Sources of Shang History: The Oracle-Bone Inscriptions of Bronze Age China
David N. Keightley's 1978 monograph is the foundational English-language scholarly treatment of oracle bone inscriptions (jiaguwen) from the late Shang dynasty (c. 1250–1046 BCE). The inscriptions were carved onto ox scapulae and turtle plastrons at the royal capital Yinxu (modern Anyang, Henan) and constitute the earliest securely dated corpus of Chinese writing — and the earliest direct textual evidence for Chinese religious practice. Keightley, a historian of ancient China at UC Berkeley, devotes the work to methodology: how inscriptions are deciphered, how they are dated by reign period (period I = Wu Ding, c. 1250–1192 BCE), and how they function as historical sources. The book remains the standard methodological reference for Western scholarship on Shang religion.
"The oracle-bone inscriptions…were produced by the Shang kings and their diviners, who used them to communicate with a pantheon of ancestors, nature powers, and the high deity Di." (Keightley 1978, paraphrase of introduction)
The inscriptions record a formal charge-and-verification structure: the diviner posed a charge ('On day X, crack-making. The king should hunt at Y?'), heat was applied until the bone cracked, the crack was read as auspicious or inauspicious, and a 'verification' (sometimes) recorded the actual outcome. This structure provides dated sequential records of royal religious activity.
Keightley dates the first period of systematic inscription (Period I) to the reign of Wu Ding, for which 26 bones have been radiocarbon-dated to 1254–1197 BCE (±10 years, 80–90% probability range); later scholars applied these dates using the Xia-Shang-Zhou Chronology Project (2000 CE).
Di (the high deity) appears across hundreds of inscriptions as the supreme power addressed in royal divinations — neither a nature deity nor an ancestor proper, but distinguished from both; his precise nature remains debated.
Keightley is a positivist historian who reads the inscriptions as close to face value, resisting over-interpretation. His methodology chapter is rigorous and widely accepted. His interpretation of Di as a sui generis high deity (rather than deified ancestor) has been challenged: Robert Eno (in Lagerwey & Kalinowski, eds., Early Chinese Religion, Brill 2009) argues Di is best understood as the collective power of royal ancestors at the top of a hierarchical pantheon, not a separate sky-god. This tension — Di as supreme deity vs. Di as apex ancestor — is unresolved in the literature. The 1978 date means later archaeological discoveries (including the Guodian bamboo texts, 300 BCE; and the Xia-Shang-Zhou Chronology Project radiocarbon series, 2000 CE) post-date the monograph; scholars have updated the chronological framework but not substantially overturned the interpretive structure.
shang-religion, ancestor-veneration-antiquity-china, oracle-bones-earliest-dated-chinese-religious-writing