You're listening to Digging for meaning? Research from the Oxford School of Archaeology, a podcast.
Recycling is one of most important strategic policies for the green economy and for the future of our planet.
But recycling isn't new. What does using recycled materials say about you and your place in society?
Welcome to the University of Oxford School of Archaeology podcasts, Digging for meaning.
I am Dr. Victoria Sainsbury, and I am going to talk to you about recent work by the Flame Team on the site of ANYANG,
led by Dr Ray Liu on recycling and social status in Bronze Age, China.
As discussed in one of our other podcasts, did the Romans recycle the human behaviour of recycling can be a useful tool to diagnose our own past,
and the lessons we learnt from our history can also guide ourselves forward.
The modern focus on recycling is because in many cases,
we've consumed huge swathes of the environmental resources that we need for production or biodiversity.
However, the choice of recycling both now and in the past, is also a complex human choice, not just one of either economics or ecology.
Even now, recycling and the perception of it is inexorably linked with the social, cultural and political aspects of our lives.
All of these variables contribute to successful implementation of recycling and effective management of resources on a societal level.
In this podcast, we'll take you back to the Bronze Age to a site called ANYANG in Henan province, slightly to the east of central China.
And Young was the last capital of the Shang Dynasty. Over 3000 years ago,
the Shang Dynasty ruled over the middle and Lower Yellow River Valley from
around 1600 B.C. to 10 46 B.C. when they were pushed out by the next dynasty,
the Zahle. Excavations by local archaeologists at ANYANG have made incredible discoveries.
There are massive ceremonial monuments. Huge settlement areas with metal foundries.
The teams of kings and queens and other elites, as well as burials of more ordinary people.
And all amongst these buildings, there is a large number of amazing artefacts,
such as artefacts of bronze jades, carved stones and detailed ceramics, as well as all this material richness.
Anyang is very notable because of the discovery of another artefact. The Oracle bones.
These are OK, scapular or turtle shells inscribed with the earliest surviving example of writing
in Chinese history with the glyphs on them relating directly to modern Chinese.
They were not only used for recording, but also divination.
If you want to hear more about that, listen to our podcast by Professor Chris Guston on the history of magic.
The objects that we are concerned with today, though, are the bronze objects. Excavators were amazed by the sheer number of such objects at the site.
While archaeologists often use the word bronze, such as the Bronze Age, we should take a moment to talk about what we actually mean.
A modern metal is defined as bronze if it is an alloy of copper containing approximately 10 to 12 percent.
Ten and the ten brass is used for an ally of copper and zinc.
There is a complicated history in archaeology of using these terms often.
Bronze was used for art objects and brass for utilitarian or tools with little
to no care as to what the actual composition of these metals were as such.
The term bronze in this talk and in much archaeological work simply means a copper alloy at ANYANG.
Those bronzes were made with a combination of copper tin and let as by looking at the relationship between these chemistries within these objects,
that allows us to look at recycling in Bronze Age, China.
Whilst Lisick Stone objects can be recycled by physical changes, they can be remapped re broken and sharpened.
It was only after the discovery of metallurgy that our ancestors realised that through repeat in the high temperature process,
we could transform the metal we had made in a completely free way.
That is, we can completely remove all visual observable traces of the previous object it had been in the original production of Bronze in China.
Tin and lead were added to copper to aid the casting process.
These additions can significantly reduce the mounting temperature of copper, which creates a liquid which can flow further before it cools and sets.
This means that leaded copper alloys can be used in highly complex moulds with lots of detail.
The typology or object types of the bronzes at ANYANG consists not only of weapons,
tools and ornaments, but very significantly for China bronze richel vessels.
These vessels are unique to central China, with no parallel found anywhere else across the entirety of Bronze Age, Eurasia,
from Siberia to Spain, because of the long history of these vessels in China and the context in which they are found.
We know a great deal about these ritual vessels. They were used in sets.
How different kinds of food are used in various ceremonies to worship and contact the ancestors.
Ritual performance was one of the key characteristics of the society that evolved in Bronze Age China and these bronze ritual vessels were
a key part of such rituals and gave birth or provide crucial material evidence for archaeologists to understand the underlying ideology.
The majority of these bonds, ritual vessels, entered into the archaeological records by deliberate deposition.
That is, they were deliberately sealed away or buried.
For instance, in the tomb of how archaeologists managed to dig out around one point six tons of bronze.
Because of the Oracle bones, we actually know a lot about FU,
how she was the consort of King Wooding and a prominent military leader in the Shang Dynasty.
It should be noted that many teens were robbed. And it is likely that other teams held even more than full house.
Most of the one point six tons of food has bronze is in the form of these ritual vessels, with her name cast as an inscription into the design.
Both this weight and the clear indication that these were deliberately made for food,
how alone gives us a vivid illustration of the massive scale in which metal was produced in urgent lastic China.
What is equally impressive is the standardised manufacturing technology.
The foundry masters were extremely good at controlling the addition of 10 or led to the copper,
while casting scientific analysis shows that her ritual vessels or weapons all contain around 10 to 15 percent tin.
And with led less than five percent, such a precisely controlled flowing recipe results in optimal mechanical properties,
a consistent colour as well as the ability to hold fine detail.
This is by no means unique to few haoles, objects, bronze objects excavated from other top ALLETE tombs.
Also illustrate a similar pattern, however.
And this is a point where the story starts to get complicated when the metal from the tombs of lower elites were analysed.
A completely different picture begins to appear. These teams had been classified as low elite because each tomb contained far less in
the way of objects indicating poor individual wealth and less evidence of ritual.
They contain much less in the way of bronze, jade and ceramic objects.
And those objects that were present were in poorer quality in terms of finish in detail.
Unlike the highlights, none of the lower elites were buried with human or animal sacrifice.
For her herself had 16 humans and six dog sacrificed in her tomb.
When we look at the chemistry of the copper alloys in these low elite teams, it is apparent that the addition of tin and LED was much less controlled.
What's incredibly variable, ranging from zero to 20 percent in the majority of lower late bronze is contain either tin or led less than five percent.
The sharp contrast an outlying pattern gives us important information in how these lowly first
highly metals were produced and in fact can give us clues to decode the choice of recycling.
In this case of Anyang, it is clear that what metal you have access to is incredibly dependent on your position within the social hierarchy.
Top athletes such as FU how could undoubtably have good access to abundant supplies of precious metal.
Her objects were therefore made with carefully weighed copper tin and led in order to achieve the best quality.
The lower elites, however, made do with what they could get.
The rather random glowing composition in the lower lead objects is open to various interpretations.
Some of the good quality objects could be gifts. Rewards for loyalty from the top elite.
However, those which require more consideration are those containing 10 or led with less than five percent.
We came up with two potential hypotheses that these could either be from mixing or
recycling of old broken objects or deliberately made with less of the expensive tin,
or let the impurity patterns within the bolt copper shed more light on this issue.
Chemical analysis suggests that the copper used in full house objects is much cleaner than that of others.
There was a large suite of elements which are normally associated with copper,
always in nature, which can be removed before casting through a process called refining.
These include arsenic, antimony, silver, nickel, zinc and iron.
This refining is another production step, which is not necessary, but significantly improved the quality of a metal,
these elements remain present in noticeable amounts in many of the lower late objects,
but not as high as in some contemporary objects from other sites. Again,
this suggests that the raw metal to produce the topically objects at ANYANG
was extremely well selected and the manufacturer process highly standardised.
However, the completely different pattern in the lower assemblage suggests much less organisation was imposed on their production and circulation.
It seems that some of this refined material is mixed with less refined, less controlled material.
That is, the highlights have fresh material and the Lower Lakes are more reliant on recycling.
One can probably draw at least two implications from this contrast.
Firstly, given the formidable consumption of metal at ANYANG, recycling was probably necessary.
It was employed effectively to ensure that people of various social classes had access to bronze objects,
even though the lowly it's probably only had very limited access dependent on recycling and the benefits of high elites.
This reinforced the power and control of these highlights. Similarly, the fact that more groups can obtain these bronzes, particularly ritual vessels,
created and reinforced the ritual beliefs and practises which were part of the critical
foundation for the society as a whole and likely helped maintain power and social cohesion.
Secondly, identification of the objects which were likely not made by recycling is also a vital archaeological significance.
We start to appreciate the fundamental value system of bronzes in ancient China.
Archaeologists are often concerned with geochemical provenance.
Looking for a chemical fingerprint within the metal, which might indicate where the ores used to produce this metal originally came from.
Since we know that the objects recovered from Brewhouse team are not recycled,
they perhaps still contain such a vital fingerprint as Anyang is located in one of the metal poor regions of China.
It is crucial for archaeologists trying to understand shung China, where the metal came from.
If this can be unpicked,
we will be able to better reconstruct both the contemporary trade and exchange or any further interregional communication or control.
If there's one lesson about recycling that we should take home from Anyang today, I would say recycling is essentially a collective social choice.
It undoubtedly has economic concerns both in the past and today,
but it's also deeply embedded with many other aspects of our society nowadays because of the increasing concern of climate change and sustainability.
The slogan of recycling has been everywhere, but we have to realise that recycling needs the right social, cultural and political ecology.
To grow up, to mature and to institutionalise the increasing social capital of recycling is promising.
But if doing so causes recycled or reusable products to become so expensive that the majority of the population cannot use them,
we will have the opposite to the situation at Onion. Much to our detriment, ultimately.
Recycling is a choice made by a human society, not a consequence of any natural process, and requires social pressure and desire to remain.
Thank you for listening. Digging for meaning for more information about this topic, offer any of our other episodes.
Please go to our Web site at a r c h dot o x dot, ac dot.
U.K. forward slash podcasts. Thank you.