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There is a Homework Assignment for Tuesday - bring your completed assignment to class. |
Reading: Shang Kingship and Shang Kinship, Shang Religion, Shang Bronzes
The principal theme for our class on Tuesday will be aspects of Shang religion that we can observe through the oracle texts, although I'll devote a few minutes at the beginning of class to the issue of the kinship network at the center of the Shang polity: the royal Zi clan (the subject of the first of your three short readings).
In discussing issues of religion we will be focusing on the heart of our late Shang data, since both the oracle texts and the bronze vessels that comprise the most distinctive forms of our recovered evidence of Shang culture.