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- viously the method of qiaose was placed only as far back as the Tang (618-906) and Song (960-1279) dynasties, but these examples, isolated as they might be, show that this decorative technique had been discovered many centuries earlier.'3
Shang jades occur in a wide variety of shapes, from ceremonial weapons and ritual objects to pendants or amulets and objects for personal ornament. Many of the ceremonial jade objects perpetuate the shapes of Neolithic stone tools such as axes, adzes, chisels, knives, etc. Almost all Shang jades, before actual carving or incising took place, were roughly cut into two basic forms. Jades in the round were fashioned into blocks or cylinders, while flat jade ornaments were made by first slicing the stone into thin sections, sometimes no more than a few millimetres thick, followed by cutting or polishing into the desired shape.
The zoomorphic and geometricized surface motifs on Shang jades are often closely akin to the decorations on the magnificent ritual bronzes of that period, but they are not near as vivid owing to the difficulty of working jade. Not only the deco�rative patterns on the bronze vessels were borrowed, but also the shape of the bronze weapons inspired a large variety of jade counterparts. These objects must have been made for ceremonial or mortuary purposes only, as they are much too thin and too fragile to have been used as cutting blades.
Shang jade amulets have a wonderful linear grace with balanced compositions. Often the lines or incisions on Shang jades emphasize the contours of the artifact. A great many of these jades were decorated with the �curl and quill� pattern�a design created by a series of thin, curvilinear lines, often terminating in hooks or curls. In general, the decorations were executed with two finely depressed parallel lines that leave the false appearance of a raised thread line between them (yinxian). The furrow of the incision was wider at the top than the bottom. While this false re�lief line was very typical, actual raised-line carving was relatively rare as it was a difficult and lengthy process. The later use of iron tools around the sixth or fifth century B.C. led to wider use of the technique.
In 1976 an important and unprecedented find of early Shang jades was made with the excavation of the royal tomb of Lady Fu Hao, a consort of the fourth Shang king, Wu Ding, at Anyang. The dig provided the first extensive amount of reliable information for the study of Shang jades. More than seven hundred jade pieces were uncovered. Their extreme refinement revealed that the Shang jade craft had reached a much higher level than formerly imagined. The decorations were more sophisticated and the shapes were more innovative compared to previously pub�lished Shang carvings. The jades found in the tomb include an extraordinary array of familiar Shang forms, such as axes, halberds, household utensils and personal ornaments. The excavation of numerous small human and animal sculptures in the round was completely unexpected, as previously this type of naturalistic sculp�ture seemed to be rare. Prior to the Fu Hao discovery, it was difficult to make defini�tive statements on style and surface decorations but this discovery changed all that, and added significantly to the �chronological clues� which Max Loehr states in 1975 were lacking in research on Shang jades.'4 Scientific analysis of the jade exhumed from the tomb reveals that most of the pieces are nephrite and have a similar quality to the nephrite found at Khotan (Hetian) in Chinese Turkestan.'5
In the eleventh century B.C., the Zhou people from west of the great bend of the Yellow River, conquered the Shang. The Zhou seem to have shared the same lan�guage and basic culture of the Shang, and would continue many of their religious beliefs. The Zhou kings came to call themselves �Son of Heaven,� thus implying they were the mediators between man and nature. By doing this, they attempted to justify their usurpation of the throne by claiming that they had won the �Mandate
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