The Bronzeware Museum in Jiangchuan County

The Cradle of Ancient Yunnan Civilization

Located in Jiangchuan County of Yunnan, Lijiashan Bronze Wares Museum is the first bronze wares museum in China. It mainly collects the bronze wares over 10,000 pieces between the Warring States Period and the Han Dynasty unearthed in the Lijiashan Ancient Graveyard in Jiangchuan. There are tools of agricultural production, utensils for daily life tools, weapons and musical instruments, etc. Among them thousands of historical and cultural exquisite articles including Bronze Ox and Tiger Altar and Cowries Vessel can be rated as “the cultural flower in the south of Yunnan, the rare treasure in the world”.

The Highlights of Bronze Culture
In 1972, the state authority on cultural relics carried out an excavation to Lijiashan.

At Lijiashan Mountain by the Xingyun Lake, some 87 ancient tombs dated back to Spring and Autumn Period or the Western Han Dynasty were excavated. Over 4,000 pieces of bronze, jade, and stone relics of rich content, fine craftsmanship and striking ethnic feature were unearthed, from which the developing phases of the culture of Central Yunnan can be induced and deduced. Such a large number of relics show a striking ethnic feature and the close relationship between Yunnan and Central China. The world famous “Cattle-Tiger Bronze Table” is the representative masterpiece of Lijiashan Bronze Culture, which displays a relatively high level in form, design and cast skill, being one of the national treasures of bronze relics.

How many historical secrets are buried in the Lijiashan Mountain? We do not know. Experts say there are more than 200 ancient tombs in the mountain. Judged from the quantity and cultural value of the bronze wares unearthed from the 87 tombs, Lijiashan Mountain plays a rare role in the world bronze wares archeological history.

Lijiashan Bronze Museum is in Dajie Township of Jiangchuan County. It collects most of the unearthed relics from Lijiashan, including weapons, musical instruments, ceremony devices, production tools, weaving tools, living utensils, ornaments, horse decorations, and other articles. The materials are of copper, iron, gold, silver, jade, stone, wood, and lacquer, of which most are bronze.
 
From January to May in 1972, an archaeological team made up of Yunnan Provincial Museum and Jiangchuan Cultural Center made a 60-day excavation and unearthed 27 tombs in total. The No. 21 tomb was revealed to be about 2,500 years old by radiocarbon assessment. About 1,300 burial articles were excavated including the famous Bull-Tiger Bronze Table.
 
In May 1991, villagers discovered new tombs and burials in their prospecting for mine and the burials were identified from Bronze Age. A second large excavation was then conducted by Yunnan Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, Yuxi Cultural Relics Administration Center and Jiangchuan Cultural Relics Administration Center from December 1991 to June 1992. Fifty-eight tombs were cleared within 1,100 square meters and 2,066 burials of copper, iron, gold, and jade were discovered. Most of the burials were similar to the ones from the first excavation, but there were still many that first appeared among Dian bronze relics. The excavation was selected as one of the ten greatest discoveries of the year in 1992 and some of the articles were exhibited in Exhibition of China’s Greatest Cultural Relics in Shanghai in 1993. In the spring of 1994, another tomb was excavated as one program of Sino-Japanese Cultural Exchange and about 100 bronze and iron articles were unearthed.