Metal, Salt, and Horse Skulls: Elite-level Exchange and Movement in Prehistoric Southwest China

Anke Hein (Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich)
NYU Shanghai Early China Lecture Series

Located on a high-altitude plateau surrounded by the steep mountains of the Hengduanshan, Yanyuan County in southwest Sichuan is a rather remote place. As can be expected, the prehistoric archaeological material has strong local particularities, especially in burial customs and personal ornaments; however, other elements such as many weapon forms show a wide range of connections to places as far away and diverse as the steppe region in the north, central Yunnan in the South, and the Han-cultural areas to the East.

This paper introduces the burial material from Yanyuan, paying particular attention to the origin of these foreign objects and the mechanisms of their exchange. The majority of these objects occur in a small number of lavishly-furnished graves that furthermore show ritual particularities (such as the interment of horse skulls and application of ocher) that suggest a northern origin of the people buried therein. Considering the local availability of rich salt sources that gave the area its name, this paper argues that it might have been these resources that attracted people from far-away and eventually led to the development of an elite-level exchange network that allowed for the rich burials of the horse-riders of Yanyuan.