Ritual Bronze Vessels in Shang Dynasty Chinese Art
Ritual bronze vessels functioned as implements for ancestor-worship ceremonies in which sacred meals were offered to deceased ancestors, reflecting a belief system in which a ruler's political authority derived from ancestral spirits who controlled the kingdom's destiny. This concept belongs to the study of Bronze Age Chinese (Shang dynasty) funerary art and relates to its parent discipline by linking ritual object function, quantity/scale of grave goods, and belief systems about the afterlife to the legitimation of political power.
Ritual Bronze Vessels in Shang Dynasty Chinese Art
Ritual bronze vessels functioned as implements for ancestor-worship ceremonies in which sacred meals were offered to deceased ancestors, reflecting a belief system in which a ruler's political author…