Anyang: China’s Ancient City of Kings Symposium

Robert Bagley, Princeton University

“Artistic Thinking in Ancient Anyang”

Robert Bagley is professor emeritus in the Department of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University. He has published extensively on Chinese bronzes, the origin of the Chinese writing system, ancient Chinese music theory, and, in his book Gombrich among the Egyptians(2015), the historiography of art. He wrote the chapter on Shang archaeology in The Cambridge History of Ancient China(1999) and contributed a general chapter on art to the fourth volume of The Cambridge World History(2015). He is coauthor with Wang Haicheng of Art and Artistic Thinking in Ancient China, forthcoming in 2024.

Cao Dazhi, Peking University

“Title or Clan Sign: Interpreting Identity in Shang Bronze Inscriptions”

Cao Dazhi is associate professor in the School of Archaeology and Museology at Peking University. His research on the archaeology of Bronze Age China focuses on the administrative structure of the Shang and Western Zhou states as well as their interactions with neighboring polities and cultures. Cao’s extensive archaeological fieldwork involves excavations at several Neolithic and Bronze Age sites in China. His recent survey work in Shaanxi Province led to the discovery of a Western Zhou–period walled city at Zhouyuan. He completed his PhD dissertation, “The Loess Highland in a Trading Network,” at Princeton University, and it was published in Chinese in 2021.

Yung-ti Li, University of Chicago

“The Invisible Building Blocks: Archaeology of Communities at the Late Shang Capital of Anyang”

Yung-ti Li is associate professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago. He specializes in Chinese Bronze Age archaeology, focusing particularly on craft production, political economy, and interregional interaction. He is the editor of Periphery and Center: Archaeological Research of Anyang and the Surrounding Regions (2016), Gems of Yinxu: Catalogue of Selected Artifacts from Anyang in the Institute of History and Philology (2009), and Archaeologia Sinica Number Four: Ta Ssu K’ung Ts’un―Settlement and Cemeteries of the Yin-Shang and Eastern Chou Periods at Anyang, Honan (2008). His most recent book is Kingly Crafts: The Archaeology of Craft Production in Late Shang China (2022).

Ariel O’Connor, National Museum of Asian Art

“Technical Evidence on Shang Ceremonial Weapon Production”

Coauthors: Donna Strahan, Katherine Eremin, Georgina Rayner, Blythe McCarthy, and Angela Chang

Ariel O’Connor is an objects conservator at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art. Previously, Ariel was an objects conservator at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the National Air and Space Museum, and The Walters Art Museum. She completed a Kress Fellowship at the Harvard Art Museums, researching casting and inlay on Chinese Shang-dynasty ceremonial weaponry; a Harvard Baird Fellowship, studying Shang inlayed bronzes in China; and a Mellon Fellowship at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, studying Southeast Asian Hindu-Buddhist bronzes from the seventh to the tenth century. She holds an MA in art conservation from the State University of New York in Buffalo.

Kyle Steinke, National Museum of Asian Art

“A Century of Anyang Archaeology”

Kyle Steinke served as the research curator for the exhibit Anyang: China’s Ancient City of Kings. A specialist in the art and archaeology of Bronze Age China, his research interests include the early development of the Chinese script, the rise of bronze-using civilizations in the Yangtze region, and the design and manufacturing techniques of early bronzes in China. He organized the symposium The Art and Archaeology of the Erligang Civilization and contributed to and edited the resulting conference volume, which was published in 2014. His publications include “Script Change in Bronze Age China” (in The Shape of Script: How and Why Writing Systems Change, 2012) and “Erligang and the Southern Bronze Industries” (in Art and Archaeology of the Erligang Civilization, 2014).

Donna Strahan, National Museum of Asian Art

“Inlay in Shang Bronzes”

Donna Strahan received a BA in Chinese language and an MA in the conservation of archaeological objects. She was a conservator at The Walters Art Museum, the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art. She is currently the head of the Department of Conservation and Scientific Research at the National Museum of Asian Art. Strahan was the head conservator at the archaeological excavations of Harappa in Pakistan, Tell es-Sweyhat in Syria, and Troy in Turkey. She is also a guest lecturer at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. Her major interests are the technology and preservation of ancient metals and Asian lacquer.

Tang Jigen, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen

“The Lady and Her King: The Excavation of Tomb 5 and the Digital Reconstruction of Fu Hao”

Tang Jigen is the former director of the Anyang archaeological team of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. He is currently a chaired professor at Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen, China. He conducted excavations of the last capital of the Shang dynasty at Anyang for twenty-seven years and was also responsible for locating the nearby archaeological remains of a preceding capital site at Huanbei.

Wang Haicheng, University of Washington

“The Ongoing Decipherment of Anyang Writing in Comparative Perspective”

Wang Haichengis the Mary and Cheney Cowles Endowed Professor in the School of Art + Art History + Design at the University of Washington. He is the author of Writing and the Ancient State (2014) and of articles on a wide range of topics connected with ancient China, including chapters in Art and Archaeology of the Erligang Civilization (2014), The Cambridge World History (2015), Ancient States and Infrastructural Power (2017), The Routledge Handbook of Early Chinese History (2018), The Hidden Language of Graphic Signs (2021), and Seen Not Heard (2023). He is coauthor with Robert Bagley of Art and Artistic Thinking in Ancient China, forthcoming in 2024.

Keith Wilson, National Museum of Asian Art

“Anyang and the National Museum of Asian Art”

Keith Wilson was appointed curator at the Cleveland Museum of Art (1988–96) and chief curator of Asian art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (1996–2006). Since joining the National Museum of Asian Art in 2006, he has reinstalled the ancient Chinese art galleries in the museum’s Freer Gallery twice and launched a comprehensive digital catalogue dedicated to the museum’s early jade collections titled Jades for Life and Death. In addition to Anyang: China’s Ancient City of Kings, he has organized numerous exhibitions, including Resound: Ancient Bells of China,Echoes of the Past: The Buddhist Cave Temples of Xiangtangshan, and Sacred Dedication: A Korean Buddhist Masterpiece.