The earliest records of the ancient bronzes of Hunan Province, China, come from the Song dynasty (960–1279) scholar Hong Mai (1123–1202). In his book Notes of Rong Studio (Rongzhai Suibi [ca. 1196]), he recorded that in 1187, a Western Zhou dynasty (11th century–771 BCE) tomb was looted and bronze objects were found within. Centuries later in the 1920s, several exotic-shaped vessels came to market and garnered worldwide attention. One of these was an elephant shaped zun (wine vessel) exhibited in the Musée Guimet in Paris. However, the serious study of the Hunan bronze began in 1981 when archaeologist Gao Zhixi raised the question in an essay as to “whether the Shang bronze culture has crossed Yangzi River or not.” At the time of his inquiry, excavations since the 1950s had turned up a number of Shang (16th–11th century BCE) and Zhou dynasty bronze vessels, including the famous human-faced rectangular ding (cooking vessel), which was excavated by a peasant in his village in Huangcai, Ningxiang, in 1958. In subsequent decades, more extraordinary bronze vessels were unearthed in the Ningxiang area, Hunan Province.
