Anyang

Anyang

Anyang (än-yäng), city (1994 est. pop. 458,400), N Henan prov., China, on the Beijing-Guangzhou RR, in a cotton-growing area. It is an agricultural and trade center with textile mills, coal mines, and a medium-sized iron and steel complex. Anyang was once a capital of the Shang dynasty and one of the earliest centers of Chinese civilization. Excavations, begun there in 1928 by archaeologist Li Chi, have revealed a rich collection of artifacts from the Shang dynasty. Unearthed articles include pottery, oracle bones, stone and jade, chariots, bronzes, and building foundations.

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The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Anyang

 

a city in China in the province of Honan, at the eastern spur of the Taihang Shan on the Hwang Shui River (the Huang Ho basin). As of 1959 the population was 145,000. The city is a railroad station on the Peking-Wuhan line. Its industries include cotton and food.

World-famous excavations of a settlement from the second half of the second millenium B.C., the capital of the Yin state, were carried out from 1928 to 1937 and from 1950 to 1963. The environs of Anyang were already settled in the Neolithic period by the Yang-Shao and Lungshan civilizations. In the early Yin period settlements existed on the banks of the Hwang Shui River. At the site of one of these settlements the last Yin capital was founded about the 14th century B.C. The center of the capital was located near the village of Hsiaot’un, where remains of court and temple buildings and numerous dwellings have been excavated and an archive of prophetic inscriptions has been found; north of Hsiaot’un, burial vaults of the Yin rulers and nobility have been found. After the Chou conquest at the end of the 11th century B.C., the Yin capital was destroyed.

REFERENCES

Hu Hou-hsüan. Yinhsü fachiu o (Excavations of the Yin Fortified Settlement). Shanghai, 1955.
Hsin chungkuo k’aoku shouhuo (Archaeology in the New China). Peking, 1961.
Chêng Têk’un. Archaeology in China, vol. 2. Cambridge, 1960.

M. V. KRIUKOV

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

Anyang

a town in E China, in Henan province: archaeological site and capital of the Shang dynasty. Pop.: 808 000 (2005 est.)

Collins Discovery Encyclopedia, 1st edition © HarperCollins Publishers 2005