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Millet, Bronze and Kings: A Shang China Exhibit

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Millet, Bronze and Kings: A Shang China Exhibit

Use museum labels and tomb data to trace how a grain surplus built jobs, ranks and trade.

The gallery guide

The Cedar Hill Museum is made up, but the objects described are like real finds from Anyang. Read the guide. Then answer the questions.

Gallery 12: Millet, Bronze and Kings

1Welcome to Gallery 12. About 1250 BCE, a city near present-day Anyang, in northern China, was the capital of the Shang kings. The Shang ruled part of the Yellow River valley from about 1600 to 1046 BCE. Most Shang people were farmers. They grew millet, a grain that handles dry summers well, in the soft yellow soil of the region, and they raised pigs, dogs and cattle.

2Farmers worked with tools of stone, wood and bone. In good years they harvested more millet than their families could eat. Archaeologists have found many storage pits dug into the ground at Anyang, and some grain was brewed into wine for feasts and ceremonies.

3Thousands of people at Anyang did not farm. Archaeologists have found large workshops where workers cast bronze, carved bone and shaped jade. Casting one large bronze vessel took many workers: some mined and melted copper and tin, some made clay molds, and others poured the hot metal. Diviners and scribes worked for the king.

4Shang society had clear ranks. The king and his family were at the top, with nobles who led armies and took part in ceremonies. Below them were craft workers, and below them the farmers, the largest group. At the bottom were enslaved people, many of them captives taken in war. Bronze was costly, and most bronze vessels and weapons belonged to the king and nobles.

5Some materials at Anyang came from far away. Historians think much of the copper and tin came from mines far to the south. Cowrie shells, small shiny seashells, came from warm seas hundreds of miles from Anyang, and nobles treasured them.

1.

Complete the chain of causes in the guide.

In good years, farmers grew a of millet. The extra grain fed full-time workers in the of Anyang. The costly bronze they made went mostly to the king and the .

2.

Underline the sentence from paragraph 3 that best shows that one bronze object depended on several different jobs.

The exhibit cases

Read the case labels. Then use them and the guide to answer.

Case Labels

1Case 1. Stone harvest knife. A flat stone blade with two holes for a cord. Farmers used knives like this to cut the heads off millet stalks.

2Case 2. Burned millet grains from a storage pit at Anyang. Fire turned the grain to charcoal, which helped it last about 3,000 years.

3Case 3. Three-legged bronze wine cup from a noble's tomb. Shang nobles poured wine made from grain from cups like this in ceremonies to honor their ancestors.

4Case 4. Clay mold pieces from a bronze workshop at Anyang. Workers carved patterns into clay molds, fitted the pieces together and poured melted bronze inside. Thousands of mold pieces were found at one workshop.

5Case 5. Oracle bone (an ox shoulder blade). A diviner heated the bone until it cracked, and a scribe carved the king's question on it: "Will we receive a millet harvest?" Shang people believed the cracks showed the answer of the ancestors' spirits.

6Case 6. Cowrie shells from the tomb of Fu Hao. Fu Hao was a wife of King Wu Ding and led armies in war. Archaeologists found her tomb at Anyang in 1976.

3.

Which two cases give the best evidence that Shang farmers and nobles lived very differently?

A. Case 1 and Case 3B. Case 4 and Case 5C. Case 2 and Case 4D. Case 5 and Case 6

4.

Draw a line from each case to what it is the best evidence of.

5.

Look at Case 2 and Case 3 together. What do they suggest about Shang farming?

A. Harvests could be large enough to store and to brew.B. Millet was too scarce to store from one year to the next.C. Nobles grew their own millet to make ceremony wine.D. Farmers were paid for their millet with bronze cups.

6.

In Case 5, the king asks whether there will be a millet harvest. Why would the king most likely care so much about the answer?

A. Millet was shipped to the warm seas to buy shells.B. He cut the millet in his own fields with a stone knife.C. Grain fed the workers and nobles who served him.D. He paid the diviners in cowrie shells from the south.

Data from one tomb

Use the table, the cases and the guide.

The tomb of Fu Hao is one of the few Shang royal tombs that robbers never reached. The museum's table lists some of what archaeologists found in it, rounded to the nearest ten or hundred.

Some objects in Fu Hao's tomb (approximate counts)
Kind of object	About how many
Bronze objects	470
Jade objects	750
Cowrie shells	6,900

7.

Use the table.

Fu Hao's tomb held about more jade objects than bronze objects.

8.

Which conclusion about trade is best supported by the table and the guide?

A. Shang farmers were buried with many shells from the south.B. The Shang made bronze from copper dug up inside the city.C. Cowrie shells were gathered from the Yellow River near Anyang.D. Royal families could gather many goods from distant places.

9.

A visitor says, "Fu Hao's tomb shows us how most people at Anyang lived." Which response is best supported by the exhibit?

A. That is right, because farmers owned most of the bronze vessels.B. That is wrong, because she was royal and most people farmed.C. That is wrong, because Shang people did not bury their dead.D. That is right, because Fu Hao was a farmer before she married.

10.

Claim: the millet surplus was the base of Shang China's specialized jobs, social classes and trade. Do you agree? Use at least two cases and one number from the table as evidence, and explain how the surplus connects to jobs, classes or trade.