ABSTRACT
Textual and material evidence shows that since the Shang dynasty (ca. sixteenth to eleventh century B.C.), workshops for manufacturing and construction existed. They provided weapons and objects for ceremonial and everyday use for the court and the ruling elite and planned and executed great central building projects like palaces, city walls, and funerary monuments. A great number of bronze vessels were produced for the ceremonial use of the rulers. Archeologists have calculated that it would have taken 18 years ‒ if 10,000 earth pounders were engaged for 330 days per year ‒ to complete the stamped-earth city walls of an early Shang city located in the vicinity of modern Zhengzhou in Henan. 1 Both cases suggest that the work organization lay in the hands of specialized groups who could command great and, in the case of the bronze casters, highly skilled manpower. These workers and artisans most probably stood in the immediate service of the rulers and were supervised by their officials. 2
