Reflection and Reception: The Origins of the Mirror in Bronze Age China

The casting of bronze mirrors was a practice that endured throughout China's dynastic history; excavated evidence and antiquarian scholarship document a tradition that spanned nearly three millennia. While the longevity of mirror use is widely recognized, the origins of reflective objects in China have never been fully examined. Nearly four decades of archaeological activity in the People's Republic has provided the material necessary to undertake such an analysis. Utilizing this record, the present study reconstructs the cultural conditions that surrounded the earliest appearance and production of mirrors in Bronze Age China. The term "mirror" (jing,, occurs in the archaeological literature as a designation for bronze objects from Shang and early Zhou sites whose form--usually a flat disk cast with a central boss--presages that associated with later dynastic tradition. Evidence indicates that the earliest mirrors unearthed in China were the products of cultures to the north and west of the Zhongyuan. In these regions, the knobbed objects identified as mirrors appear to have been created along with other circular reflectors for ceremonial and funerary purposes. This thesis argues that it was the capacity for reflection rather than a specific typology that initially distinguished this category of bronze object. The archaeological record suggests that the production of reflectors in China began in the late Spring and Autumn period. Although important experimentation in structure and surface imagery accompanied this initial period of indigenous manufacture, excavated evidence to date indicates that the appropriation of the mirror occurred relatively slowly in the Zhongyuan. Considerably more rapid development, however, can be identified within regions below the Yellow River; this study examines cultural factors that may have stimulated the production and use of mirrors in the south during the Bronze Age. The analysis concludes with a detailed discussion of the so-called "Chu mirrors" and proposes a chronology for material excavated from sites associated with this important late Zhou kingdom. This dissertation documents the origins and early history of a specific object within a complex cultural tradition. Formal developments are therefore examined as fully as possible in relation to contemporary political and aesthetic issues, in an attempt to present a comprehensive art historical analysis.