Cracking the secret bones: literacy and society in late Shang

With the arrival of the late Shang with its political center relocated to the south of the Huan River in Anyang, the study of Early China has gained another footing – contemporary written evidence. We are now able to understand the past not only through the material remains it has left behind and to a limited degree through the retrospective documentation produced by later generations, but also through the eyes of the protagonists of history. The perspectives offered by such written evidence, though not without bias (as is true for all records which are the products of the human mind), are unparalleled in the sense that they are both the eyewitness record of the time they speak about, and also the least ambiguous presentation of events and institutions that are usually not directly evident in the material remains. In the case of the Shang oracle-bone inscriptions, particularly because they were the divination records of the Shang kings, they offer especially rich information about the concerns and activities of the king and the operation of the Shang royal court. But there are other areas in which we can only expect that they remain silent.