Excavations at Yinxu have revealed eleven major royal tombs, the foundations of former palace buildings, and the remains of both animals and humans that were sacrificed in official state rituals.

Most prominently, the site has yielded the earliest known examples of Chinese writing—a corpus primarily consisting of divination texts inscribed on oracle bones, which were usually either turtle shells or ox scapulae.

The inscriptions provide critical insight into many topics from the politics, economy, and religious practices to the art and medicine of the early stages of Chinese history.

From the sources available to him, the Han dynasty historian Sima Qian assembled a chronological account of the Shang as part of the Shiji (c. 91 BC) official history.

[3] A slightly different account of the Shang is given in the Bamboo Annals, a text whose history is complex: while originally interred in 296 BC, the authenticity of the manuscripts that have survived is controversial.

Since Huangfu Mi's Records of Emperors and Kings in the 3rd century AD, "Yin" has been frequently used to refer specifically to the latter half of the Shang.

It is also the name predominantly used for the dynasty in Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, being rendered as In, Eun and Ân in Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese respectively.

In the text, a woman named Jiandi, who was the second wife of Emperor Ku, swallowed an egg dropped by a black bird and subsequently gave birth miraculously to Xie.

In the last century, Wang Guowei demonstrated that the succession to the Shang throne matched the list of kings in Sima Qian's Records of the Grand Historian.

[15][16][17] The Eastern Han dynasty bestowed the title of Duke of Song and 'Duke Who Continues and Honours the Yin' upon Kong An, because he was part of the legacy of the Shang.

[20][21][22] Many Shang clans that migrated northeast after the dynasty's collapse were integrated into Yan culture during the Western Zhou period.

[23] Both Korean and Chinese legends, including reports in the Book of Documents and Bamboo Annals, state that a disgruntled Shang prince named Jizi, who had refused to cede power to the Zhou, left China with a small army.

[24] These were finally traced back in 1928 to what is now called Yinxu, north of the Yellow River near Anyang, where the Academia Sinica undertook archaeological excavation until the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937.

[25][26] The rammed earth construction of these walls was an inherited tradition, since much older fortifications of this type have been found at Chinese Neolithic sites of the Longshan culture (c. 3000 – c. 2000 BC}.

[25] In 2022, excavation of an elite tomb inside the city walls yielded over 200 artefacts, including a gold face covering measuring 18.3 by 14.5 cm (7.2 by 5.7 in).

[23] The discovery of a Chenggu-style dagger-axe at Xiaohenan demonstrates that even at this early stage of Chinese history, there were some ties between the distant areas of north China.

[32] Accidental finds elsewhere in China have revealed advanced civilisations contemporaneous with but culturally unlike the settlement at Anyang, such as the walled city of Sanxingdui in Sichuan.

[56] Trade relations and diplomatic ties with other formidable powers via the Silk Road and Chinese voyages to the Indian Ocean did not exist until the reign of Emperor Wu during the Han dynasty (202 BC – 221 AD).

[57][58] At the excavated royal palace in Yinxu, large stone pillar bases were found along with rammed earth foundations and platforms, which according to Fairbank, were "as hard as cement".

Over time, court rituals to appease spirits developed, and in addition to his secular duties, the king would serve as the head of the ancestor worship cult.

[23] Apart from their role as the head military commanders, Shang kings also asserted their social supremacy by acting as the high priests of society and leading the divination ceremonies.

[66] As the oracle bone texts reveal, the Shang kings were viewed as the best qualified members of society to offer sacrifices to their royal ancestors and to the high god Di, who in their beliefs was responsible for the rain, wind, and thunder.

Members of the royal family would be assigned personal estates; the king provided them with pre-determined public works such as walling cities in their regions, distributed materials and issued commands to them.

[68] More distant rulers were known by titles translated as marquess or count, who sometimes provided tribute and support to the Shang King in exchange for military aid and augury services.

[71][72] There were six main recipients of sacrifice:[73] The Shang believed that their ancestors held power over them and performed divination rituals to secure their approval for planned actions.

[citation needed] The Shang also seem to have believed in an afterlife, as evidenced by the elaborate burial tombs built for deceased rulers.

[76] This production required a large labour force that could handle the mining, refining, and transportation of the necessary copper, tin, and lead ores.

[76] The Shang royal court and aristocrats required a vast number of different bronze vessels for various ceremonial purposes and events of religious divination.

The last character of each name is one of the 10 celestial stems, which also denoted the day of the 10-day Shang week on which sacrifices would be offered to that ancestor within the ritual schedule.

There were more kings than stems, so the names have distinguishing prefixes such as da ('greater', 大), zhong ('middle', 中), xiao ('lesser', 小), bu ('outer', 卜), and zu ('ancestor', 祖), as well as other, more obscure ones.