Western Zhou
The "Western" label for the period refers to the location of the Zhou royal capitals, which were clustered in the Wei River valley near present-day Xi'an.
Texts from the Warring States period and Han dynasty provide fuller accounts, though further removed from the original events.
[3] Bronze vessels are a key marker of Western Zhou sites, including buildings, workshops, city walls and burials.
[7] A vessel was typically cast for some member of the Zhou elite, recording a relevant event or an honour bestowed on the owner by the king.
Scholars have devised a range of criteria to narrow down the reign of an inscription, including the style of the vessel, the form of the characters and details within the text.
[15] The Book of Documents is a collection of formal speeches presented as spanning two millennia from the legendary Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors to the Spring and Autumn period.
[17] The five "announcement" (or "proclamation") chapters use the most archaic language, similar to that of bronze inscriptions, and are thought to have been recorded close to the events of the early Western Zhou reigns they describe.
[9] The Bamboo Annals provides a wealth of attractive detail, often varying from other sources, but its transmission history presents many problems.
[22] The standard account is found in the "Basic Annals of Zhou", chapter 4 of the Historical Records compiled by the Han dynasty historian Sima Qian.
[21] Most scholars divide the Western Zhou into early, middle and late periods, which also correspond roughly to stylistic changes in bronze vessels.
[27][28] The Cambridge History of Ancient China used dates determined by Edward L. Shaughnessy from the "current text" Bamboo Annals and bronze inscriptions.
The archaeology of pre-conquest Wei valley is varied and complex, but no material culture comparable to the dynastic Zhou has been found.
[40][41] They also expanded the Late Shang practice of inscribing bronze vessels to create lengthy texts recording the accomplishments of their owners and honours bestowed on them by the king.
[44] The lengthy inscription, summarizing the history of the Zhou and that of the Wei (微) family, begins:[45] Accordant with antiquity was King Wen!
[47] King Wu expanded his father's campaigns to the Shang, defeating them in the decisive Battle of Muye, which is also described in the "Great brightness" song of the Classic of Poetry.
They built an eastern capital at Chengzhou (modern day Luoyang) and began founding colonies or states at strategic points in their domain.
[58] The inscription on the Mai zun narrates the ceremony in which King Cheng appointed a son of the Duke of Zhou to rule Xing.
[59] This phase of expansion came to an end in a disastrous southern campaign in the Han River region, in which King Zhao lost his armies and his own life.
The inscription on the Dong gui celebrates a defeat inflicted by the Zhou on the Dongyi near Ying, a colony set up by one of King Cheng's brothers to guard the southern approaches to the capital.
Bronze inscriptions of the time use two different royal calendars, and the Bamboo Annals mentions King Yih moving out of the capital.
[70][c] Both Sima Qian and the Bamboo Annals state that King Yi boiled the Duke of Qi (in eastern Shandong) in a cauldron.
The received texts all present him in a negative light, and record that he was driven out of the capital into exile in the Fen River valley.
[75] The Bamboo Annals, confirmed by bronze inscriptions, relate that control of the state passed to Lord He, instituting the Gonghe Regency.
[78] He reinforced the south by relocating settlements from the Wei valley to the Nanyang basin and sought to inprove relations with distant Zhou states in the northeast and east.
