow River societies, and explore the middle Yangtze bronze industries in the eleventh and tenth centuries BCE on their own terms. First recognising the catalytic role that Panlongcheng (c. 1500 BCE) and similar sites played in disseminating casting technology and Zhengzhou bronze repertoire in the south, the main discussion will focus on the Erligang-stimulated middle Yangtze cultures, and their interactions with the newly risen Zhou sphere looming from the north.

In the 15th century BCE, the rapid expansion of the Erligang culture from the Yellow River valley triggered the transregional spread of bronze art and technology, a scale unprecedented in the East Asia continent. As the first book in English, On Their Own Merits interweaves art history, archaeology, metallurgy and epigraphy to present a multivalent perspective on the indigenous societies and their original bronze art in South China's Yangtze River valley (modern-day Wuhan to Shanghai). To strengthen the spotty archaeological findings in South China, this project explores the environment of the Yangtze River that conditioned ore procurement and knowledge dissemination, argues for the seminal role of bronze casters in the lower Yangtze plains, and reconstructs a tightly-knit exchange network along the river that gave rise to a prominent bronze center in the middle Yangtze hills in the 12th to 9th century BCE.