Trajectories of adoption for silver and bloomery iron in China from the Spring and Autumn period (c. 770–476 BC)

We examine the number of sites with silver objects in China over a period of 3500 years to suggest that technologies that stimulated the indigenous exploitation of silver-bearing ores were innovated during the Spring and Autumn period (c. 770–476 BCE), and that increased centralisation and bureaucratisation from the Warring States period (475–221 BCE) advanced their adoption. This culture of innovation should have extended to other prestige metals used for decorative objects, such as bloomery iron. However, bloomery iron, although rare prior to the 5th century BCE, disappears almost entirely from the archaeological record in China after this time. We recognise that the movement of objects and ideas across the Eurasian Steppe was potentially the impetus for both silver- and bloomery iron-production technologies in China, but that the adoption trajectory of bloomery iron diverged from that of silver because of the introduction of mass-produced cast iron. In effect, we propose that bloomery iron's status and value diminished when iron became recognised as a utilitarian material; that is, the Chinese invention of cast iron stymied the adoption of the bloomery process and effectively signed the death warrant of iron as a prestige metal.