Socketed axe with geometric decorationSocketed axe with geometric decoration

1. (Undated folder sheet note) Purchased from Ton-Ying & Co., New York. For price, see <u>Freer Gallery of Art Purchase List after 1920<e>.

2. (J.A.P., 1944) One of a group of twelve weapons said to have been found at Hsun  Hsien, Wei-hui Fu, Honan Province. (<u>cf<e>. 34.3)

The tubular socket has a surrounding band in relief near the top, and two similar bands near the bottom. Two small concentric circles in relief appear on either side of the blade just where it joins the socket, and at the back of this member is a small, blunt vestigial tang. A small hole through both sides of the socket below the uppermost band must have received a transverse pin to fasten the haft in place.

While small axes with tubular sockets have come from China, they do not appear to belong among the indigenous bronze-age products of that country. They are rather associated with the nomadic peoples of the marginal regions to the north and west; and similar materials occur as far away as the Danube. Numerous examples have been published. (See Yetts, <u>The George Eumofopoulos Collection<e>, vol. 1, nos. A145, A146, A151; Anderson, <u>Hunting Magic in the Animal Style<e>, BMFEA, 4, pp. 240-242, pl. X, and <u>Selected Ordos Bronzes<e>, BMFEA, 5, pl. VI; Janse, <u>Quelques antiquites chinoises d'un charactere hallstattien<e>, BMFEA, 2, pl. III; F.R. Martin, <u>L'age du bronze au musee du Minoussinsk<e>, Stockholm, 1893, pl. 2; Umehara, <u>Shina Kokogaku ronko<e> [chn] p. 26, pl. 8, 31). With the exception of those published by Martin, which were found in the Yenisei Valley in Siberia, and the Halstatt examples cited by Janse for purposes of comparison, the provenance of these objects is uncertain. Most of them were bought in North China, and belong to that group of materials loosely known as Ordos bronzes because many of them purport to come from that region of northern Shansi. It should be noted, however, that even when finds of objects of this group are definitely recorded, this information is not conclusive evidence of anything in particular. The makers were members of various nomadic tribes who, through the centuries, wandered back and forth over thousands of miles of territory; and weapons or other objects might be lost or discarded at any point in the steppe country leaving no indication of where they were made or which particular people made them.

3. (J. Smith per Keith Wilson, 3/2009) Socketed axe with geometric decoration; Western Zhou dynasty; Purportedly from Xun xian, Henan Province, Ordos, Inner Mongolia.