Large Bronze Bird Head, List#16

Narrator

This large bronze bird head, the head of a predator, is fearsome. It echoes the bird imagery found in other pieces from the Sanxingdui and Jinsha sites. Some are large, others are small, some seem to be decorative, others, like this one, imposing.

This might have been attached to the body of a bird, or mounted onto something else. Could it have been a totem or representation of the people who lived there? It might also have been part of their religion—and a reference to the sun. Sun cults were common all over the world at this time, and the bird was a powerful symbol connecting heaven and earth.

Suzanne Cahill

This provides archeologists and historians with wonderful fruit for speculation about the religious beliefs and the sacrificial rituals of these people. And about their iconography; that is their religious symbolism in their art.

Narrator

So, while these objects may give us a clue about their spiritual beliefs, they don't reveal anything about how people carried on in their everyday lives.

Suzanne Cahill

We don't have objects that would tell us about how people cooked their rice or sewed their clothes. But it's not unusual not to have a lot of everyday objects. It's not unusual in the Central Plain either. Most of them were made out of perishable materials. And nobody made any special efforts to preserve them, because they were just ordinary stuff.