Divination and power: A multiregional view of the development of oracle bone divination in early China

Current Anthropology

Volumn 49, Issue 3, 2008, Pages 403-419

  Flad, Rowan K ^a  

^a HARVARD UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 48749086734     PISSN: 00113204     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/588495     Document Type: Review

References (14)

1. All dates are calibrated radiocarbon dates unless they refer to historical eras such as the Zhou Dynasty (ca. 1046-256 BC).
2. The year of the Zhou conquest was either 1046 or 1045, according to the Three Dynasties Project and the recent Cambridge History of Ancient China, respectively (see Falkenhausen 2006, 7, and Shaughnessy 1999, 23, for brief discussions and additional references).
3. It is possible and perhaps likely that, in addition to the osteomancy discussed here, other forms of archaeologically invisible divination were practiced in prehistoric China. Divination using yarrow sticks seems to have begun by the first millennium BC (Loewe 1981), and divining that relied on animal organs such as the hepatoscopy practiced in western Eurasia and other regions may have been important as well (Jastrow 1908; Pardee 2000).
4. This terminology and discussion follow a more detailed treatment of these issued in Keightley (1978a, 3-6). One form of ethnographically documented apyromantic divination in South China uses chicken leg bones. Sticks are inserted in the foramina of the bone shaft and the patterns are interpreted (see Li Yangsong 1982 and Tayanin 2000).
5. Turtle carapaces were also used occasionally.
6. For discussions of pyromantic divination among the Yi and Naxi of southwestern China, see Ge (1997), Lin (1964), and Wang Ningsheng (1987).
7. Strangely, sometimes said to be located in Liaoning Province (see, e.g., Lee 1981a, 46, and Keightley 1978a, 4, n. 3).
8. 14C yr BP, although an uncalibrated date of 4735 ± 110 is often given. This is based on the "true" or "Cambridge" half-life of 5,730 years, whereas convention calls for using the Libby half-life of 5,568 years. Using the "true" uncalibrated date would produce a date of 3505 ± 118 calBC.
9. The Yangshao culture dates to ca. 5000-3000 BC. The dating of this phase at Xiawanggang, however, is imprecise, and it is possible that the context from which the bones come should be considered Longshan (i.e., ca. 3000-2000 BC) in date (Venture 2002a, 196, n. 20; Araki 1999, 258).
10. The radiocarbon dates used to establish this time span constitute a portion of a long series of dates from stratigraphically (and stylistically) sequential contexts (Zhang and Qiu 2005, 384). The sequence of dates has been used by members of the Three Dynasties Project to reduce the probability ranges through a "wiggle match" procedure. "Wiggle matching" involves relying on relative chronology to eliminate portions of the probability curve generated by the calibration of radiocarbon dates. The date ranges given here for each phase of the Erlitou culture and for the subsequent phases of the Early Shang period are therefore narrower than the potential ranges suggested by the radiocarbon dates alone.
11. Through ceramic seriation and correlation these two phases have been dated to the late part of the first subphase of Upper Erligang and the late part of the second subphase of Upper Erligang respectively. In terms of absolute dates, that would put these two contexts in the 1400-1300 BC range, although a slightly earlier absolute date for phase V is suggested by the one AMS radiocarbon date from this phase, which is provided as a calibrated date in the publication and therefore not recalibrated in table 2 (HSWKY 2001, 444).
12. All the Daxinzhuang dates are estimated on the basis of the correspondence of the material culture with that of other sites. No published radiocarbon dates are available to compare with this proposed sequence.
13. The authors of the report suggest that the opercula are sturgeon (Family Acipenseridae), but sturgeon do not have bony opercula. No images are available with which to assess their identification. There is, however, no reason to doubt the possibility that fish bones were used in pyromantic divination at the site.
14. See, in particular, the discussion in Cao (2002) of the positions of various scholars and the extensive bibliography of studies of Zhouyuan oracle bones and their inscriptions in that same work (pp. 191-98). The brief discussion here follows this summary.