Metalworking in Bronze Age China: The Lost-Wax Process By Peng Pe ...

milestone work on this issue, suggests that Henan Erlitou production, representing the earliest known bronze industry (large-scale metallurgy) in the Central Plains region of China, was triggered by the transmission of northern Asiatic metalwork. Contemporaneous metallurgical centers in northwestern China, especially Gansu Qijia and Shaanxi Kexingzhuang Culture II, played an intermediate role in this process.² The impact of the renowned Seima-Turbino metalworking tradition³ to the north has been supported by a series of more recent discoveries from China,⁴ namely a number of distinct socketed spearheads with a downward hook and a small loop on the same or opposite sides of the socket that could be confidently associated with the Seima-Turbino visual vocabulary of southern Siberia.⁵

With high mobility and brilliant technology, the Seima-Turbino groups⁶ were among the first regular users of a tin-bronze alloy in the north of Central Asia.⁷ It is possible that they might have also mastered the lost-wax process, judging by certain tools and weapons with pommels bearing three-dimensional figurines (e.g., fig. 4).⁸ This possibility, though unverified, is not unlikely, in light of the flourishing use of lost-wax on the Eurasian landmass from the third millennium BCE. Anthony further identified the source of Seima-Turbino lost-wax casting as the BMAC (Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex, c. 2100–1800 BCE),⁹ the Late Bronze Age civilization of Bactria and Margiana in Central Asia. Rich materials indicate that the BMAC had close international relationships with the Indus Valley, with the Iranian Plateau, and perhaps even indirectly with Mesopotamia, all of whose civilizations were intimately familiar with lost-wax casting.¹⁰ As might be expected, lost-wax casting was also developed in the BMAC,¹¹ as evidenced by superb ornaments and delicate figures,¹² in addition to comparatively simple and mass-produced artifacts, such as the compartmented metal seals¹³ whose common motifs of crosses and stars are comparable to similar designs from Qijia, Erlitou, and their surroundings.¹⁴