Table of Contents

I. Late Prehistoric China

II. Bronze Age China

III. Chu and Other Cultures

IV. Early Imperial China

GO TO SITE: http://www.nga.gov/education/chinatp_toc.shtm

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How the Upper Crust Lived, and Died, in Early China
By KEN JOHNSON
Published: April 9, 2009

They say you can’t take it with you, but in certain times and places people thought otherwise, and they stocked the tombs of their most illustrious citizens with everything they would need in the next world: clothing, food, money, reading material, pets and even live servants. We don’t know if this was helpful for the intended beneficiaries, but the effective preservation of much art and material culture has been a great boon for modern scholars of ancient civilizations.

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Archaeology

Digging Up China’s Best Exhibitions
BY ETI BONN-MULLER
Published: February 12, 2009

Willow Weilan Hai Chang is the director of the China Institute Gallery in New York City, where she has spent nearly a decade organizing a wide variety of exhibitions, ranging from imperial calligraphy to contemporary photography. She has also been instrumental over the years in introducing American audiences to hundreds of China’s greatest and rarest archaeological discoveries. Formally trained as an archaeologist, she is at the same time incredibly brilliant and completely unassuming. Amid a flurry of preparations for the opening of the landmark show, Noble Tombs at Mawangdui: Art and Life in the Changsha Kingdom, Third Century BCE to First Century CE, she spoke with ARCHAEOLOGY’s managing editor, Eti Bonn-Muller, about why she choose an unconventional major (for a nice young lady, that is), what it was like to unearth evidence for the origin of rice cultivation in China, and how she brings her passion for the ancient world to life on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

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马王堆文物展在美国纽约隆重推出

马王堆文物在美展出引起轰动 (Needs Internet Explorer to View)

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The Mawangdui Burials

For the first time ever in the United States, China Institute’s exhibition Noble Tombs at Mawangdui presents over sixty rare artifacts excavated during 1972-74 from one of the most important archaeological sites discovered in the 20th century. Consisting of three tombs in the hill named Mawangdui located near the modern provincial capital of Changsha in the Hunan province, the site has provided a unique window into the beliefs and cultural practices of the early era of the Western Han dynasty (206 BCE-9 CE). The Mawangdui tombs are the resting places of Li Cang, the Marquis of Dai (d. 186 BCE), his wife, Xinzhui, Lady Dai (d. ca. 163), and a third person who is thought to be their son.

Buried in the tomb to accompany Lady Dai to the Afterlife were a complete wardrobe of the finest silk and linen for each of the seasons, various food and lacquer ware, pottery, wooden figures, and musical instruments. In the burial tomb archeologists also found Lady Dai’s perfectly preserved 2,000 year-old body. Incredibly, her skin was still supple and her limbs could be manipulated, as if she had just died last week. This is because — unlike the process used in Egypt that produced “dry” mummies — the ancient Chinese mummification process involved “saponification,” causing the fat of a corpse to convert to a water-insoluble material consisting mostly of saturated fatty acids.

Due to these advanced embalming techniques, Lady Dai’s perfectly preserved body could be autopsied by 20th-century pathologists, yielding amazing scientific discoveries, including her cause of death (a heart attack), analysis of her blood type, other ailments (gall stones and a hip infirmity), and even the foods that comprised her last meal. An exquisite and rare collection of texts on silk and bamboo from Tomb Number Three, on subjects such as philosophy, the military, health and Chinese herbs, have enriched our knowledge of the early books and culture of China.

Providing important windows into art, culture, history, science, geography, and other subjects, the Mawangdui site ranks among the most important of China’s — and the world’s — cultural heritage sites. With deep gratitude to the Hunan Provincial Museum, China Institute is proud to share with you these thrilling artifacts and educational resources.

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