The artistry and workmanship of the Dian bronzes
Bronze, as the precious material of antiquity, characterised its various forms of daily utensils, ritual implements, prestige goods, and wealth markers, its distinguished features serving to distance it from other types of materials. The Dian ruling aristocracy is a priority to control the production of bronze, more than any other kind of prestige material (Murowchick 2001). Bronze products acted as a fundamental form of mediation to signify individual authorities and convey socio-political meanings. For example, bronze vessels were used for the preparation and offering of food to ancestors in temples and at the funeral of aristocrats, who were about to become important ancestors. In addition, they were probably used for food consumption by aristocrats (Undrehill 2004:11).
During the Warring States era (fourth to second centuries BC), the increasing manufacture and use of bronzes developed to such a level that it became necessary to procure and control material sources, human labour, and specialists. This suggested significant social change in the Dian polity, including frequent rituals, complex social stratifications, population intensification, economic growth, and military mastery. The one significant human element required to achieve these societal changes was the increasing necessity for more skilled craft workers to meet the needs of extensive bronze manufacturing. As Contin suggests, social necessity is a principal major factor driving changes in craft production (Costin 2001: 303).
Specialised craftsmen included bronze products with specific socio-political meanings (cognitive features) and qualities (physical features). These twofold features, however, were ascribed to the owners, and not to the makers. Consequently, possession of the exquisite bronze product, in which the craftsmen’s preferences, skills, cognitions, and disciplines were stored, became a marker suggesting the privilege and authority of the owner to command the specialists needed for production. As regards the relationship of the Dian craftsmen, Murowchick (2002:133–134) suggests that under the patronage and control of the local ruling aristocracy, the process and products of bronze production both conferred and maintained socio-political authority in the hands of the aristocrat, who compelled craftsmen to develop complicated methods of manufacturing sophisticated, bronze products representing various aspects of Dian life. It appears that a close, symbiotic relationship existed between Dian metallurgical craftsmen and their elite patrons.
The elite patrons’ aegis of Dian bronze production suggests the “attached” feature of Dian bronze specialist and goods produced therein, which served to uphold socio-political differentiation and function, and secure privilege and inequality through exercising economic, political, military, and ideological power. In other words, “attached forms of production promote social inequality because they facilitate the efforts of some privileged members of society to gain unequal access to labour, appropriate production, and control information and ideology” (Costin 1991:152).
Concepts of “attached” and “independent” production were originally a set of conceptual types first proposed by Earle (1981; see also Brumfiel and Earle 1987) to distinguish between production systems that make and distribute goods under the patronage of some ruling aristocracy, and those in which goods are made and exchanged without elite involvement and ideology (Costin 1991:152).
The pursuit of qualities and quantities of prestige goods can stimulate competition over access to control specialists and motivate new approaches to display status. Murowchick (2001:135) states that it may be argued that the rapid developments in Dian metallurgical specialisation were attributable to the ultimately essentially self-serving patronage of the Dian aristocracy.
Judging from the impressive quality and quantity of the weapons buried in both the lavish and moderate graves, Dian military power must have been highly significant in Dian society. As a means of distinguishing themselves from persons of subordinate status, the Dian princely aristocracy sponsored craftsmen to cast exclusive individual craft goods, e.g., the armour with delicately incised zoomorphic motifs (Lijiashan M13:4 ),
the socketed halberd in the form of a fowl’s head with long beaks attached two crescent axe-like ends, (Tianzimiao M41:147),
and the cowry container with a warfare scene (Shizhaishan M6:1 and M13:356).
The bronzes of the Dian culture are famous for the richness of their design and their variety. With their distinctive regional style and lively characterizations of people and animals, studies of the bronzes — in particular of the form, dress, and hairstyles of their three-dimensional cast figures — can provide a vivid understanding of the origins and development of the people of ancient Dian.
By employing regular and standardised designs, the schematic style can take form and enable the social significance and features to transform into — and be recorded on — the ornament, demonstrating social characteristics and individual identities. However, the development of social stratification and political centralisation may result in increasing heterogeneity and expanding social inequality, which may not change at the same rate. As the social structure becomes more complex, the roles and functions of some artefacts may accordingly be transformed from craft products into objects acquiring some symbolic value, i.e., rarity, exquisite, aesthetics, abstraction, hugeness, or heterogeneity, as social markers of the superordinate status of individuals. Dian craftsmen invented a dramatically variant, artistic expression of naturalistic style, rendering this careful observation of humans, animals, and architectures of daily life, ritual activity, and warfare into miniature figurines arranged within detailed settings and repertoire.
As ornament became more pictorial, and as naturalistic themes prevailed after the post-conquest Dian period (late second century BC to first century AD), the nature of its narrative theme became more complex. In contrast, the uniqueness of its substantiality became more obvious. Each composition of naturalistic theme became an independent creation, allowing the Dian ruling aristocracy to flaunt their superiority over the Dian commoners.
Conclusion: Decorative program as a documentary
These intra-societal differences of artistic taste show that the divergent decorative vocabularies function to communicate various social units, vertical (socially stratified) and horizontal (geographically separated). The distinct aesthetic preferences of Dian people on bronze products testified by the schematic and naturalistic styles of the Dian bronze. As part of the aristocratic exclusivity, Dian nobilities reserved themselves the possession of certain types of items to serve as indicators of their superior statuses, it is primarily on these prestige goods that we see the naturalistic style is demonstrated. With only a few exceptions, most items embellished in this decorative taste are almost exclusively limited to upper-class burials.
It suggests that the two schematic and naturalistic styles evident in Dian material can function on two levels: The pervasive regional style (schematic style) served to negotiate geographically separated kin groups or political affiliations. Simultaneously, the distinct elite aesthetics served to legitimate the authority of the aristocracy in a system of inequality and control.
Reference:
Brumfiel, E. M., Earle, T. K., Audouze, F., Renfrew, C., Sherratt, A., Schlanger, N., … & Ashmore, W. (Eds.). (1987). Specialization, exchange and complex societies. Cambridge university press.
Costin, C. L. (1991). Craft specialization: issues in defining, documenting, and explaining the organization of production. Archaeological method and theory, 3, 1–56.
Murowchick, R. (2001). The political and ritual significance of bronze production and use in ancient Yunnan. Journal of East Asian Archaeology, 3(1), 133–192.
Minghua, X. (2006). Bronze Cowry-containers of the Dian Culture. Chinese Archaeology, 6(1), 168–173.
Underhill, R. L., & Malone, M. M. (2004). U.S. Patent №6,726,668. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
