The Early Chinese Mirror

Abstract

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Exploring Complexity in Bronze Age Exchange Networks by Revisiting the Bronze Mirrors of Central Asia and China

“…Disc-shaped mirrors appear in what is now western and northwestern China in the early second millennium BCE, and they are considered to be the precursors of later examples made by the Chinese dynasties and exported across Eurasia, to the extent that they were formerly known as the 'Chinese mirror' in English-language research (Dohrenwend 1964;Juliano 1985;Rubinson 1985). Like other bronze objects with earlier parallels in Central Asia, these early mirrors are considered by many as evidence for far-reaching networks of trade and exchange that existed across early Bronze Age Eurasia.…”