![]() Footnote 3 Yet there are still important connections to be made, as it concerns Shang ritual culture at the time when writing first appeared and when animals were first being written about.įirst, I want to call attention to specific connections between late Shang Anyang period taotie animal ‘images’, Footnote 4 which by this time had evolved into being featured on bronze ritual vessels in high relief on a patterned background, sacrificial animals recorded on contemporary oracle bone inscriptions (hereafter OBI) and food and beverage for spirit and human consumption. Footnote 1 Its origin is now reasonably determined as having derived from Neolithic prototypes, Footnote 2 and its early development and stylistic evolution in Bronze Age art has been traced through the type sites Erlitou 二里頭 (c. ![]() The taotie is a highly complex and symmetrically arranged pattern-motif that can be looked at either as two animals joined together or as a single animal split apart. ![]() Most of us get introduced to Shang animals through animal motifs in Shang art, particularly the two-eyed animal pattern called the taotie 饕餮 or ‘glutton’ mask, which is not only one of China’s most enduring and representative designs, but also one of the most original and distinctive in the iconography of the ancient world. Animal images – whether realistic, imaginary, schematic or just recognizable – are seen all over the archaeology, art, material culture and orthography of the late Shang period (c.
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