Axe Shape Piece With Collared Hole, List# 30 & 31

Narrator

These bronze objects in the shape of an axe blade have a square hole in the center surrounded by a raised collar. These square-ish pieces have been found at both sites, but not anywhere else in China.

Suzanne Cahill

What they are or what they were used for, we don't exactly know. They're called 'axe-blade-shaped,' but they could not have been used for axes. They don't have any sharp edges. And what they resemble, or what they seem to be most similar to, is a shape that we find in bronze and in jade, which is a circular shape.

Narrator

Similar circle designs appear frequently in later Chinese cultures. Ancient written texts explain that those circles are associated with the heavens – a symbol of the world of the gods.

But like most everything else discovered at Sanxingdui and Jinsha, that theory doesn't quite fit—these objects, with their squared-off shape and distinctive collars just look too different. What do you think?