Survey_Excavation_and_Geophysics_at_Songjiaheba_-_A_Small_Bronze_Age_Site_in_the_Chengdu_Plain.pdf

Rowan Flad, Timothy J. Horsley, Jade D’Alpoim Guedes, He Kunyu, Gwen Bennett, Pochan Chen, Li Shuicheng, Jiang Zhanghua Asian Perspectives, Volume 52, Number 1, Spring 2013, pp. 119-144 (Article) DOI: 10.1353/asi.2013.0006 For additional information about this article /journals/asi/summary/v052/52.1.flad.html Access provided by Washington State University Libraries (18 Jan 2015 21:27 GMT) Survey, Excavation, and Geophysics at Songjiaheba — A Small Bronze Age Site in the Chengdu Plain ROWAN FLAD, TIMOTHY J. HORSLEY, JADE D’ALPOIM GUEDES, HE KUNYU, GWEN BENNETT, POCHAN CHEN, LI SHUICHENG, AND JIANG ZHANGHUA introduction The Chengdu Plain, in the northwest corner of the Sichuan Basin (Fig. 1), was the setting for the emergence of a complex civilization in the second millen- nium b.c. This civilization is most notably associated with the site of Sanxingdui , in Guanghan, where two sacrificial pits discovered in 1986 revealed a rich and unexpected collection of jade objects, ceramics, elephant tusks, and elaborate bronze and gold objects ( Bagley 2001; Flad 2012; Sichuan 1999). The discovery of the Sanxingdui pits was followed by research at other sites in the Chengdu Plain, includ- ing several loci in the city of Chengdu that post-date Sanxingdui, such as an elite residential location called Shi’erqiao ( Jiang 1998; Sichuan et al. 1987), a zone of ritual deposits, cemeteries, and settlement areas named Jinsha (Chengdu and Beijing 2002; Chengdu Institute 2006; Zhu et al. 2003), and Shangyejie, a Late Bronze Age elite burial site with large log coffins filled with lacquers and other elite objects (Chengdu 2002). Based on the excavations of these sites, we now know that bronze-producing communities that commanded multi-community networks of resource acquisition existed in t