Wucheng

Bronze Age site of the mid-2nd millennium BC in Jiangxi Province, China, of the Shang Dynasty. Finds include stone-mold casted bronze weapons and ritual vessels, and geometric pottery and glazed stoneware. The incised marks on the pottery and molds are thought to be an indigenous writing system.

[Wu-ch’eng]. A habitation site of Shang date in Qingjiang Xian, Jiangxi province, China, first excavated in 1973. Familiar Shang bronze weapons, tools, and a few ritual vessels suggest that the remains belong to the end of the Erligang Phase and the next few centuries thereafter. Unparalleled at other Shang sites are reusable stone moulds, some inscribed, for casting bronze weapons and tools, and potsherds incised with inscriptions in an eccentric variant of the Shang script. Wucheng is 300 km south of a slightly earlier outpost of metropolitan Shang civilization at Panlongcheng and the remains have a distinctly provincial character. Designs stamped on much of the pottery suggest affiliations with the geometric pottery cultures. A large proportion of the pottery carries a high-fired leadless glaze. Similar glazed pottery has been found only in small quantities at Shang sites in the north such as Zhengzhou and Anyang, and it is possible that glazed ware was native to the Yangzi region, where it figures prominently also in Western Zhou finds (see Tunxi).