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

vessels’ shape, size, and level of craftsmanship.⁵⁴ Careful research carried out on a large number of bronzes similarly led the leading scholars Guo Baojun and Hua Jueming to believe that most early Chinese bronzes were cast by the section-mold process.⁵⁵

Early Bronze Age: Section-mold Casting and Its Development

Although small-scale metallurgy had appeared sporadically several centuries earlier within the territory now occupied by modern China, the rise of a real bronze industry occurred around the sixteenth century BCE, as manifested by Erlitou metalworking in the Middle Yellow River Valley (the core area of the Central Plains of China).⁵⁶ With an exclusive dependence on casting, a technique used with little regard for the cost of metal and usually as a metalsmith’s last resort, Erlitou metalworking was immediately distinct from that of the rest of the world.⁵⁷ Although simple stone molds and clay bivalve molds have been unearthed from the Erlitou cultural sphere, the archaeological site of Erlitou is most featured by the new-fashioned technique of section-mold casting.⁵⁸ This pioneering technique, though experimented at earlier sites in the Central Plains region (e.g., Taosi of Shanxi Province), was substantially explored at Erlitou to produce ritual vessels that had previously been made in pottery.⁵⁹ Perhaps owing something to the highly developed pottery-making technique of the east coast cultures during the late Neolithic and early Bronze Age, the making of section molds soon achieved great sophistication.⁶⁰

The section-mold process, by requiring the application of clay to the model, the removal of fitted parts, and the reassembly of those parts around one or multiple cores (see fig. 7, the mold divisions for a ding tripod of the Erligang period, which immediately followed the Erlitou culture in this part of the Central Plains), favors symmetrical bronze shapes.⁶¹ The most demanding design among Erlitou bronzes is the slightly odd-shaped jue drinking cup with a strap handle (fig. 8), which is