A new purchase arrived yesterday and I couldn’t be happier with it! Warring states, State of Zhao. Ca. 350-281 BC. Small square foot spade. Hartill 3.330, Lin 焛(蔺). I stayed up till about 4 am local time to attend the live-bidding for a Steve Album auction and managed to snag up this spade. There were a couple of other spades I had my eye on, but the usual heavy competition on the Chinese lots in these Steve Album auctions prevented me from winning any others. But I am more than content with this piece! The inscription is not extremely common, but was the only one in the top 10 commonest spades that I lacked. I was never able to find a genuine one in nice enough condition for a decent price (@TypeCoin971793 did manage to find a nice one a couple of years ago, for a far better price), until now that is. An interesting thing to note is the way that the middle line on the obverse (seen on most if not all square foot spades) has been incorporated into the inscription itself! But more importantly is the interesting city behind this inscription. This type had long been read as Kuan 關, based on superficial similarities to the modern character, but a slightly more academic approach resulted in reinterpreting it as 焛 Lin. This character already appears in early oracle bone inscriptions, in differing forms, and seems to be an archaic abbreviation for its homophone 蔺 Lin. An ancient city by that name was located a few kilometres to the west of current day Lishi 离石 and has been identified as the issuing entity responsible for this spade. This city already shows up in several Shang dynasty documents and after a period of barbarian occupation in the first half of the first millenium BC, was reclaimed by the state of Jin near the end of the Spring and Autumn period. Afterwards, this state would split into three and Lin fell to the state of Zhao 趙. It would prosper under their rule, but as time progressed, became increasingly close to the ever-expanding Qin 秦 state border. During this period, it was sacked multiple times, quite severely in 313 BC, and would finally fall into their hands in 281 BC. Since Qin not issue any spades, this provides a terminus ante quem for this spade of 281 BC. Numismatically, this city is interesting because of the diversity of coin-types that were cast there. Usually, we see a city casting one or maybe two different subtypes of spades, knives or round-coins, but rarely does a city cast more than one form of coinage. Lin is different. It produced both knives, two different types of round coins and no less than three different types of spades (Square footed (my specimen), point footed and round footed spades in two denominations). Why did such a city cast all these different types of currency, some of which originated thousands of kilometres away? The answer probably lies in geography. Lin was located strategically near a major crossing of the yellow river and formed an important trading hub on the East-Western China trading route. Merchants of all nationalities using all sorts of coinage must have passed through. It is therefore theorized that to facilitate and profit from this trade, a plethora of different types of coinage were cast locally in Lin. In 1986, a strange find made us revaluate the merit of the attribution to the city of Lin. While excavating in the non-residential quarter of the ancient city of Lingshou 灵寿(which still goes by the same name), several furnaces and a rectangular pit containing three storage vessels were found. These large vessels contained six complete terracotta moulds for round-footed spades, as well as a two other moulds, a bunch of fragmentary moulds and some casting residue. Their inscription? Lin 焛! This led to some confusion. The moulds looked at least semi-official (not crudely made local copies), as far as one is able to discern that from looking at the moulds alone. Should the entirety of the Lin coinage be reattributed to Lingshou, a city not even in Zhao territory? Lingshou was namely the capital of the state of Zhongshan, a minor state that managed to survive incredibly close to the heartland of Zhao until 296 BC. These two states were constantly at war with each other and since the major remodelling of the Zhao state in 307/306 BC, Zhao had Zhongshan almost completely surrounded. The site of their capital Lingshou was discovered in 1976 and has since seen extensive excavations that have provided us with a wealth of information concerning the lesser-known state of Zhongshan, as well as on its economy. For example, the terrible relationship with the Zhao state shows in the archaeological record; throughout the entire site, only a handful of coins originating from the Zhao state have been found. Meanwhile, Yan state Ming knives were found in large numbers, circulating along the locally cast Chengbo 成白 straight knives, meaning these two states engaged in significantly more trade than Zhongshan and Zhao. But back to the moulds. Was Lingshou indeed the source for all Lin coinage? The answer lies in the two other complete moulds from the same rectangular pit. These were also used in the casting of coins, but instead of spades, these moulds carried the design of Ming knives! furthermore, we also have a passage from the Shiji, the work of famous Han-dynasty Historian Sima Qian, concerning the people of Lingshou: (Translation from Nancy Lee Swann) “Grown men, gathered together for games and contests, would sing plaintive songs of great sadness. Rising up (being excited) they would follow one after another, beat and stab each other, but in private life they would rob graves, and perform adroitly the casting of counterfeit coins”. Counterfeit coins? Yep, it appears these moulds were able to archaeologically verify a passage from the Shiji! How awesome is that. They were thus not official moulds, but used in counterfeiting in the state of Zhongshan, although the scale and precision with which this happened might indicate this being a state-organised or at least a state-condoned operation. Strangely enough, a few years later in the early nineties, several other counterfeiting moulds (200 fragments in total) for round-footed Lin spades were excavated. This time in Xinzheng 新郑, the old capital of the state of Han 韩. Apparently this was a frequently forged type, although it is extremely rare nowadays, with specimens rarely appearing on the market. Will we ever know why? Anyway, hope you enjoyed this, even it was a little off-topic for a large part. But as an archaeology student, I always like to examine these archaeological papers and identify the impact they have on numismatics. Post anything you like! Mika
Excellent write-up as usual. I really need to start subscribing to these archaeological papers... Here is my Lin spade which @AnYangMan alluded to: And a round coin with a Lin inscription.
Happy Holidays! Nice square foot spade. Good ones don't seem to come up that often (or I don't look hard enough these days?). I picked up these 2 a few years ago during my HK trip. The writing are from seller, but I keep them in case I'll do research in the future.
@happy_collector, thank you for digging up this topic once again! I hate to break it to you, but that second spade is a well-known fake I am afraid. It imitates a Liang-yi spade, but no genuine example has a crotch this high. These (and related equally granular fakes) notorious fakes have been circulating since at least the late nineties, and pop up now and then on the market. A selection of examples seen recently: The calligraphy matches down to the length and thickness of each single stroke. Also note the rough surfaces on all of them, much more granular (look at the edges) than on genuine spades. The calligraphy is also off, but the patina is a major red flag as well. Yours is slightly better done than those presented above, but still, such a uniformly dark green patina with what I personally call a ‘wet’ look is something to be very wary of! The first spade, inscribed Xiangyuan, is however likely to be genuine! This is one of my favourite types and a nice of example of it at that. Some of these, such as one of my examples I have posted below, have very faint numerals in the top right corner of the reverse (Shi yi, 11, in my case). Any chance yours has this? Kind regards, Mika
Thank you for confirming my suspicions about the second spade. Here is my example of the first spade.
Happy Holidays, Mika. Thanks for your additional info about the second spade. I am no spade expert, and surely it's good to know more. Will put note on the cardboard, and use it as reference/comparison purpose. I'll look up the first spade and check the reverse.
Success! A bit difficult to make out, but in the top right corner, three faint horizontal dashes can be observed; the character 三 San (three). Spades having such an additional character on the reverse are seen slightly less frequently than those without and fetch a slight premium. The exact nature of them remains a mystery, but control marks for either moulds or furnaces are amongst the most likely functions. Lovely coin!
Mika, thanks for an interesting & well researched article. I've never owned any Chinese bronze money from the Waring States period, however, about 5 years ago I sold at auction a Waring States period carved jade pommel insert pictured below, 53 mm diameter. The center has a spinning whorl surrounded by a grain pattern. Below that jade is a Qing Dynasty copy of a Waring States jade bi disc that I still own, 77 mm diameter. The center is decorated with the grain pattern & the exterior ring has an abstract pattern if bovine heads & feet. The art work of the Waring States period reached a very high level equaled only in the Western Han period.
Your Warring States jade pommel is very nice indeed. I don't know how people can secure it onto the sword handle though. Maybe bandage it somehow, but that would look ugly, and defeats the reason to put this on (i.e. beauty). Also, I noticed some numeric characters on the reverse side. Likely those are for accounting purpose, which was practiced in the Han dynasty. I mean accounting for the items people put inside a tomb. Which could mean the piece was from a big tomb (lots of burial items). Possibly belongs to a noble king. Just my thoughts.
happy_collector, good observations on your part. The numbers on the back of the insert are possibly accounting numbers as you suggest or possibly numbers a collector had engraved on the jade for his own inventory. There are many small chips on the exterior of the jade indicating it was probably bezel set on the pommel since there is only one drilled hole that would secure it internally. The jade is very fine quality indicating it was made for someone of importance. The bi disc is finely carved but much too small to be a period piece. During the 16th-18th centuries collecting ancient jades was a popular pastime of the literati & many ancient graves were looted to satisfy collector demand. Collector demand far exceeded the available supply so talented jade carvers filled the demand by making copies like this bi disc.
