Zhougongmiao oracle bone inscriptions (OBI) workshop

Up to 130,000 Shang dynasty (13th–11th c. BCE) oracle-bone inscriptions, China’s earliest writing, have been excavated since 1928. The succeeding Zhou are not associated with bone inscriptions, but 300 appeared in Zhouyuan in 1977 and 10,000 were excavated in Zhougongmiao from 2003 to 2011. At this workshop international scholars and graduate students will study one hundred never before seen Zhougongmiao inscriptions that shed light on a formative period of Chinese civilization, at the threshold between Shang and Zhou. Participants hail from archaeology, linguistics, paleography, and history, with expertise on the physical material and context of bones, the structure of the writing system, the encoded language, and the meaning of the texts in their wider social and intellectual context.