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of section-mold casting” (“The Beginning of Metallurgy in Ancient China”). Although Bunker here is basically correct, it is important to avoid Ledderose’s abuse of the term “modular production” or “module” in describing mass-production in Chinese art (Ten Thousand Things).

61. This serves to explain the pervasive symmetry and regularity of bronze shapes following the Erlitou tradition, indicating the difficulty of using section molds for more irregular shapes. See Bagley, “The Beginnings of the Bronze Age,” 71.

62. According to Bagley, “The jue almost certainly copies wrought-metal prototypes, a suggestion borne out not only by rivets imitated on the handle of a pottery jue from Erlitou but also by the rims of early bronze jue, which copy the appearance of a rim folded over and hammered down” (Shang Ritual Bronzes in the Arthur M. Sackler Collections, 25). For a similar discussion of the “skeuomorph” phenomenon, see also Fitzgerald-Huber, “The Relationship of the Painted Pottery and Lung-shan Cultures,” 207; and Hwang, “Maixiang Zhongqi Shidai: Zhutong Jishu de Shuru yu Zhongguo Qingtong Jishu de Xingcheng,” 600–621. As Fitzgerald-Huber believed, the jue vessel originated outside of China and could be linked to the sheet-metal vessel type of Bactria-Margiana (“Qijia and Erlitou,” 52–62). Either with the wrought-metal prototype as an antecedent or emulated from a design in another medium, the bronze jue vessels must have held great ritual and ceremonial significance for Erlitou elites.

63. Barnard inferred that the handle of the jue was precast (“Thoughts on the Emergence of Metallurgy in Pre-Shang and Early Shang China and a Technical Appraisal of Relevant Bronze Artifacts of the Time”), but as Su et al. pointed out, all the jue vessels from Erlitou were produced solely through casting (Zhongguo Shanggu Jinshu Jishu, 97).

64. For details, see Su et al., Zhongguo Shanggu Jinshu Jishu, 97–99.

65. See Bagley, “Shang Ritual Bronzes,” 14.

66. Fairbank, “Piece-mold Craftsmanship and Shang Bronze Design,” 12–15; Bagley, Shang Ritual Bronzes in the Arthur M. Sackler Collections, 18; Bagley, “Shang Ritual Bronzes,” 12.

67. The Erligang ceramic culture, associated with two fortified settlements at Yanshi and Zhengzhou, respectively in the Yiluo Basin and the central region of Henan, had already become noticeable during the Erlitou Phase IV. Two levels have been distinguished in pottery assemblages, Lower and Upper Erligang, and in the Central Plains the Erligang-dominant period is roughly assigned to c. 1500–1300 BCE, fixing