Ancient Chinese Warfare (40 page)

Local variation stems from several factors, including environment, lifestyle (agriculturally based or seminomadic), and accessible metal resources, though productive specialization is not necessarily limited by the latter’s availability.
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Copper, the crucial metal in the so-called Bronze Age revolution, is generally found intermixed with other metals, including tin, lead, arsenic, and antimony, resulting in what might be termed naturally occurring alloys when smelted prior to the evolution of more thorough understanding and craft practices.
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Because human resources and fully processed metallic ores were never unlimited, warfare’s importance within society clearly affected the purpose toward which technological capabilities were directed, including the production of daily utensils, decorative items, ritual bronzes, agricultural implements, and weapons.
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Thus, even though Shang production levels quickly escalated, the supply was neither inexpensive nor unlimited, no doubt key factors in the development and use of “semblance” artifacts late in the dynasty. Intended purely for display and for accompanying the dead, these implements never received the usual detailing, sharpening, and polishing associated with Shang dynasty weapons and ritual bronzes. Moreover, being cast from an inferior alloy with a much higher lead content and correspondingly reduced tin portion, they were fundamentally incapable of being perfected to the same degree. (Both rare and expensive, tin provided the essential characteristics of hardness and brittleness, whereas lead facilitated the flow during casting but resulted in a softer product less capable of being sharpened.)
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However, other factors may have contributed to this tendency to inter inferior-quality bronzes, ranging from diminished reverence for the deceased, to growing disdain for spirits of the departed, to an increasingly insatiable demand for copper (especially for weapons), to just outright greed, since semblance bronzes were increasingly seen even in opulent graves.
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Even though other prestige materials such as jade (which played a critical prestige role in Liang-chu culture) might have served equally well, bronze metallurgy soon fulfilled a crucial role in producing ritual objects that could be manipulated by the ruling elite for political
purposes. Bronze also became indispensable because it allowed rapid casting of the weapons needed to dominate an increasingly hostile world and critical chariot components. However, although copper smelted with zinc produces brass, a material with especially conducive characteristics for moving components, the fabrication process is far more complex. Despite the recovery of a few (presumably accidental) specimens, it remained far beyond Shang technical capabilities.

Mining activities rapidly expanded, and bronze production soared during the initial reign period at Yen-shih and Cheng-chou. The government established far-flung outposts at Tung-hsia-feng, P’an-lung-ch’eng, and other locales to ensure the security of the raw materials; embarked on predatory campaigns against the Yi to acquire them;
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and apparently refrained from hostile gestures toward Shu so as to ensure an uninterrupted supply of copper from the Sichuan plains and lead from farther afield in Yünnan through Shu’s intermediation.
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The scope of the bronze production facilities at the last capital at Anyang is equally astonishing. Two major, segregated workshops have been excavated, one north of Miao-p’u and the other southeast of Hsiao-min-t’un, which seems to have specialized in casting ritual vessels. Copper-smelting furnaces, molds for bronze casting, and various implements for preparing clay molds and for finishing and polishing the final products have all been found in the 10,000-square-meter work area. A staggering 30,000 molds have also been recovered, many of them composite, as well as numerous cores, including some that produced unusual vessels previously attributed to the early Western Chou.
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The incipient period of Chinese metallurgy ending with the Shang witnessed a progression from small copper decorative items and simple tools such as knives and awls to weapons and large ritual vessels. However, there seems to have been little inclination to divert highly valued metals to agricultural implements despite increasing reliance on agriculture. On the assumption that the Hsia and Shang were slave-based societies, it has been claimed that agricultural implements were never produced because the ruling class feared providing the downtrodden with metal weapons. Although recognizing the essentially convertible nature of agricultural equipment, this explanation amounts to nothing more than an idle projection of envisioned fears and is completely unfounded,
because there would be no significant difference in the general effectiveness of stone and metallic variants.

Somewhat akin to the controversy over the nonexistence of iron swords, it has also been asserted that bronze’s immense value mandated that broken and worn-out tools be melted down, thereby presumably explaining the absence of bronze agricultural implements at Shang archaeological sites. In contradiction, the recovery of highly decorated, symbolic farm implements presumably employed in ritual performances from a few Shang graves indicates that at least a few molds existed, implying some degree of production. Functional specimens such as plows, adzes, simple spades, shovels, and mattocks have also been found, particularly in peripheral areas where warfare played a lesser role, as well as highly specialized mining tools lying about ancient shafts.
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Accordingly, it would appear that the Shang emphasized weapons of war and the ritual vessels essential to power, resulting in pedestrian agricultural implements continuing to be fabricated from wood, stone, and bone despite more effective shapes, greater sharpness, and greater resilience being possible with metal plows or hoes, but not to the complete exclusion of agricultural needs.

Although disagreement over the origins of Chinese metallurgy and the date of the first identifiable artifacts continues, the Shang clearly benefited from a lengthy heritage of technological development stretching back to the Yangshao (4400 to 2500 BCE) or possibly earlier. A general trend toward achieving a working knowledge of the properties of different metals and mastering the requisite working techniques is apparent from 3000 to 2000 BCE, coincident with the Lungshan period, when the stage of minimal productivity was realized. Nevertheless, arguments about when one or another culture crossed the horizon from the Stone to the Bronze Age and whether to characterize certain centuries as dual use have similarly not abated. However, the question of when the number of bronze implements in circulation became significant enough to label the era “chalcolithic” is largely irrelevant for Chinese military history, because the earliest weapons imitated lethal stone versions, and metal’s ritual role dwarfed its military application, copper and bronze being allocated or diverted to weapons only with warfare’s rising intensity.
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Rather than substantial copper or bronze objects, core evidence for the initial stage of metallurgical development is provided by metal fragments, ore residue, and smelted globules primarily of copper and crudely processed ores. Small items such as small decorative pieces, jewelry, pins, awls, and knives rank next in importance. Again, for the purposes of military history singular appearances are anomalous and irrelevant; only the widespread adoption of new materials in producing weapons has discernible impact. However, in conjunction with the erection of defensive fortifications, early attempts at manufacturing bronze weapons certainly imply a growing concern with external threats and a probable escalation in conflict.

Ancient China has long been recognized for the superlative quality of its massive vessels, precisely cast weapons, and other objects fabricated from various bronze alloys. Although silver did not appear until much later, gold was employed for small decorative items as early as the Shang,
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yet it was glistening, highly burnished bronze that formed the very basis of power. The recovery of a broad axe with a meteoric iron blade affixed in a copper mounting clearly shows that Shang metallurgists recognized iron and were cognizant of its superior hardness. (An early Chou dagger-axe of bronze with a meteoric iron point has also been found.) Nevertheless, despite occasional claims based solely on traditional literary sources that the Hsia and Shang had already commenced smelting and employing it to produce weapons, iron would not be produced until well into the Chou.
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Discerning the existence and effects of the various components in China’s bronze alloys is complicated by the impure nature of the minerals in situ, elements such as tin, arsenic, sulfur, antimony, zinc, and even gold and silver often being found intermixed in copper deposits.
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Alloys combining two or more of these elements in apparently functional proportions may have inadvertently resulted from their presence in the ore. These occurrences tend to obscure the “normal” developmental sequence from copper through copper/tin and copper/lead and then ternary variants; deliberate but collateral intermixing of copper with arsenic and accidental brass formulations further add to the complexity. Only with the passage of centuries did a working knowledge of alloys emerge, enabling the Shang to consistently cast large ritual bronzes
and weapons with deliberately chosen, varying degrees of hardness and durability.

Chinese metallurgical practices evolved in several distinct regions: the northwest in the so-called Ho-hsi corridor of eastern Xinjiang and the immediately contiguous area; between the Yellow River and the Huang-shui River; in the central plains, but really centered in the Yen-shih/Cheng-chou corridor; the lowest reaches of the Yellow River in Shandong; and the southwest, emblematized by the dramatic cultural manifestations of San-hsing-tui.
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However, the most numerous and earliest bronze artifacts, some 1,500 in comparison with only about 200 from the middle reaches of the Yellow River in Yü-hsi, have been found in the northwest, encompassing Gansu, Qinghai, and Xinjiang, where some small objects strongly resemble external styles.

Early knowledge of metals and metalworking seems to have been widespread but highly limited in actual application during the third millennium BCE. Copper and primitive bronze alloys came into use between 3000 and 2300 BCE, and the Bronze Age seems to have commenced around 2400 to 2000, though assessments vary.
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In terms of identifiable cultures, only a few early knives have been recovered from Ma-chia-yao (3300-2650) and Ma-ch’ang (2650-2000) cultural sites, while the increased number of artifacts, roughly 130, including axes, knives, daggers, and awls from the Ch’i-chia culture (2200-1800), lying in the intermediate region between the core and the northwest, indicates greater but still sporadic interest in metals. However, the more than 300 copper and bronze objects and the first stone molds discovered at Ssu-pa (1950- 1550) cultural sites, said to be the transmission nexus for steppe and thus Western metallurgical knowledge, mark a transition to metal and stone’s coexistence, at least in consciousness if not in quantity.

In the incipient stage the greatest strides and most extensive production occurred in Xinjiang and especially Gansu, where the majority of early artifacts have been recovered. Based on fragments of crucibles, knives, axes, awls, ornaments, mirrors, small copper items, and partially refined metallic globules, it is generally claimed that copper was already being mined and smelted along the upper Yellow River during the Yangshao and that copper and bronze manufacturing was being conducted at more than forty sites in this general area by the end of the Ch’i-chia culture.
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The first metal alloys have long been identified with Lin-t’ung Chiang-chai, a site that was continuously occupied from the Yangshao through Shih-chia-lei, Miao-ti-kou, and late Pan-p’o.
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Two metal plate fragments dated to about 2700 BCE have been recovered, incontrovertible evidence that metals were already known, but their high zinc content (65 percent copper and 25 percent zinc) makes them somewhat problematic because the knowledge and technology for producing brass objects would not exist for another four millennia due to zinc’s volatility, prompting claims that they could not have been produced in China.
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However, they also have a high sulfur content, indicative of the earliest stages of smelting; the region’s copper sources are marked by the presence of high concentrations of other metals, including zinc;
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and experiments have proven it is possible to produce brass bits identical to those from an awl found in Shandong from locally available, comparatively high-zinc-content ore.
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Subsequently, Ch’i-chia culture in Gansu and later the early Hsia had access to this material.
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Chronologically next in importance would be knife remnants from the definitive Ma-chiao-yao (3400-2000 BCE) cultural site in Gansu, variously dated from 3280 to 2740 BCE but more likely closer to the latter. Hardly primitive, the knife was fabricated from an alloy containing about 6-10 percent tin and cast in a two-part mold indicative of a new orientation to quantity production; it remains the earliest bronze implement yet found. A few casting remnants have also been found that reportedly consist of an imperfectly refined intermixture of iron and copper, evidence of smelting and the achievement of both copper and bronze.
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Copper knives dating somewhat later have also been discovered in the Ma-kuang, Juo-mu-hung, and K’a-yao cultures.

The forty-five to fifty artifacts recovered from Ch’i-chia (2055-1900 or 2200-1800 BCE) cultural sites in Gansu not only range from pure copper through lead/copper and tin/copper but also show a distinct trend from copper to bronze, prompting the conclusion that both casting and hot forging were being employed by about 2000 BCE.
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Knowledge of metals and alloys was clearly increasing, but still remained at an intermediate stage. Even though a large bronze spearhead and a forged arrowhead dating to about 2000 BCE have been recovered, small items such as copper knives and awls predominate, copper apparently still being too
valuable to waste on casting expendable arrowheads. However, alloys containing from 5 or 6 percent up to 10 percent tin had been achieved, with cold hammering, hot forging, and some casting (such as of a copper knife discovered at Min-hsien) in two-part molds all being employed.