Dating

The vast majority of the inscribed oracle bones date to the last 230 or so years of the Shāng dynasty; oracle bones have been reliably dated to the fourth and subsequent reigns of the kings who ruled at Yīn (modern Ānyáng)—from king Wu Ding (武丁) to Di Xin (帝辛). However, the dating of these bones varies from ca. the 14th -11th centuries BCE to ca. 1200-1050 BCE because the end date of the Shāng dynasty is not a matter of consensus. The largest number date to the reign of king Wǔ Dīng . Very few oracle bones date to the beginning of the subsequent Zhōu Dynasty.

Discovery

The Shāng-dynasty oracle bones are thought to have been unearthed periodically by local farmers, perhaps starting as early as the Hàn dynasty, and certainly by 19th century China, when they were sold as dragon bones (lóng gǔ 龍骨) in the traditional Chinese medicine markets, used either whole or crushed for the healing of various ailments. The turtle shell fragments were prescribed for malaria, while the other animal bones were used in powdered form to treat knife wounds. They were first recognized as bearing ancient Chinese writing by a scholar and high-ranking Qing dynasty official, Wáng Yìróng (王懿榮; 1845-1900) in 1899. A legendary tale states that Wang was sick with malaria, and his scholar friend Liú È (劉鶚; 1857-1909) was visiting him and helped examine his medicine. They discovered, before it was ground into powder, that it bore strange glyphs, which they, having studied the ancient bronze inscriptions, recognized as ancient writing. As Xǔ Yǎhuì (許雅惠 2002, p. 4) states:

It is not known how Wang and Liu actually came across these “dragon bones”, but Wang is credited with being the first to recognize their significance, and his friend Liu was the first to publish a book on oracle bones. Word spread among collectors of antiquities, and the market for oracle bones exploded. Although scholars tried to find their source, antique dealers falsely claimed that the bones came from Tāngyīn (湯陰) in Hénán. Decades of uncontrolled digs followed to fuel the antiques trade, and many of these pieces eventually entered collections in Europe, the US, Canada and Japan. The first Western collector was the American Rev. Frank H. Chalfant, while Presbyterian minister James Mellon Menzies (明義士) (1885-1957) of Canada bought the largest amount. The Chinese still acknowledge the pioneering contribution of Menzies as "the foremost western scholar of Yin-Shang culture and oracle bone inscriptions." His former residence in Anyang was declared in 2004 a "Protected Treasure" and the James Mellon Menzies Memorial Museum for Oracle Bone Studies was established

Official excavations

By the time of the establishment of the Institute of History and Philology headed by Fù Sīnián at the Academia Sinica in 1928, the source of the oracle bones had been traced back to modern Xiǎotún (小屯) village at Ānyáng in Hénán Province. Official archaeological excavations in 1928-1937 led by Lĭ Jì (李濟; 1896-1979), the father of Chinese archaeology, discovered 20,000 oracle bone pieces, which now form the bulk of the Academia Sinica's collection in Taiwan and constitute about 1/5 of the total discovered . The inscriptions on the oracle bones, once deciphered, turned out to be the records of the divinations performed for or by the royal household. These, together with royal-sized tombs, proved beyond a doubt for the first time the existence of the Shāng Dynasty, which had recently been doubted, and the location of its last capital, Yīn. Today, Xiǎotún at Ānyáng is thus also known as the Ruins of Yīn, or Yīnxū (殷墟).

Materials