Imprints of Kinship: Studies of Recently Discovered Bronze Inscriptions from Ancient China

Edward L. Shaughnessy

Mar 2017 · The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press

About this ebook

Recent discoveries of bronze ritual vessels from ancient China provide the ground for this collection of essays, which focus in particular on the nature and patterns of family lineages as seen from these artifacts found in tombs throughout north China. Based on careful readings of the inscriptions on the bronze vessels, the editor and his eight contributors reconstruct the genealogies, kinship structures, political identities, and relationship networks of leading families and individuals from BronzeAge China. The rich scholarship also contributes to our understanding of the archaeology, chronology, warfare, and legal structures of ancient China. "The bronze inscriptions from ancient China are far too important to be left to the specialized archaeologists alone. Professor Shaughnessy and his group of leading practitioners of the arcane art of teasing out the meaning implicit and explicit in these extraordinarily difficult--often only recently discovered--inscriptions allow us to look over their shoulders as they struggle valiantly with some of the richest sources from the earliest stages of Chinese intellectual ethnography and literary culture. This volume provides the kind of handson and welldocumented exploratory philology that opens up a wide field of general discussion concerning an early formative stage of Chinese civilization." --Christoph Harbsmeier, Professor Emeritus of Chinese, University of Oslo

About the author

Edward L. Shaughnessy is the Lorraine J. and Herrlee G. Creel Distinguished Service Professor in Early China Studies at the University of Chicago. Most recently the author of Unearthing the Changes: Recently Discovered Manuscripts of the Yi jing (I Ching) and Related Texts (Columbia University Press, 2014) and Haiwai Yi jian zhi (Firm-and-Even's Records from Beyond the Seas; Shanghai Guji chubanshe, 2016), he specializes in the textual heritage of ancient China,both the received literary tradition and also unearthed documents.