Zhengzhou Shang City: An Early Bronze Age Capital in China

Zhengzhou Shang City is the buried remains of a great walled city of the early Shang dynasty, built around 1600 BC beneath what is now the centre of Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan province in China. Its rammed-earth walls, about 7 kilometres long, enclosed palaces and were surrounded by bronze foundries and workshops. It is the largest known city of the Erligang period and one of the first great capitals of Chinese history.

Discovery

In 1950 a local schoolteacher, Han Weizhou, noticed ancient pottery at Erligang, a low ridge on the south-east edge of Zhengzhou. Excavations from 1952 identified a culture older than the late Shang remains already known at Anyang. In 1955 archaeologists, among them An Jinhuai, recognised that long earthen ridges running through the city were the walls of a Shang city.

The discovery showed that Shang civilisation was far older and more widespread than had been thought. The pottery sequence at Erligang gave its name to the whole early Shang culture, the Erligang culture, dated to about 1600–1400 BC.

The walls

The inner walls form a rough rectangle with a circuit of about 6.9 kilometres, enclosing some 3 square kilometres. They were built of rammed earth, made by pounding thin layers of soil between wooden boards. At the base they were around 20 metres wide, and in places they still stand several metres high.

Estimates of the labour involved are very large: building the walls would have required many thousands of workers over several years. In the 1990s excavators also traced parts of an outer wall to the south and west, showing that the settled area extended well beyond the inner enclosure.

Palaces and workshops

The north-eastern part of the walled area contained large rammed-earth platforms, the foundations of palace or temple halls. Outside the walls lay specialised workshops. Two bronze foundries have been found, one to the south at Nanguanwai and one to the north at Zijingshan, with fragments of clay moulds and crucibles. There were also workshops for bone objects and pottery kilns.

These industries show a society in which the ruling elite controlled skilled craft production on a large scale. The foundries cast objects in clay piece-moulds, the same technique pioneered at Erlitou, but in greater numbers and larger sizes. Bronze was used above all for ritual vessels for feasts and offerings to ancestors, and for weapons.

Life in the city

Beyond the elite core, the city held ordinary houses, wells, storage pits and cemeteries. Most burials were modest, with a few pots, while richer graves contained bronze vessels, weapons and jade, reflecting a sharp social hierarchy. Some pits contained human and animal remains that archaeologists interpret as sacrifices, a practice that became much more common at the later Shang capital at Anyang.

The city also needed a steady flow of resources. Copper and tin for its foundries came from distant mining areas, possibly as far as the middle Yangtze, and the spread of Erligang outposts along these routes suggests that securing metal was one reason for the state’s expansion.

Bronze hoards

Several pits filled with ritual bronzes have been found around the city. In 1974 two large square cauldrons, called fangding, were found at Zhangzhai Nanjie; the larger is about a metre tall and weighs over 80 kilograms. Further hoards were found in 1982 and 1996. Their decoration, with bands of stylised animal masks known as taotie, develops the simpler style first seen at Erlitou.

Which capital was it?

No writing has been found at Zhengzhou that names the city, so its identity rests on matching it with later texts. Many Chinese scholars see it as Ao, the capital of the Shang king Zhong Ding. The archaeologist Zou Heng argued instead that it was Bo, the capital of the dynasty’s founder, Tang. The question remains open.

Around 1400 BC the city declined. Power seems to have shifted to other centres, including the site of Xiaoshuangqiao to the north-west, and later to Anyang, where the last Shang capital at Yinxu has produced inscribed oracle bones.

Legacy

Erligang-style bronzes and pottery have been found from the Yellow River to the Yangtze, including at Panlongcheng in Hubei, which suggests that Zhengzhou was the centre of a state with wide reach. Today the walls are protected as a national heritage site, and stretches of them can be seen in parks and along streets in the modern city.

Timeline

• c. 1600 BC: Construction of the walled city begins in the Erligang period.
• c. 1600–1400 BC: The city flourishes, with palaces, foundries and workshops.
• c. 1400 BC: The city declines as the Shang centre moves elsewhere.
• 1950: Han Weizhou finds ancient pottery at Erligang.
• 1955: The Shang walls are identified.
• 1974: Two large square cauldrons are found at Zhangzhai Nanjie.
• 1996: Another hoard of ritual bronzes is found in the city.

Why it matters

Zhengzhou Shang City shows that the early Shang state could organise labour and bronze production on a scale unknown before in East Asia. It links the earlier palace centre at Erlitou with the later royal capital at Anyang and helps explain how Shang civilisation spread across much of northern and central China.