Robert Bagley

Professor Robert W. Bagley is an American art historian and archaeologist in the Department of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University. Bagley specialises in pre-Han art and archaeology with a broad spectrum of academic interests, including ornament, archaeometallurgy and ancient metal technology, archaic Chinese jades, comparative study of the first civilizations and the first writing systems, and the archaeology of ancient Chinese music.

Education
A.B. (1967), A.M. (1973), Ph.D. (1981), Harvard University.

M.S. (1969), University of Chicago.

Books and Book Chapters
Max Loehr and the Study of Chinese Bronzes: Style and Classification in the History of Art. Ithaca, NY: Cornell East Asia Series, 2008.

“Anyang Writing and the Origin of the Chinese Writing System.” Chapter 7 (pp. 190- 249) in Stephen D. Houston, ed., The First Writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

[ed.] Ancient Sichuan, Treasures from a Lost Civilization. Seattle and Princeton: Seattle Art Museum and Princeton University Press, 2001.

“Percussion.” Chapter 2 (pp. 34-63, 120-27, and 136-7) in Jenny F. So, ed., Music in the Age of Confucius. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2000.

“Shang Archaeology.” Chapter 3 (pp. 124-231) in Michael Loewe and Edward L. Shaughnessy, eds., The Cambridge History of Ancient China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

“Les techniques métallurgiques” (pp. 37-44) and “Les vases rituels au début de l’âge du bronze” (pp. 57-64) in Rites et festins de la Chine antique: Bronzes du musée de Shanghai. Paris: Musée Cernuschi, 1998.

[ed.] Art of the Houma Foundry. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996. Co-winner of the 1997 Shimada Prize.

Chapters 1-2 (“Il neolitico”, “L’antica età del bronzo”) in Michèle Pirazzoli, ed., Le arti della Cina. Torino: UTET, 1995.

Shang Ritual Bronzes in the Arthur M. Sackler Collections. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1987.

Chapters 1-6 and entries 1-63 in Wen Fong, ed., The Great Bronze Age of China (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1980). The book received the Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award of the College Art Association.

Contributions to Reference Books
Entries on Chinese archaeology and Chinese metallurgy in The Dictionary of Art. London: Macmillan, 1996.

Entries on metallurgy and Chinese archaeology in Ruth Whitehouse, ed., The Macmillan Dictionary of Archaeology (London: Macmillan, 1983; 2nd ed. 1985). Published in the United States as The Facts on File Dictionary of Archaeology.

Articles
“Interpreting Prehistoric Designs.” Chapter 1 in Paul Taylor, ed., Iconography Without Texts. London: Warburg Institute Colloquia 13, 2008, pp. 43-68.

“Ornament, Representation, and Imaginary Animals in Bronze Age China.” Arts Asiatiques 61 (2006), pp. 17-29.

“The Prehistory of Chinese Music Theory.” Proceedings of the British Academy 130 (2005), pp. 41-90.

“Quatre conférences sur l’invention dans l’art de la Chine ancienne.” Summary of lectures given at the École pratique des Hautes Études (IV e Section), Paris, May-June 2003. École pratique des Hautes Études, Section des Sciences historiques et philologiques, Livret-Annuaire 18 (2002-2003) (Paris: 2004), pp. 366-9.

“L’invention des ensembles de cloches accordées en Chine.” In Archéologie et musique, actes du colloque des 9 et 10 février 2001. Paris: Musée de la Musique, 2002, pp. 122-6.

Review of Wu Hung’s Monumentality in Early Chinese Art and Architecture. Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 88.1 (June 1998), pp. 221-56.

“Nanfang qingtongqi wenshi yu Xin’gan Dayangzhou mu de shidai” [“The decoration of southern bronzes and the date of the Xin’gan tomb”]. In Ma Chengyuan, ed., Wu Yue diqu qingtongqi yanjiu lunwenji [Studies of bronzes from the Wu Yue area]. Hong Kong: Tai Yip, 1997, pp. 125-36.

“Debris from the Houma Foundry.” Orientations, October 1996, pp. 50-58. Reprinted in Chinese Bronzes: Selected Articles from Orientations 1983-2000 (Hong Kong: 2001), pp. 246-54.

“What the bronzes from Hunyuan tell us about the foundry at Houma.” Orientations, January 1995, pp. 46-54. Reprinted with corrections in Chinese Bronzes: Selected Articles from Orientations 1983-2000 (Hong Kong: 2001), pp. 214-22. Chinese translation in Wenwu baohu yu kaogu kexue (Sciences of Conservation and Archaeology) 10.1 (May 1998), pp. 23-9.

“An Early Bronze Age Tomb in Jiangxi Province.” Orientations, July 1993, pp. 20-36. Reprinted in Chinese Bronzes: Selected Articles from Orientations 1983-2000 (Hong Kong: 2001), pp. 169-85.

“Cyril Stanley Smith.” Archives of Asian Art 46 (1993), pp. 103-5. “Replication Techniques in Eastern Zhou Bronze Casting.” In Steven Lubar and W. David Kingery, eds., History from Things: Essays on Material Culture. Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993, pp. 234-41.

“Meaning and Explanation.” In Roderick Whitfield, ed., The Problem of Meaning in Early Chinese Ritual Bronzes (London: School of Oriental and African Studies, 1992), pp. 34-55. Reprinted in Archives of Asian Art 46 (1993), pp. 6-26.

“Changjiang Bronzes and Shang Archaeology.” Proceedings, International Colloquium on Chinese Art History, 1991, Antiquities, Part 1 (Taibei: National Palace Museum, 1992), pp. 209-55. Chinese translation in Nanfang wenwu 1996.2, pp. 31-48.

“A Shang City in Sichuan Province.” Orientations, November 1990, pp. 52-67. Reprinted in Chinese Bronzes: Selected Articles from Orientations 1983-2000 (Hong Kong: 2001), pp. 122-37. Chinese translation in Li Shaoming, Lin Xiang, and Zhao Dianzeng, eds., Sanxingdui yu Ba Shu wenhua. Chengdu: Ba Shu Shushe, 1993.

“Shang Ritual Bronzes: Casting Technique and Vessel Design.” Archives of Asian Art 43 (1990), pp. 6-20.

“Max Loehr.” Archives of Asian Art 42 (1989), pp. 86-9.

“Sacrificial Pits of the Shang Period at Sanxingdui in Guanghan county, Sichuan province.” Arts Asiatiques 43 (1988), pp. 78-86.

“Ancient Chinese Bronzes in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.” Orientations, May 1988, pp. 40-53. Reprinted in Chinese Bronzes: Selected Articles from Orientations 1983-2000 (Hong Kong: 2001), pp. 30-43.