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 Shamanism and
The Origin of States
 SHAMANISM AND
THE ORIGIN OF STATES
Spirit, Power, and Gender
in East Asia

Sarah Milled ge N elson

First published 2008 by Left Coast Press Inc.

Published 2016 by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an i'?forma business

Copyright © 2008 by Taylor & Francis

All rights reserved. No part ofthis book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised
in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or
hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Notice:
Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are
used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data:

Nelson, Sarah M., 1931-

Shamanism and the origin of states : spirit, power, and gender in East Asia I
Sarah Milledge Nelson.
p.cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-59874-132-2 (hardback: alk. paper)-
ISBN 978-1-59874-133-9 (pbk.: alk. paper)
1. Shamanism-East Asia. 2. Mythology, Asian. 3. East Asia-Religious life and
customs. 4. Religion and state-East Asia. 5. Sex role-East Asia. I. Title.
BL2370.S5N45 2008
201'.44095-dc22 2008019852

ISBN 13: 978-1-59874-133-9 (pbk)

 ,
For H a l w ith love
 CONTENTS

List of Figures xi
Preface and Acknowledgments xv

CHAPTER 1: ORIENTATION TO SHAMANISM 1

AND THE ORIGIN OF STATES
Spirit, Power, and Gender in East Asia
W hat Is Shamanism? 3
Who Were the Wu} 5
State Formation 6
Archaeology 7
Texts 8
Organization of the Book 9
Case Study A: Niuheliang, China 14

CHAPTER 2: LANDSCAPES, LEGENDS, 19

AND SKYSCAPES
Landscapes 19

vu
viii Contents

Myths and Legends 31

Skyscapes 38
Interaction between Earth and Heaven 42
Conclusion 46
Case Study B: The P uyang Buria/y China 47

CHAPTER 3: W HAT IS A SHAMAN? 51

The Archaeology of Religion, Magic, and Ritual 54
Shamans in Ethnology 57
Shamans in History 61
Other Beliefs and Rituals in East Asia 63
Practices of Shamans 67
Material Culture of Shamans 68
Current Shamanism in East Asia 71
Variability of Shamanisms in Ancient East Asia 72
Conclusion 74
Case Study C: Yoshinogari, Japan 76

CHAPTER 4: POWER, LEADERSHIP, AND GENDER 81

Shamanism and Power 81
Leadership Strategies 84
Theories of Leadership 85
Obtaining Power 86
Qualities of a Leader 92
Ideologies of Leadership 93
Women as Shamans and Leaders 95
Conclusion 99
Case Study D: Anyang, China, Tomb No. 5—Lady Hao 100

CHAPTER 5: SHAMANS IN THE EAST 105

ASIAN NEOLITHIC
Neolithic Chronology 109
 Contents ix

Possible Evidence of Neolithic Shamans 112

Conclusion 138
Case Study E: Kamegoaka, Japan 140

CHAPTER 6: SHAMANISM IN EARLY 143

CHINESE STATES
Evidence of Xia 146
Evidence of Shang 151
Means of Reaching the Spirits 156
Critiquing the Shaman Hypothesis 162
Warring States 163
Conclusion 166
Case Study F: Sanxingdui, China 168

CHAPTER 7: SHAMANISM IN KOREA 171

Paleolithic and Neolithic 172
Bronze Age 174
The Han Commanderies 179
The Korean Three Kingdoms 181
Current Shamanism in Korea 190
Conclusion 191
Case Study G: H wangnam Daecheong, K orea—B urial o f a 192
R uling Q ueen?

CHAPTER 8: SHAMANISM IN THE JAPANESE ISLANDS 199

K am i 200
Japanese Archaeology 200
Early Japanese History 207
Shamanism in Present-Day Japan 208
Ryukyu Islands 210
Conclusion 212
Case Study H: Han iwa, Japan 213
X Contents

CHAPTER 9: RETYING THE KNOTS 217

Leadership, Ideology, Cultural Patterns, Gender,
and Shamans in East Asia
Times, Trends, and Gender 218
Context and the Cultural Mosaic of East Asia 224
Other Gender Issues 228
Present-Day Shamanism in East Asia 229
Conclusion 230

References 233
Index 265
About the Author 283
 LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1.1 The geography of East Asia xx

Figure A .l Goddess Temple from the air 14
Figure A.2 Face with inset jade eyes from the Goddess Temple 15
Figure A.3 Locality 2 burial mounds and altars 16
Figure A.4 Hongshan jades 17
Figure A.5 Painted cylinder 18
Figure A.6 Jade “pig-dragons” 18
Figure 2.1 Estimated coastlines of East Asia at lowest sea level 22
Figure 2.2 Karst hills along the Li River in southern China 24
Figure 2.3 Chonji, the Heavenly Lake 26
Figure 2.4 Seaside shrine in Japan 29
Figure 2.5 The five naked-eye planets lined up “like pearls on 44
a string”
Figure B .l Puyang burial 47
Figure 3.1 Shaman ritual near Seoul 61
Figure 3.2 The character for w u from oracle bone and 62
modern script

XI
xii List of Figures

Figure 3.3 Sacred tree with ribbons 64

Figure 3.4 Miruk from Puyo 65
Figure C .l Reconstructed watchtowers and granaries 76
Figure C.2 Burial urn 77
Figure C.3 Bronze sword 78
Figure C.4 Blue cylindrical beads 78
Figure C.5 Raised granary 79
Figure D .l Plan of Lady Hao’s inner burial 100
Figure D.2 Northern Bronzes from the grave of Lady Hao 101
Figure D.3 Jade phoenix 102
Figure D.4 Drinking cup of ivory inlaid with turquoise 103
Figure 5.1 Map of Neolithic sites mentioned in the text 107
Figure 5.2 Carving of double-headed sunbird from Hemudu 111
Figure 5.3 Painted Neolithic bowls depicting “female” dancers 116
Figure 5.4 Painted Neolithic bowl depicting “male” dancers 117
Figure 5.5 Shell figure from Zhoubaogou with a belt 118
Figure 5.6 Rope belt, part of broken female figurine from 119
Dongshanzui
Figure 5.7 Liangzhu jade figure with mask headdress 121
Figure 5.8 Faces from Korea and the Russian Far East 123
Figure 5.9 Burial of woman and girl from Yuanjunmiao 124
Figure 5.10 Plaque from Lingjiatun, Hunan, engraved with 129
eight-pointed star found inside a turtle box
Figure 5.11 Marks on pottery from Banpo 132
Figure 5.12 Mongolian symbol compared to symbol on a 133
Longshan jar
Figure 5.13 Painted li tripod from Dadianzi 136
Figure 5.14 B i and cong from Liangzhu 137
Figure E .l Figurine from Kamegoka 140
Figure 6.1 Map of locations of Sandai and contemporaneous 144
peoples
Figure 6.2 Bronze jia from Erlitou 147
Figure 6.3 Oracle bone from Shang 155
 List of Figures X lll

Figure 6.4 Shang ritual axe 161

Figure 6.5 Monster from Chu with antlers and hanging tongue 164
Figure 6.6 Zhongshan bronze trident 166
Figure F.l Bronze figure with large hands 168
Figure F.2.Bronze human head 169
Figure F.3 Bronze head with protruding eyes 169
Figure F.4 Bronze bird 170
Figure 7.1 Map of Korean sites 173
Figure 7.2 Types of dolmens in Korea 175
Figure 7.3 Polished red cups 176
Figure 7.4 Bronze “shaman figure” 178
Figure 7.5 Bronze rattle 178
Figure 7.6 Korean bronze mirrors 179
Figure 7.7 Painting of shaman in Goguryeotomb 183
Figure 7.8 Dancers painted on the wall of aGoguryeo tomb 184
Figure G .l Gold crown from Tomb 98 192
Figure G.2 Gold belt from Tomb 98 193
Figure G.3 Plan of Tomb 98 194
Figure G.4 Gyeongju tomb park 195
Figure G.5 The Heavenly Horse painted on birchbark, 196
from the Jeonma Jeong
Figure G.6 Kinship chart of Silla royalty 197
Figure 8.1 Sites in Japan 201
Figure 8.2 Flame design Jomon jar 203
Figure 8.3 Torii gate 209
Figure 8.4 Ise shrine 210
Figure H .l H aniwa horse 213
Figure H.2 H aniwa house 214
Figure H.3 H aniwa shaman 214
Figure H. 4 H aniwa shaman 215
Figure H.5 H aniwa shaman 215
 PREFACE AND
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

N A WAY, this book began in 1970 and 1971 when I lived in Korea to
Ì conduct research for my dissertation. Much help came from senior
archaeologists Kim Won-yong and Sohn Pow-key, as well as Im Hyo-
jai, Choe Mong-lyong, and many others. In addition to surveying for
archaeological sites along the Han River with my Korean colleagues and
many of my international friends, I taught at the University of Maryland,
Far East Division. I was fascinated with the mudangs, the women shamans
of Korea, who are more politely called manshift, meaning “ten thousand spir­
its.” At least once a term, whenever I could justify it, I would take my classes
on a shaman expedition.
The shrine for these shamans was just outside the city walls, in an area
of traditional one-story houses with tiled roofs. The students and I had to
scale the wall and pick our way through the narrow streets. The hilltop
above the shrine is graced with an oddly shaped pair of boulders that resem­
ble humans wrapped in cloaks. A bit below the eroded boulders, a flat slab
of granite provided a place to sit with a view into the shrine—a perfect place
for the class to watch the ritual taking place in the m anshins traditional
house. Sometimes we would be invited in, and one of the students might

XV
xvi Preface and Acknowledgments

even be commanded to wrap in a colorful robe and dance at the end of the
ritual. One of the male students especially amused the manshin with his
dancing. Thus my interest in East Asian shamans goes back more than
thirty years. But at that time, I couldn’t find a way to study shamans in the
Neolithic past. M y dissertation concerned subsistence and settlement.
I returned to Korea in 1978, when I was invited to be an Inter-port
Lecturer for semester-at-sea; in 1983 for a month thanks to the Academy
of Korean Studies; and in 1986, when I was funded by the Korean Cultural
Society. I visited Korea again in 1987, when I attended the Pacific Science
Congress; in 1989, to lead an Earthwatch Project in Korea; and in 1990,
when I stopped in Seoul on my way to the Indo-Pacific Prehistory Associ­
ation meeting in Indonesia, with funding from the University of Denver.
On each trip, I collected material for The Archaeology o f Korea, and pondered
possible connections between the archaeological past and current shaman­
ism. On these trips, I attended shamanic rituals, called kut, and especially
noted their material culture. W hat would archaeologists find if shamanism
existed in the Neolithic? In the Bronze Age?
The Korean archaeologists who offered their time and expertise to me
are too many to name. In addition to those mentioned elsewhere in this
preface, they include Lee In-sook, Choe Chong-pil, Kang Bong-won, Lee
Yong-jo, Bae Ki-dong, Yi Sonbok, Gyoung-Ah Lee, and Martin Bale.
As I pursued the Neolithic in Korea, I continued to wonder if it held
any suggestion of ancient shamans. There were a few signs—a shell mask,
a tiny female torso, bone objects with designs on them. But these were
hardly enough to write a paper about. M any years later, I wrote a novel,
Spirit Bird Journey, about the Korean Neolithic, in which an adopted Korean
learns about the archaeology and dreams the prehistoric past of the site she
is digging. This novel was an exercise in imagining the past from the frag­
ments left in several ancient sites, as well as the story of a woman leader and
shaman.
I led student tours of archaeological sites in China in 1981,1982, and
1985, but my research in northeastern China really began when the north­
east provinces of China, called the Dongbei, had just been opened for
tourism to Americans. These trips were interfingered with visits to Korea.
I began with an exploratory trip to Liaoning, Jilin, and Heilongjiang
provinces in the summer of 1987. The draw for me was that sites in this
region are related to sites in Korea, and I wanted to know about the region
in more detail. On this first exploration, I was accompanied by a graduate
student, Ardith Hunter, and our skilled interpreter, Ming Ming Shan. Ming
 Preface and Acknowledgments xvii

M ing ultimately earned a masters’ degree from the University of Denver,

and became a lifelong friend. Sun Shuodao and Guo Dashun were our
guides. Ardith and I were the first foreigners allowed to see the Goddess
Temple site, which is part of Locality 1 at Niuheliang. The site amazed us
with its unexpected riches—the life-sized statues including the face of the
“goddess,” the finely carved jades, the unusual decorated building. The large
mounded tombs nearby were another major find.
In 1988 I was funded by the Committee on Scholarly Communication
with the Peoples Republic of China to spend six weeks exploring archaeo­
logical sites in the Dongbei. This time Guo Dashun and other members of
the Liaoning province Archaeological Research Institute took me back to
Niuheliang and to other sites in Liaoning. One of the important Neolithic
sites is Houwa, very close to North Korea. Houwa has two levels, both of
which have strange small heads, perforated so they could be strung on a
cord. These heads could be interpreted as fetishes related to shamanism.
The Chahai site near Fuxin also has ritual features. Besides, the pottery from
both sites and others that I visited belonged to the same general styles as
Neolithic pottery from Korea. We stayed in Dandong long enough for me to
watch some North Korean television, and I looked longingly at the bridge
over the Yalu (Amnok) River, which I was not allowed to cross.
Jiang Peng from the Jilin Archaeological Research Institute accompa­
nied me in Jilin province, with M ing M ing as an invaluable aid all the way.
Getting to the sites was particularly adventuresome, as there was no provi­
sion for foreign travelers. Among other places, we went to Jian, a former
capital of the Goguryeo kingdom; to Changbaishan, where once again we
could see into North Korea across the Heavenly Lake of Chonji; and to
Yanji, the capital of Yanbian, the Korean Autonomous Region. On this trip
I realized how rich the archaeology of this region was, and how little it was
known outside of China. I approached the archaeologists from the three
provinces of the Dongbei about writing chapters for a book on Dongbei
archaeology to be translated into English. They were pleased to do it. Trans­
lations were accomplished by students M ing Ming Shan, Ke Peng, and me.
Several more trips to China included important meetings, where I met
scholars interested in the Dongbei from as far away as Novosibirsk, Russia,
and parts of Japan. The Circum-Bohai conferences were particularly useful
to me. I attended meetings in Dalian, Shijiazhuang, and Chifeng. Other
meetings included one organized by Emma Bunker in Hohhot, Inner Mon­
golia. In 1994 I was funded to attend a conference in Vladivostok, and I was
able to spend a couple of weeks visiting sites in Dongbei on the way. Inner
x v ii i Preface and Acknowledgments

Mongolian archaeologists drove me by jeep down dry river beds all around
the Chifeng region, as well as to the Lower Xiajiadian site of Dadianzi, and
many museums. I briefly returned to Harbin, then flew to Khabarovsk on
the Amur River. Transportation was difficult in Russia in those days, but I
finally caught a plane to Vladivostok, where I made many Russian friends
with similar interests, including Irina Zhuschchikovskaya, Yuri Vostretsov,
David Brodianski, and Yaroslav Kuzmin.
About 1990, Geoffrey Read of the W orld Bank contacted me to
inquire about archaeological sites in the Dongbei, which the Bank might
consider to fund for stabilization in the context of cleaning up air and water
pollution in Liaoning. I suggested some sites, including Niuheliang. The
whole project, however, was given to a British company, which chose Gina
Barnes to report on it for them. She became interested in the site. As a
result, she and I proposed joint research at Niuheliang, along with Yangjin
Pak. Although we both found funding, a permit to survey from the Chi­
nese Academy of Social Sciences was not forthcoming, and Gina withdrew
from the project. Yangjin and I decided to keep trying and, with the aid of
Hungjen Niu, we finally received a permit in 2005—ironically just as our
other funding ran out.
A meeting about archaeology of the Central Asian steppes, and espe­
cially horse domestication, allowed me to visit sites in Kazakhstan with a
bevy of archaeologists, including some who had worked with Okladnikov
in the Russian Far East. I thank David Anthony and Dory Brown for this
opportunity. I attended several meetings on Eurasian archaeology, subse­
quently widening my understanding of East Asian archaeology and its con­
nections with surrounding cultures.
In 1994, after I had made many trips to study Niuheliang, I wrote
another novel, Jade D ragon, inviting Clara, my imaginary Korean adoptee,
for an adventure in Chinese archaeology. This time Clara dreams the past
of a shaman named Jade, who lives her life in the Hongshan culture and
travels to other places in the four directions.
Archaeoastronomy is another exploration represented in Jade Dragon.
This idea comes from Robert Stencel, a University of Denver astronomer
who taught a class with me on this topic, and at his urging we used the
Hongshan culture, specifically Niuheliang (NHL) for data for the students
to process. W ith Chris Rock, who went with me on an expedition to NHL
in 2000, we made a CD of the site, including maps and measurements of
all sixteen of the localities. Bob Stencel and I used the CDs with subsequent
honors classes. The last one we taught produced interesting data, and a
 Preface and Acknowledgments xix

paper authored by myself, Rachel Matson, Rachel Roberts, Chris Rock, and
Robert Stencel is currently under review.
Anne Martin-M ontgomery, a graduate student at the University of
Pennsylvania, collected data on the NHL site as a ritual landscape in 2000.
In 2002, Charlotte Bell, with the help of Tiffany Tchakarides, conducted a
ground-penetrating radar survey at Locality 2. They found possible build­
ings in an open area above the Goddess Temple.
The last trip to NHL included (briefly) Gwen Bennett, Josh Wright, and
Yangjin Pak. Sadly we planned more research that was never funded. Sara
Gale, a graduate student from the University of Denver, accompanied me to
Anyang, where we were hosted by Zhi-zheng Jing, as well as Niuheliang.
Over the years, many conversations with Guo Dashun at the site, as
well as my co-workers Yangjin Pak and Hungjen Niu, ranged widely over
possible interpretations of this site—it is obviously a ritual area, but it is not
obvious what kind of rituals might have occurred. At the time I wrote the
novels, it seemed impossible to write an academic book about either
shamans or gender. Now, however, new ways of thinking about archaeology
(and shamanism) have made this book possible. Gender is now taken seri­
ously as a publishable topic, and ideology has also come out from under its
cloud. The length of the bibliography gives some sense of how many ideas
I borrowed for this book.
Seven trips to Japan allowed me to visit sites and museums from
Kyushu to Hokkaido, although I never had the opportunity to dig these
sites.
I had assistance in writing the book as well. I want to thank Allison
Rexroth for reading my handwriting and entering many changes in the
manuscript. Caitlin Lewis did a heroic job of organizing the figures as well
as being my graduate teaching assistant. Students in my seminar “Shamans
in East Asian Archaeology” at the University of Denver deserve my thanks
for reading the almost-finished manuscript and offering candid suggestions
for making it more student-friendly. I acknowledge with gratitude the cri­
tiques of Doug Baer, Whitney Fulton, Joy Klee, Liz Meals, Meghan O’Hal-
loran, Jenae Pitts, Alec Ropes, and Qiyang Zhang. Scholars also read all or
part of the manuscript when it was in the writing stage. M y thanks to
Fumiko Ikawa-Smith, Laurel Kendall, Katheryn Linduff, and Robert Sten­
cel for saving me from errors, although I would not make them responsible
for any that remain. Thanks to my husband Hal for being patient while I
wrote the book, which took about a year longer than I planned, and for
turning old slides into black-and-white figures.
XX Shamanism and the Origin of States

Figure 1.1 The geography o f East Asia. A fter Barnes 1993

 ORIENTATION TO
SHAMANISM AND THE
ORIGIN OF STATES
S p irit, Power, an d G en d er
in E a s t A sia

Shamanism is a traditional, religious phenomenon tied closely to nature

and the surrounding world, in which a practitioner endowed with the
special ability to enter a state o f trance-possession can communicate
with supernatural beings. This transcendental pow er allows the practi­
tioner, the shaman, to satisfy human cravings fo r explanation, under­
standing, and prophecy.
—Tae-gon Kim 1998:19

r IT HIS CHAPTER is called “orientation” as a play on words, but also

to remind readers that the notion of a place called “the Orient” was
L a European concept that made exotic others of all people from the

1
2 Shamanism and the Origin of States

Levant and Egypt to Japan (Said 1978). The concepts of “Near East,” M id­
dle East,” and “Far East” are likewise European terms. Thus I use geo­
graphic terms in this book—“East Asia” describes the part of the continent
of Asia that is on its easternmost side. This chapter is thus an orientation
(a way to find ones place) to the topic of shamans in East Asia—China,
Korea, Japan, and parts of the Russian Far East. As a region, East Asia is
diverse, but coherent because of two powerful influences: the writing sys­
tem of China (and the Confiician influence it carried) and the shamanism of
the regions north of China.
In East Asia, ideology seems to have been particularly important in the
formation of state-level polities. Several archaeologists who work in China
have postulated that the early ideology/religion of East Asia was shaman­
ism because various features of archaeological discoveries—especially buri­
als and art objects—suggest shamanic rituals. Other archaeologists and
historians are not convinced, seeing patrilineal clans and ancestor worship
as creating the political and social ties that kept the state functioning.
Among Korean archaeologists, the shamanic nature of early states is taken
for granted. Likewise, in Japan figurines can be described as depicting
shamans without fear of contradiction. Perhaps this difference stems from
the fact that shamanism still exists in Korea and Japan (especially Okinawa),
but other factors were at play, to be delved into in later chapters.
The topic of shamanism in early states provides an avenue into the
larger question of the role of ideology as a factor in state formation. The
nature of the patterns in the archaeological sites that are attributed to
shamanism brings up other topics as well, which turn out to be inextrica­
bly interlinked. Since, in the present, most practicing shamans are women,
the question of gender asserts itself. And because the shamanism of Korea
and Japan is often linked to that of Siberia (through northeastern China),
questions of continuity of practice as well as variations in practice require
a close look at East Asia as a whole. W hen I began to think about organ­
izing this topic, I kept visualizing the traditional decorative knots of Korea,
called maedup. To understand its parts each strand has to be followed, but
to understand the whole and appreciate the pattern, it must be knotted
again.
To explore these interlinked problems, a broad swath through regions
and times is the best approach to the question of shamanism and state for­
mation. The questions of whether shamanism was prevalent at the forma­
tion of early states in East Asia, and if so, whether shamans became political
 Orientation to Shamanism and the Origin of States 3

as well as religious leaders, are only a beginning. In thinking about state ori­
gins we must consider how shamans might have become leaders, as well as
w hether they did.
The processes of state formation were not identical in the regions where
the nation-states of China, Korea, and Japan are found. Related states
formed in the Russian Far East (Table 1.1). Archaeological evidence forms
the basis for this observation, but many relevant texts are also consulted in
spite of disagreements among historians about when they were written and
what axes their authors may have to grind. Art history, too, contributes to
the understanding of states in East Asia, considering the meanings of preva­
lent symbols. Thus East Asian archaeology, mythology, ethnography, art,
and texts provide a rich context to probe the notion of shamanism as con­
tributing to state formation. Each of these approaches to the past has lim­
itations, but adds a valuable dimension for the whole. Although archaeology
is the emphasis in this book, more than mere description of sites and arti­
facts is needed, since relevant facts are subject to theoretical perspectives
(W ylie 2002). The question of epistemology—how we know what we
know—is never far from the foreground of this exploration.
Ideology as an explanatory factor in state formation has not been popu­
lar in wider archaeological circles for several reasons. For one, archaeologists
have entertained a number of theories about the development of leadership
and the purposes of leadership, and these theoretical positions do not neces­
sarily leave room for shamanism. Another stumbling block may be that stud­
ies of current East Asian shamans show that they are preponderantly female.
Just as shamanism has been proclaimed as incompatible with leadership in
state level societies, so leadership is often said so be a male prerogative. Did
shamans change genders, or could ancient leadership have been female?

What Is Shamanism?
The varieties of shamanism found in Siberia tend to be used as a touchstone
for shamanism because of the emphasis in Eliade s (1964) Shamanism, Archaic
Techniques o f Ecstasy. However, shamans of ancient East Asia, as described
in texts and interpreted in archaeological sites, are both like and unlike Siber­
ian shamans of the past and present. Those who study shamanism in the
present have documented the varied beliefs, rituals, and artifacts of shaman­
ism according to time and place. Nicholas Thomas and Caroline Humphrey
(1994:2) note that not all shamanisms are equal in terms of scholarship: “the
4 Shamanism and the Origin of States

Table 1.1

BCE China Korea Japan Russian Far East

16,000 Late Late Incipient Late

Paleolithic Paleolithic Jomon Paleolithic
10,000 Early pottery Mesolithic Initial Jomon Early Pottery
8,000 Xinglongwa, Early Earliest Jomon
et al. Chulmun
6,000 Yangshao, Middle Early Jomon
et al. Chulmun

4,000 Longshan, Late Middle Jomon Boismanskaya

Honghsan et al. Chulmun

2,000 Erlitou/ Mumun Late Jomon Zaisanovskaya

Xia Dynasty
1,500 Shang Dynasty Early Bronze
Age
1,000 Zhou Dynasty Early Yayoi/ Yankovskaya
Final Jomon
200 Han Dynasty Lelang/ Middle Yayoi Ilou
Samhan
CE
100 Later Han Iron Age Late Yayoi
Goguryeo
300 Three kingdoms, Silla, Kaya, Kofun
Six dynasties Baekje (Paekche)
600 Tang United Silla Heian

magnetism of shamanism . . . has made some forms of shamanism peculiarly

attractive as objects of scholarship, and has made others appear derivative,
impure, or secondary.” Everyone wants to study what they believe are the
real, original shamans. But “pure” shamanism never existed. It is an anachro­
nistic mistake to freeze an imagined shamanic past as “real” shamanism, and
compare everything else to it. Scholars of current shamans often refer to
shamanisms—plural.
But shamanisms must have shared elements to be able to discuss them
at all. Current varieties of East Asian shamanism have in common the belief
in spirits who are able to affect human lives, the ability of some special
 Orientation to Shamanism and the Origin of States 5

humans to reach the spirits, and, importantly, the belief that propitiating
the spirits can change the course of events. The relationship between spirits
and their human counterparts is the constant that underlies the consider­
able differences among forms of East Asian shamanism.

Who Were the Wu?

China scholars are mostly in agreement that practitioners called w u in
ancient China are considered shamans, in the sense of dancing, trancing,
divining, and presumably contacting spirits (Chang 1983, 1994a, 1994b,
2005; Childs-Johnson 1988,1989,1995,1998; but see also Falkenhausen
1995 and Keightley 1998, who prefer to use the term “spirit medium” to
translate wu). The character for w u is found on oracle bones of the Shang
dynasty, about 1500 BCE, and the character was engraved on the hat of a
figurine from Shandong (Liu 2003). Thus, w u is known to be an ancient
concept, although shifts in precise meanings of the character w u surely
occurred through time and within different regions (Tong 2002).
Wu could be applied to both male and female shamans, but sometimes
a different term was used for male shamans, according to ancient Chinese
texts. This suggests that the first shamans were women, since the unmarked
member of the pair is female. However, the notion that leadership is gen­
dered male is deeply entrenched in both Chinese and Western cultures, and
this notion is not easily shaken (Nelson 2002b). I suspect that the gender
balance of shamanism is another reason that shamanism has been seen as
incompatible with leadership in state-level society. One may infer the dis­
missal of female leaders in archaeological discourse stems from the fact that
the literature on state formation takes little notice of female leaders,
although they widely existed (Arwill-Nordbladh 2003; Bell 2003; Davis-
Kimball 2003; Gailey 1987; Linduff 2003; Linnekin 1990; McCafferty and
M cCafferty 2003; M uller 1987; Nelson 2003b; Piggott 1997,1999; Sil-
verblatt 1988; Trocolli 2002; Troy 2003; Vogel 2003).
Because the Chinese had a word for these practitioners—w u —and
because the same word appears as a loanword in Korean {mu in modern
Korean), I will sometimes use those specific terms to apply to the shamans
of ancient China and Korea. Other designations used for shamans in East
Asia are miko in Japanese, and yuta in Okinawan. The word shaman is often
applied to these female practitioners but shamanisms in these regions are
not identical—and the differences among them are instructive. They will be
described later in the book.
6 Shamanism and the Origin of States

State Formation
The hypothesis of this book is that the rituals and beliefs of shamans provided
an important building block for the formation of states in ancient East Asia,
and that shamans themselves could become leaders. Archaeological discover­
ies and texts provide evidence that shamans, both women and men, could be
successful leaders of complex societies in East Asia. Their access to the spirit
world provided the right to leadership. Their ability to lead, and the knowl­
edge accrued as ritual leaders, led to the development of long-distance trade
and craft specialization because the resulting artifacts were used in the serv­
ice of evolving rituals.
W hile it would be difficult to deny altogether the presence of shaman­
ism in East Asia, whether shamans themselves became leaders, or the elite
used shamanism for their own ends, or whether shamans had any role in state
formation are contested. Skepticism is difficult to confront because studies
of state formation in ancient East Asia are not in agreement about how lead­
ers arose or even how leaders led. However, widespread shamanism is seen
in the fact that native words for shamans persist in each of the languages spo­
ken in East Asia, in addition to Chinese loanwords that are used alongside
native words in Japanese and Korean. The native words were present at least
as far back as the time of state formation and are a reminder that shamans
were active when secondary states arose in East Asia. Forms of both charis­
matic and institutionalized power were present in the Shang dynasty, as
attested by oracle bone evidence and archaeology. Although not everyone
agrees that rulers were shamans, there is no disagreement that the Shang
people believed in a variety of spirits and powers (e.g., Keightley 2000). Some
of the Warring States of the Eastern Zhou period almost a thousand years
later are known for the prevalence of shamans. It is probably less known that
shamanic beliefs helped to shape the state in Korea and Japan, and the details
in those instances shed light on the general principles through which
shamanism could generate state-level polities. In the peninsular and island
societies, shamanism was either not gendered or gendered female, and it is
possible to glimpse societies with gender parity and female rulers at the time
of state formation (e.g., Nelson 1991b, 1993b, 2002b; Piggott 1997,1999).
The first states in East Asia occurred in China, between 2000 and 1000
before the Common Era (BCE). The question of shamanism in the forma­
tion of the Shang state and its predecessors in the Neolithic has received
attention from a number of archaeologists over the past few decades, both in
the anthropological archaeology of Anglophone studies and the more his­
torically and text-grounded archaeology largely practiced in East Asia. By
 Orientation to Shamanism and the Origin of States 7

gathering this data for students and the interested public, as well as archae­
ologists without access to primary East Asian sources, I apply the question
of whether shamans became leaders to the whole gamut of the archaeology of
East Asia. Even if shaman leaders were important, it is not likely that
shamanism alone was sufficient to create complex societies. Rather, older
forms of shamanism were adapted to fit new circumstances. One of the new
circumstances was increasing population density filling in the East Asian
landscape. Another was the presence of various ethnic groups in this increas­
ingly crowded landscape, which created a cultural mosaic in which the hege­
monic group varied through time. The ethnic groups bumped up against one
another, both adopting and resisting parts of neighboring cultures. Develop­
ing elites may have intermarried, thus blurring ethnic divisions. These inter­
actions surely refined the local versions of shamanisms and allowed them to
develop wider constituencies and meld with other ideologies.
W hile some claims of shamanism in both texts and material culture are
more reasonable than others, discovering which forms are “real” shamanism
is not the aim. Whether or not some claims for shamanism in the ancient past
may be overenthusiastic, there is no question that shamanisms have existed
across East Asia—and still do exist in many regions. How and why shamans
were able to gather the various resources necessary to form incipient states
and to govern them effectively are the central questions. The ability to claim
these resources was grounded in belief in differential access to spiritual power
and, reciprocally, access to resources verified access to spiritual power.
This approach to shamanism in ancient East Asia brings two new
dimensions to the discussion of shamanism and state formation. By includ­
ing all of East Asia, the context of the debate about shamans in China is
extended; and by expanding the time period under consideration to include
the formation of states in Korea and Japan in the first centuries of the Com­
mon Era, the breadth and depth of shamanism and state formation in East
Asia can be appreciated. In addition, using texts and archaeology together
to analyze ancient shamanism, enriched by ethnographic descriptions of
more recent shamanism, a convincing whole is created which allows appre­
ciation of the broad picture without sacrificing the variability that charac­
terizes East Asian shamanism.

Archaeology
Archaeological discoveries suggest that shamanism was an important force
in early East Asia, perhaps as early as the Paleolithic, but certainly no later
8 Shamanism and the Origin of States

than Neolithic times. W ith so much archaeological activity in China in

recent years, the Holocene archaeology with purported shamanistic activ­
ity and beliefs is more compelling and more varied in the (much larger)
landmass that is now China than it is in Korea and Japan, but the excava­
tions, while not uniform in either time or space, suggest widespread com­
mon beliefs and related rituals. These discoveries cannot be easily
summarized—in fact, they contribute to the impression of a cultural mosaic,
a mosaic made of repeating and similar hues. The metaphor of a decorative
knot, like the Korean maedup, is also useful.
Although several archaeologists have suggested that the Shang state of
ancient China was ruled by a shaman king, the Shang polity is not alone in
having a ruler who is said to have been the chief shaman. Another notable
example is the Silla state of the Korean Three Kingdoms period, situated
on the southeastern part of the Korean peninsula (Kim Won-yong 1983,
1986; Nelson 1991b). The Yayoi period of southwestern Japan is similarly
said to be shamanistic (Mizoguchi 2002), and ceremonies dating back at
least to the Kofun period for the accession of Japanese kings have shamanic
elements as well (Ellwood 1973). These assertions are based largely on texts,
although figurines from archaeological sites provide visual evidence. An
anthropological perspective is helpful to evaluate the claims for shamanism
in early East Asia.
Dragons, jades, and altars to heaven and earth provide some of the data
to be discussed in later chapters. Archaeology suggests some shamanistic
interpretations, but the skeptical are rarely convinced because alternative
explanations are almost always possible to entertain. Archaeological inter­
pretations are usually underdetermined. However, the temporal and terri­
torial distribution of shamanism in East Asia presses consideration of
shamanism as a reasonable possibility. The persistence of shamanism beyond
the formation of the states in the Korean peninsula and the Japanese islands
is particularly relevant. By including early Korea and Japan in the discus­
sion I show that leadership in state-level societies is compatible with East
Asian shamanism and, further, that shamanism was instrumental in forming
those states.

Texts
The major Chinese texts related to shamanism have been examined and dis­
cussed by those who command both the languages and the records of
ancient East Asia. One of the clearest texts in regard to shamanism is a pas­
 Orientation to Shamanism and the Origin of States 9

sage from the Chu-yü, which is quoted at the beginning of chapter 3. This
passage from a document believed to date from the fourth century BCE is
one foundation upon which the understanding of shamanism in ancient
China is erected. Julia Ching (1997:14-15) and K. C. Chang (1983:44) both
use this text to introduce their rather different discussions of ideology in
early China. Chang believes that shamanism was the domain of the king in
the Late Shang state. Ching refers to mysticism and kingship, looking for
spirituality in general rather than the specificity of a shaman who brings
down the spirits. The texts obviously allow for multiple interpretations.
However, some particulars are not in dispute. The cited text clearly states
that w u and xi were women and men, respectively, and that they had access
to the spirits who dwelt above. The spirits would descend upon these per­
sons because of their many virtues. Thus it is clear that women could be
shamans as well as men, and women are widely known to be shamans in
ethnographic contexts (Tedlock 2005).

Organization of the Book

Chapter 2, “Landscapes, Legends, and Skyscapes,” begins with the environ­
ments in which the East Asian polities formed. Myths and legends figure
in current discussions of the past and are needed to understand debates
about interpretations of early prehistory/history. Earth and sky were equally
important in early East Asia, and they were believed to interact. The land­
scape of East Asia is varied in elevation and climate, and the climate
changed dramatically through time. East Asian cultural similarities and dif­
ferences cannot be explained entirely by the landscape. The sky, on the other
hand, was common to all. It is clear that the sky was closely studied as early
as the third millennium BCE—and quite likely much earlier. The relation­
ship between earth and sky is particularly important in early beliefs in East
Asia. Not only could omens for humans be read in the movements of the
sky, but events on earth were believed to influence the sky as well.
Chapter 3 explores the question, what is a shaman? Shamanism takes a
variety of forms in East Asia, even into the present, but the fundamental con­
cept of spirits who can influence earthly life and who can be contacted and
even manipulated by chosen persons is ubiquitous. This concept formed a
basis for shamans’ claims to rulership. The ability of leaders to contact those
spirits and influence them guaranteed the compliance of the populace.
Although the debate about exactly when and where shaman leaders
in ancient East Asia arose depends on the interpretation of disputed
10 Shamanism and the Origin of States

archaeological and textual evidence. The negative side is strengthened by

reigning archaeological theory. The very definition of state-level society has
included religions dominated by priests and a written canon, suggesting that
ecstatic practitioners who had direct access to the spirits belonged to “lower”
levels of sociocultural evolution (Flannery 1972). In ethnology, too, shaman­
ism is often seen as antithetical to the state, coexisting uneasily within state
mechanisms, although the existence of shamans within current states is
undeniable (Thomas and Humphrey 1994). When shamanism is seen as a
characteristic of ancient and modern hunter-gatherers (Eliade 1964),
shamanism and state leadership are constructed as a contradiction in terms.
How could rulers of states be shamans?
Some of the disagreements about whether leaders were shamans in East
Asian states may be resolved by considering ethnographic definitions of
shamanism. It is pertinent to decide whether shamanism should be strictly
defined by Siberian characteristics, or whether a looser definition, such as
the presence of trance or ecstatic religion, is permissible. Still less stringent
would be an interpretation of shamanism as a cultural belief in spirits and
individuals within the culture with the rare ability to contact them. Thus,
both ethnographic and archaeological uses of the term “shamanism” are
explored in chapter 3, helping to chart a path through the textual and
archaeological data.
The question of the development of leadership and the origin of states
is taken up in chapter 4. Shamans are consistently described as leaders in
less complex societies, and a common understanding is that they are “knowl­
edgeable.”The existence of leadership may be obvious, but the paths to lead­
ership, and the ways that archaeology and texts can illuminate those paths,
are not obvious and need to be teased out. The question becomes, do any
manifestations of power make a compelling case for shamans as leaders and
shamanic practices as a means to power? And were the shamans always
male? Gender requires its own discussion in the context of leadership
because of the subtle and not-so-subtle assumptions that have been made
about the gender of shaman leaders.
W hile the Chinese word for shaman in general is the same as that for
women shamans and a special word differentiates males, many Asian
archaeologists see shamanism as a male preserve. I suggest that Confucian
precepts—which insist that womans place is secondary, not as a leader—
have distorted the understanding of early East Asian cultures, and that we
need to examine the archaeology and textual evidence without the weight
of the opinions of later ages.
 Orientation to Shamanism and the Origin of States 11

In chapter 5 the archaeological evidence for shamanism in the East

Asian Neolithic is presented. The Neolithic in China is rich in burials and
other archaeological data that suggest a belief in the existence of ancestral
spirits and powers—and of leaders who were believed to be able to reach
and influence these powers (Keightley 2000). To many Chinese archaeolo­
gists and some of their Western counterparts, the Neolithic data provide
excellent reasons to believe that shamanism had a long history in China
before the rise of the Shang kingdom. New discoveries have been advanced
as examples of early shamanism, ranging from possible astronomical land­
scapes and a burial flanked by dragon and tiger mosaics to the use of drums,
wine, and unusual clothing. These discoveries, individually and collectively,
have suggested shamanism to a number of researchers of Neolithic China.
Shamanism in the Neolithic seems be less freighted with emotional
baggage than discussions of shamanism and the state because it does not
impinge on preconceived notions of what the Neolithic is about. Shamans
belong in the Paleolithic and Neolithic by definition, while by the same evo­
lutionary scheme, they do not belong in the state. Even with wider latitude
for accepting Neolithic shamanism, multiple possible interpretations of the
same evidence may be offered. For example, does feasting at a graveside
point to ancestor worship—which is to be expected in China—or a belief
in the power of spirits, also known in the Chinese context?
Chapter 6 turns to the Shang polity and its contemporaries and succes­
sors. Chang argues strongly that shamanism was the driving force in the
Shang period, but Keightley (1982:299) explains in detail his skepticism on
many points. Using both Chang and Keightley as guides, I confront Shang
shamanism directly, discussing the evidence already gathered by scholars of
the Shang.
It is possible to infer from Western Zhou documents that the w u were
partly suppressed by turning them into bureaucrats and ritual performers
soon after the Zhou conquest of the Shang. Although shaman leaders sur­
vived elsewhere in East Asia as leaders in a complex society, within China
the w u were considered mere fortune-tellers or charlatans and gradually
became despised. This degradation removed the w u from ruling roles. How­
ever, shamanism seems to have continued in its ecstatic form in the state of
Chu, which is sometimes thought to be descended from Shang ancestors.
In spite of the attempt to organize the w u , or even because of it, the activ­
ities of w u are specified in the Chu-yü. According to that document, the w u
had both duties and talents. These included divination, knowledge of the
proper way to perform sacrifices, knowledge of the movements of heavenly
12 Shamanism and the Origin of States

bodies, curing, dancing to invoke the spirits (or send them away), and danc­
ing for rain. This list of activities is helpful in specifying the kinds of archae­
ological remains that could result from shamanistic activities.
Secondary states in East Asia arrived at state-level society through the
medium of shamans, and those of the Korean peninsula are the topic of
chapter 7. Ancient histories describing the rise of states in the Korean
peninsula, and the archaeology of the period—although later than state for­
mation in China—suggest that shamanism is implicated in the organiza­
tion of Korean states. For example, excavations of royal tombs reveal that
the kings and queens of Old Silla (traditional dates 37 BCE to 668 CE)
were interred with shamanistic crowns bearing gold antlers and stylized trees
sprouting from a gold circlet as prominent symbols of royalty. Historic
sources indicate that state rituals of the Goguryeo (Koguryea) kingdom (tra­
ditional dates 57 BCE to 668 CE) did not merely tolerate shamans, but
required their services to mediate disastrous events. A portrait of a woman
shaman was painted on a Goguryeo tomb wall, even though Buddhist
motifs are more common in Goguryeo tombs.
Evidence from state formation in Japan and ethnography in Okinawa
relate to shamanism as well, as discussed in chapter 8. Regarding early soci­
eties in the Japanese islands, Chinese documents refer to wu, widely
regarded as shamans or spirit mediums, especially in a much chewed over
passage concerning Queen Himiko, a shaman in the Yayoi period. Archae­
ological artifacts and site plans tend to confirm the accuracy of some of these
semi-historical accounts. The early shamanic beginnings in Japan are echoed
even today in Shinto rites, as well as in the practices of the princesses of
Okinawa. The yu ta and miko, who are local shamans in Okinawa, and the
rituals of the Ainu of northern Japan are also discussed in this chapter.
The concluding chapter wraps up the issues that appear throughout the
book. It is particularly useful to realize that China has been analyzed as if
it were a cultural entity, although in reality it was a mosaic of cultures. W ith
a perspective on contemporaneous cultural differences, the issues are easier
to grasp. Manchuria, the Korean peninsula, and the islands of Japan were
also cultural mosaics. Understanding this pattern unties the nationalist knots
and helps to conceptualize the varieties of shamanism, as well as connec­
tions among them over long distances.
Interleaved between the chapters are a series of case studies, each related
in some way to the chapter preceding it. The case studies show how archae­
ological data has led to the interpretation of shamans in each instance. They
 Orientation to Shamanism and the Origin of States 13

also illuminate specific sites or time periods in more detail than can be cov­
ered in the theoretical chapters.
The study of shamanism and power in ancient East Asia thus has many
strands. Each topic requires its own chapter, but in the end discussions of
shamanism, power, leadership, and gender, using the varied archaeological
discoveries and texts, can be shown to combine in a number of different
ways in East Asia, producing different patterns, and knots made of similar
but not identical strands.
14 Shamanism and the Origin of States

CASE STUDY A

NIUHELIANG, CHINA
he site of Niuheliang, near the city ofJianping, Liaoning province,
T China, is the earliest known example in China of an archaeolog­
ical site that appears to be wholly dedicated to ritual (Barnes and Guo
1996; Guo 1995a, 1997; Guo and M a 1985; Nelson 1991a; Sun 1986;
Sun and Guo 1986a). The major features include fourteen identified
groups of tombs, an artificial hill, and a structure that has been dubbed
the Goddess Temple.
Locality 1 includes the Goddess Temple in addition to several other
features (Fang and Wei 1986). The long narrow building (18.4 x 6.9
meters) has four lobes, three at the top and one at the foot (Figure A .l).
Traces of interior decoration show geometric painted patterns as well as
raised dots and indentations. Pieces of the building material imply wat­
tle and daub construction, probably in the shape of a barrel arch. Within
the floor outline of the structure were parts of unfired clay statues. The
most spectacular statue fragment is a life-sized face with eyes of inset
green jade, with cheeks painted pink and smiling lips (Figure A.2).
Additional fragments of statues include a breast and shoulder, thus
it was concluded that the statues were female. Some statues represent
animals—a pig jaw and trotters, and a large claw that could have been
from a big bird or a dragon (Fang and Wei 1986). As soon as the face
was unearthed, the Chi­
nese team decided to
cover the excavation and
wait for the funding and
expertise to excavate to
learn the most from a
thorough excavation.
Another section of
Locality 1 is called the

Figure A. i Goddess Tem­

ple from the air. A fter Guo
1995a
 Orientation to Shamanism and the Origin of States 15

platform. It measures 175 x 179 meters and appears to have several

areas edged with stones. Several piles of stones lie on various parts of
the platform, which may be collapsed towers or other buildings. Sev­
eral pits have been discovered in this locality. Broken pots are layered
into one large pit, another contains sheep bones, and into yet another
a painted jar with a lid was placed, apparently deliberately buried. The
pits may all be the remnants of ritual events.
Another structure of interest at Niuheliang is an artificial hill at
the entrance to the valley. It has been thoroughly searched for burials
or other evidence of its use. On the ground level, the mound is encir­
cled by a ring of neady squared, white marble-like stones from a nearby
quarry. Another ring of white stones is embedded in the middle of the
height of the mound, and a third was placed near the top. The only
artifacts found were near the top of the mound—crude clay crucibles,
with traces of copper adhering to the interior. The top of a hill is a sur­
prising place to melt copper, and thus it seems likely to represent a rit­
ual event. The only other copper found at the site is a small copper
earring with a piece of unpolished jade. A study of alignments from this
hill found that burials on hills marked the north and south extremes of
the moonrise in the
east.
The largest group
of tombs is labeled
Locality 2 (Figure
A.3). It includes four
earthen mounds. One
is roughly square, in
the shape of stepped
pyramid, with a cen­
tral stone structure in
the middle that must

Figure A. 2, Face with

inset jade eyes from the
Goddess Temple. A fte r
Guo 1995a
16 Shamanism and the Origin of States

Figure A. 3 Locality 2 burial mounds and altars. A fter Guo 1995a

have contained a burial. A round tomb contained fifteen burials,

each enclosed in its own stone cist. Some of the skeletons were
extended and some were bundle burials. Each grave contained only
jades as grave goods. The jades included pendants lying on the chest,
a hollow tube under the head, bracelets, and other jade objects (Fig­
ure A.4). No pottery or stone tools were placed in the graves with
the dead. However, around the edges of the square tomb pottery
cylinders had been arranged side-by-side. The best-preserved side
included at least twenty-four of the cylinders, which were made of
hard-fired red pottery with curvilinear designs painted in black (Fig­
ure A.5).
Other excavated tombs show some of the same elements, but they
are not identical. Locality 5, for example, includes a single burial sur­
rounded by a ring of stones. Instead of slabs of sandstone as walls for
the grave, this tomb had a coffin made of small stones. Locality 16
produced some interesting burials, one with a raptor bird carved from
jade beneath its head.
The jades are all small, designed for personal display. They
include earrings, bracelets, pendants, and tubular objects that are inter­
preted as hair-dressing artifacts—perhaps to pull long hair through
like a large ponytail. W hile each jade is unique, shapes follow partic­
ular patterns, especially the pendants that are usually found on the
chest. They are described as clouds, combs, and dragons. Other shapes
include rings, birds, turtles, insects, and fish. The “dragons” are so
 Orientation to Shamanism and the Origin of States 17

Figure A .4 Hongshan jades. A fter

Sun and Gao 1986b

called because they resemble the

earliest character translated as
dragon. It is an open coil with an
animal head on one end. Most
chest ornaments are relatively flat
and have “ox-nose” perforations
on the back for attachment to
clothing, but the dragons are
rounded and have a hole for a
cord. They come in two sizes, the
smaller one with a pig-like head,
the larger one thinner with a long
head with a mane like a horse (Figure A.6).
Although it seems that rituals would have been performed here
for the elite who occupied the grave mounds, the large area implies
that audiences for the ritual would have encompassed all the villages
of the Hongshan culture. Niuheliang is unquestionably a ritual area,
but whether the ritual specialists were shamans or priests is not yet
discernible.
Less than 40 kilometers, across the range that includes Pig Moun­
tain, is a smaller ritual center called Dongshanzui. A layout of low walls
and altars suggests the channeling of ritual activities into a pattern of
18 Shamanism and the Origin of States

Figure A.5 Painted cylinder. After Figure A .6 Jade “pig-dragons.” A fter

Sun and Gao 1986b Guo 1995a

movement. Clay figurines are smaller than those of the Goddess Tem­
ple. One figure holds something missing to her breast, and another is
in the last stage of pregnancy. A piece of a statue that sat barefoot with
crossed legs wears a rope belt that is probably significant.
A likely explanation for these two ritual centers is that Niuhe-
liang centers upon rituals of death, and Dongshanzui upon rituals of
life. Li (2003) explains them as ceremonial centers for the entire
Hongshan culture, which developed from village altars and even ear­
lier household goddesses. Some archaeologists have interpreted these
sites as evidence of ancestor worship (Lei 1996), but an equally rea­
sonable explanation is shamanism. In any case, the two interpretations
are not mutually incompatible.
 LANDSCAPES, LEGENDS,
AND SKYSCAPES

The basic story o f China is the four-thousand^)} ear expansion of'H an

or 'Chinese' population, political powers, and culture from their birth­
place in the northwest and northeast, with secondary centers in the west
and center, into all the areas shown [on his map o f China], and
indeed, beyond them.
—Elvin 20 0 4:3

The Grand Historiographer said: Ever since the people have existed,
when have successive rulers not follow ed the movements o f sun, moon,
stars, and asterisms?
—Shiji, Tianguo Shu, cited by Pankenier 1 9 9 5 :1 3 1

Landscapes
Ancient peoples attended to their environment in ways that we in the urban­
ized world largely have forgotten. They knew the hills and rivers, the ani­
mals and their habitats, the plants and their uses, where to find rare resources,

19
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
 270 THE INNS OF OLD SOUTHWARK felt his fancy
disordered it was his habit to make long arithmetical calculations as
a means of relief His own account was, ' Why, sir, if you are to have
but one book with you upon a journey, let it be a book of science ! '
In the very limited district now under review on the east side of the
High Street were somewhat close together four notable gaols, and
subsequently, or as substitutes, when time had done its decaying
work, four more at least. We hear a great deal of the taps at the
gaols, the immense supply of drink, the profits, and the misery. Here
is a specimen of a gaol-tap halfpenny token — O. lOHN . LOWMAN .
AT . THE = A portCullis. I . M-. L \ R. MARSHALSEY . IN .
SOVTHWARK = HIS HALFE PENNY. In the olden days all these gaols
might be seen at one glance, the Compter, Marshalsea, King's
Bench,i and 1 The King's Bench, latterly the Queen's Bench and the
Queen's Prison, was removed in the latter half of last century to the
comer of Blackman Street and Borough Road. It was abolished as a
prison for debtors in i860, and has since been destroyed. Here, in
the top story but one, Dickens's Mr. Micawber is supposed to have
dwelt, pending the arrangement of his financial difficulties. Within
the walls was the Brace Tavern, kept originally, it was said, by two
brothers named Partridge, FIREPLACE, DUN HORSE.
 IX GAOLS 271 White Lion ; later, and more widely
dispersed, the Bridewell, the New Gaol, the House of Correction, and
the later Marshalsea. They were all between the Town Hall and St.
George's Church. People of all sorts, virtuous and vicious, were
provided for in these prisons or shambles, as of old they were. Loud
cries of cruelty, extortion, injustice, plague poison, want of air,
overcrowding, came up from these dispirited, half- starved, sin-
saturated wretches. The prisons were nearly all flanked by the open
ditch of the district, which ran close behind and helped the
pestilences which often appeared in Southwark, carrying off, some of
them, a fourth of the inhabitants. Taylor in his Praise and Vertue of a
Jay le and Jaylers, 1623, gives the name and number of them, and
after his fashion their evils. He, by way of anagram, shows us what
the prison is and does, in one word Nip-sore — " 'There men are
nipped with mischiefes manifold, With losse of freedome, hunger,
thirst, and cold. With mourning shirts, and sheetes and lice some
store ; And this in prisone truly doth Nip Sore.' Among those who
tasted ot these prison troubles in Southwark were Bonner, Marbeck,
Selden Eliot, Udall, Penry, Richard Baxter, Withers — multitudes of
honest, strong-minded, religious people of all denominations ; in
modern times many of our most noted writers. In fact, it is almost as
difficult to say who never were lodged in them as to name those
who were. East in the High whence the sign. It was suppressed by
Act of Parliament, 5 and 6 William IV., when the various debtors'
prisons were consolidated and the liberty of the rules ceased to
exist.
 272 THE INNS OF OLD SOUTHWARK chap. Street, very
near the church, was, from about 1560, the renowned White Lion
Prison, in which many good as well as bad people had been confined
; not only the thief and the cutpurse, but Puritans, Quakers, Roman
Catholic recusants. Fifth-monarchy men, and others. In 1 68 1 it
became unsafe for the detention of prisoners, and the Marshalsea
was soon after used instead, the old place becoming a House of
Correction here. Finally, on this site in 181 1 was built the later
Marshalsea, which Dickens immortalises in his story of Little Dorrit,
and of which there is still some trace (approached now through
Angel Place).! Next door was the Black Bull, its site in my time
represented by No. 149 in the High Street, let to a firm of
ironmongers. Hicks and Co., and now No. 211, in the occupation of a
cheesemonger. The Black Bull is worth notice on its own account. In
1571 it was given by a Mr. Lambe to St. Thomas's Hospital, and is
more than once recorded in their minutes ; the owner reserved to
himself an annuity out of his gift. The same year a lease of twenty-
one years, at a rent of £\ a year and a fine of ^5, was granted to
the keeper of the White Lion Prison, he to do all manner of repairs.
Complaining soon after of a gutter between the Black Bull and the
prison, the governors of the Hospital quaintly record that they will
view it 'if God sends fair weather'— 1 Dickens in his Preface to Little
Dorrit says, 'Whoever goes into Marshalsea Place, turning out of
Angel Court leading to Bermondsey, will find his feet on the very
paving stones of the extinct Marshalsea gaol ; ' and Dickens ought to
have known ; his father had been imprisoned for debt there, at
which time the son lodged close by in Lant Street.
 IX ANGELS 273 a Strange note, considering that it was
barely ten minutes' walk from the Hospital. At the front of a house
between this and the church the governors had placed stocks, and
as we might expect, it proved to be a serious nuisance and loss to
the house, and was of course complained of ; a set-off in the rent
was asked for and granted. I have been informed by an ' oldest
inhabitant ' and parish official, that a pillory was once on the same
spot, — it came to him as an apparently sound tradition. Couple this
with a lock-up house, later on, I suppose, in Falcon Court exactly
opposite, and we have repressive measures complete. In fact, we
were of old a very criminal objectionable lot in the Borough, and
had, as I have shown, many prisons, not only adapted to our own
plentiful necessity, but as a sort of Botany Bay on a small scale for
other places. A few doors to the north is the still existing Angel
Place, sadly changed from the days when Strype describes it as very
handsome, with new brick buildings, which marks the site of a
tavern of that sign within the rules of the King's Bench. Here lived
Doggett, who founded the waterman's race for the coat and badge
named after him ; and the house is known in connection with no
less a personage than Joe Miller of facetious memory, also a
comedian, who if not witty himself was the cause of wit in others.
On several occasions he performed at Southwark Fair, and among
the Burney playbills for the year 1722 has been found a newspaper
cutting which reads thus: — ' Miller is not with Pinkethman but by
himself! At the Angel Tavern, next door to the King's Bench, who
acts a new droll called The Faithful Cotiple or The
 274 THE INNS. OF OLD SOUTHWARK chap. Royal
Shepherdess, with a very pleasant entertainment between — Old
Hob and his Wife — and the comical' humours of Mopsey and Collin,
with a variety of singing and dancing — ' The only comedian now
that dare Vie with the world and challenge the fair.' It is to be hoped
that his acting was better than his poetry. Moralising over this sign,
the writer of the Vade Mecum for Maltworms suggests angels from
the absence of them, lucus a non lucendo. We shall see in Wesley's
experience what angels were likely to be there. In 1558 Arthur
Hilton, sub-marshal and Keeper of the King's Bench Prison, St.
George's, makes his will at the sign of the ' Angell,' directing his
burial to be in the St. George's aisle of St. George's Church. The
association of ideas leads me to the north-west corner of Crosby
Row Snow Fields, where there was an Angel with its skittle ground, a
boundary mark of St. Saviour's parish. A few yards south of this
public-house is now a small Welsh dissenting chapel. It should be
more noted than it is, for it was John Wesley's place of worship, built
by himself when he first preached the Gospel in Southwark. He was
ejected by one of his own people from a chapel close by in Meeting-
house Walk, before he built this one in Crosby Row. In this chapel he
for the first time preached, 1 8th August 1 764, upon the text, ' O
how amiable are thy tabernacles, thou Lord of Hosts.' Twenty years
before, a woman of the place put the question, 'What! will Mr.
Wesley preach at Snow Fields ? there is not such another place in all
the town ; the people there are not men but devils ! ' This was
 IX ANGELS 275 before the boundary Angel was built. In
1816 the old chapel had become on the weekdays a ' court of
requests,' for the recovery of small debts, and on Sundays a
Methodist Sunday School. At four years old I made my first
appearance in this school in 1 8 1 6, of which, in long after years,
and at its new place, I became treasurer. On this spot, as so widely
over Southwark, remains of Roman burial have been found from
time to time — in 1818 a drinking pot with two ears, a diota of
brown earthenware, and an iridescent rudely-formed glass ' tear
bottle,' six inches long, very perfect, in my possession. I have
already (p. 41) noticed an Aungell at Battlebridge, part of Fastolfe's
property. Another I should mention is the Angel on the Hoop, an inn
of St. Saviour's ; the Angel Alley, Redcross Street, of Rocque
probably points out the spot. A messuage known by this name
belonged to John Scraggs, a very benevolent member, and in 151 7-
18 master of the Leathersellers' Company, who made his will in
1531, and died in this house in 1534. In the terrier of his estates are
mentioned 'the Angell on the Hope in Southwark, rent £\ ; a
meadow at Horse-a-down ; a house called the Hye Howse which
John Cokys (John the Cook) holdeth ; the Unycorne ; the Kateryn
Whelle, and others.' 1569. — Thomas Cure conveyed to St.
Thomas's Hospital a plot of ground belonging to him, and a
messuage called the Angel in the Hoop. I may note that there were
many signs in Southwark and elsewhere, on or in the Hoop. The
hoop, an addition to the sign, represents in a more refined way the
old rough-and-ready sign of the Bush. Near my own native place in
Cornwall a bush was
 276 THE INNS OF OLD SOUTHWARK chap. always put to
the doors of houses extemporised during fair time for the sale of
liquor. The bush or hoop would simply imply a public-house, which
might have a sign in addition ; the bush would be, so to speak, a
generic sign, as we have seen was sometimes the case with the
chequers and the lattice. Thus in 1617 one Price had set up a tavern
in a dangerous place, i.e. next a flax warehouse ; directions were
issued to shut the doors and take down the bush.^ In a print ^ of a
noted procession of 1638, to celebrate the arrival of Marie de Medici,
an elaborate hooped bush is hung out before the Nag's Head in
Cheapside, showing that it was an inn or tavern — a help, no doubt,
as to its true character, when almost every house had a sign. In
Mynshal's Dialogues, 1559, we have ' R. What is under those green
boughes ? G. The head of a wilde boar. R. Then it is the bush of a
taverne.' Some old doggerel records, 'A bushe that hangeth out for
to tell that within is wine to selle.'^ Lodge, 1596, 'You have hanged
out the ivie bush, so bring forth the wine.' Earle in his
Microsmographie, as a facetious alternative, and by way of
explanation, says, ' If the Vintner's nose is at the door, it is sign
sufficient, but the absence of this is supplied by the ivie bush.' Taylor
in his Travels, among twelve signs mentions ' a taverne with a bush
and no signe, under the new burse, — a taverne with a bushe and
no signe in Milford Lane.' He has his doggerel upon this also, too
good to be omitted — 1 Remembrancia of London, p. 544. 2 This
print is also valuable as one of the very few street views extant of
the City before the Great Fire. 3 MS. Cottonian Tib., A 7, fol. 72.
 IX CATHERINE WHEEL 277 ' Where no sign is 'tis no ill sign
to me, Where no sign is 'tis no good sign to see, But though the
signs are neither good nor bad, There's wine, good, bad, indifferent
to be had.' I will refer briefly to the Cock on the Hoop, a common
sign once. Bailey in voce gives us ' Cock-a-hoop, Coqua-hupe,
standing on high terms ; ' and, ' Cock on hoop,' appropriate enough
to inns, i.e. a spigot or cock laid on the hoop of the barrel, implying,
at the height of mirth and jollity, ' I have good cause to set the
cocke on the hope and make gaudy e chere.' Lastly, we have many
other of these hooped signs, not strictly of Southwark, but apropos
all the same. From Riley's Memorials these : ' Atte Mayden en la
Hope — Lion on the Hoop — John at Cok on the Hop — Belle on the
Hope — Kay sur le Hoope — Le Wallsheman sur le Hoope — The
Swanne on the Hoope — the Pye on the Hope.' The hoop was
almost as general an appendage as the bush or leaves attached to
the Alestake,^ and hence the sign, whatever it was, on or in the
Hoop. St. George's and other registers I have seen are, reading
between the lines as it were, full of illustrations of this small matter.
The Blue Mayde on the east side of the High Street appears in the
map of 1 542. Rocque has Blue Maid Alley, so often mentioned in
accounts of the Fair, which is changed by the end of last century to
Chapel Court, still so named from a chapel there, built by a
Wesleyan preacher, who was also an attendant at the Snow Fields
Chapel near the Angel. The chapel, says Mr. 1 In the year 1375 there
was a City ordinance, that in future no one should have an alestake
bearing his sign or leaves projecting over the King's highway, more
than seven feet in length at the utmost.
 278 THE INNS OF OLD SOUTHWARK chap. Wilson,^ is a
good brick building of moderate size ; it has three galleries and a
burial-ground adjoining. A little modern public-house, the Blue-Eyed
Maid, more true to nature and politeness, is at hand, to remind us of
the Blue Mayde of nearly 350 years ago. Next to this, north, was the
Mermaid, also in the thick of the Fair ; its approach in the High
Street, and at its back the Bowling Green. It is in the grant from
Edward VI. to the City in 1551, ' 4s. 2d. and service going out of the
Mermaid.' Taylor says something pleasant of the Mermayd in the
Burough of Southwark — 'This Mayd is strange (in shape) to Man's
appearing, Shee's neither Fish nor Flesh nor good Red-hearing,
What is shee then ? a Signe to represent Fish, Flesh, good wine with
Welcome and Content.' Strype relates of Mermaid Court in 1720 that
it is 'an open court, indifferently well built and inhabited, having a
long passage down steps to a Bowling Green, by a ditch.' Close to it
on the north was the entrance to the old Marshalsea. Crossing the
way we come, exactly opposite the Half Moon, to the Catherine
Wheel, on the west side of the High Street. This is one of the sacred
signs ^ common in 1 History and Antiquities of Dissenting Churches,
vol. iv. p. 319. 1814. 2 On the treatment of such signs as this in the
days of the Commonwealth, Richard Flecknoe in his Enigmatical
Characters, 1658, 8vo, has some quaint remarks. He says, of ' your
fanatick reformers,' ' they have pretty well begun the reformation
already, changing the sign of the Salutation of the Angel and our
Lady, into the Shouldier and Citizen, and the Catharine Wheel into
the Cat and Wheel, so that there only wants their making the
Dragon to kill St. George, and the Devil to tweak St. Dunstan by the
nose, to make the reformation compleat. Such ridiculous
 IX CATHERINE WHEEL 279 Southwark, and was the badge
of an Order of Knights for the protection of pilgrims. It is somewhat
doubtful if the saint really existed ; but that does not matter. It
represents a reverend legend, which runs somewhat thus : St.
Catherine was placed upon a wheel with pointed spikes, designed to
tear her limb from limb, but at the first movement, by the power of
an angel, it fell to pieces, and she was delivered from the horrible
death ; hence the name St. Catherine's Wheel. An exquisite picture
of the saint and her wheel, by Raphael, is in our National Gallery.
Among the festivities for welcoming Henry's first queen, Katharine of
Arragon, into London, the legend of her sainted namesake was acted
by young ladies with gorgeous decorations.^ Poor soul ! she found
the spikes, and there was no angel to deliver her. But to the inn. We
have seen that in 1534 it was part of the property left by John
Scraggs ; ^ ' the rent of the " Kateryn Whelle " was £2^, and next
to it was the " Unycorne " both in St. George's Parish, at a rent of
£2^ : 8s.' Both these and much else were left by will, forming a part
of the Scraggs Charities. A large portion was diverted from the
intent, in accord with the statute of Superstitious Uses, concerning
property left for obits and the like. In 1564 the inn is in the
possession of St. Thomas's Hospital, and is let for six years at four
marks a year. 1568. — The Court grants a lease on a premium of ^i6
: 6 : 8, for twenty-one work they make of their reformation, and so
zealous are they against all mirth and jollity, as they would pluck
down the sign of the Cat and Fiddle too, if it durst but play so loud
as they might hear it.' 1 Selections, Gentleman! s Magazine, vol. i. p.
276. 2 Report on Charities.
 28o THE INNS OF OLD SOUTHWARK chap. years, at a rent
of ^8 ; said inn not to be converted into tenements without leave of
governors. 1 595. — The tenant seeks to rebuild ; the value appears
to have steadily increased from the first. The Charity Commissioners
note the rent in 1 840 as ^240 per annum. It had been ^3 in 1564;
the present rent is ;^550, a small tax excepted; the enormous
difference is worth a thought. I have already noted a couple of
shows during Southwark Fair time in the seventeenth century at the
Katherine or Catherine Wheel (for the spelling is now being
changed), and no doubt it was frequently used for such purposes. I
have often gone up and down the old stairways of this inn, along its
quaint galleries and into its small stuffy rooms, to see my patients,
among them the landlord, Mr. M. A. Barber, whose widow was the
last occupant. Some thirty years ago it was the scene of a
remarkable swindling transaction. 'A charitable and religious oilman,'
and member of our Vestry, whose shop was part of the inn premises,
apparently intending to open a new business with great eclat, sent
round a van with trumpet and drum music, to stir up the Borough
folk, announcing to them that a parcel of soap, candles, and pickles
would be ready on a stated day for all comers, a wonderful bargain,
the price 1 6d. The crowd was so great that each customer was
conducted by the front door through the shop, the parcel delivered
and money received — a window was taken out and steps placed for
an outlet into the yard of the inn, there being no possibility of return
the same way. The receipts were very great. A few days afterwards
the advertiser of the soap and candles had disappeared with some
_;^ 16, 000, obtained.
 CATHERINE WHEEL 281 as I heard, chiefly from his
bankers, and has, so far as I know, never been heard of since.
Those who knew him were especially sorry, he seemed so frank and
open, ' as honest as the sun ' as was often said. He might have
borrowed largely of any of us, but he did not ; he even CATHERINE
WHEEL INN. paid some small debts at the time. We give a drawing
of the picturesque old building (the original by T. H. Shepherd, in the
British Museum). Two trade tokens relating to the inn are known,
which read thus — 0. John . Warner . near . the . Katherin . wheel.
(In five lines.) I R. IN . Y^ . BVROVGH . SOVTHWARKE = HIS HALF
PENY. Another — O. lOHN . STANLEY . IN = A . CATHERINE .
WHEEL. R. SOVTHWARKE . 1665 = I. M. S.
 282 THE INNS OF OLD SOUTHWARK John Taylor in 1637
notes that the 'Carriers of Tunbridge, of Sevenoake, and other places
doe lodge at the Katherine Wheele.' In 1 720 it is described as very
large, and a well-known resort for coaches, waggons, and horseDOG
AND BEAR INN. men. It ceased to be an inn after 1869, the old
structure was pulled down, and the site is now a receiving-place for
the Midland Railway Company, who hold it for their purposes until
1944.
 DOG AND BEAR 283 In the Guildhall Collection and
elsewhere are views of the interior of the Dog and Bear, a little way
north of the Catherine Wheel, called also the old Croydon House ;
the site shown in Rocque and Horwood as Dog and Bear yard. Here
in 1759 the upper part of a house was blown down, by which
accident one man was killed and another wounded. We give a
drawing of the inn copied from J. C. Buckler, 1827. Immediately
north of Dog and Bear yard was the sign of the Red Cross, still
shown in the Ordnance map of 1876 as Red Cross Square, with a
way through into Red Cross Street.
 CHAPTER X MAY POLE ALLEY — RED LION — GREYHOUND
— BELL — GREEN . DRAGON — bull's HEAD — BEAR AT BRIDGE
FOOT Next, on the north, and opposite to the old Marshalsea, was,
and still at the same spot is, May Pole Alley; a long, narrow passage
leading to a wide space far behind. A dangerous or a safe spot in
lawless times, according to the class of people who inhabited it.
There is no record of an actual inn ; the name, however, suggests
one ; and some of them were, as we know, approached by a long
and narrow passage of this sort. A well-known Puritan minister,
Henry Jessey, in 1660 ejected from St. George's, Southwark, was so
much exercised in his mind about the May Pole dissipations that I
have thought he must have often had them before him, perhaps at
Southwark Fair time. Certainly he must have been well acquainted
with what Stubbes in his Anatomy of Abuses \ia.di, with apparent
Puritanical horror, said in 1585. Not far off, however, thanks to Mr. W.
F. Noble, who has transcribed the account at the Record Office,
some very graphic particulars have come to light of the proceedings
of the Puritan rector of Bermondsey, Mr. Elton, with the May Pole
people there.
 CHAP. X MAY POLE ALLEY 285 About thirty years ago,
when, being parish surgeon and officer of heahh, I knew May Pole
Alley as a Roman Catholic colony of poor Irish people, a school was
established in the court and managed by some excellent sisters. At
this time I took a census for my own purposes, and, exclusive of the
school, I found about 160 adults and children living in this blind
alley, with its long approach of about five feet in width. The place
was remarkably unhealthy, its appearance was filthy in the extreme,
and the people more brutal and quarrelsome than I was accustomed
to, even in the worst of other low colonies in similar courts. In one
instance, among many similar experiences, after successful
attendance of five weeks in a fever case and a costly supply of
necessaries by the parish, I was, on refusing a further boon,
threatened with violence, ' when you come our way, as you often
do.' And the husband was a well-to-do, stalwart navvy, whose family
had had all this help improperly out of the parish. I shall never
forget one scene in May Pole Alley. Some very poor Irish people had,
with much hardship, made a deck passage from Dublin in stormy
weather. When landed they were lodged here, and at once
developed a malignant form of fever, almost in its character a true
plague. It passed from house to house, and destroyed within forty-
eight hours of the attack almost every one of my patients. The
continuity was only broken by watchfully noting the slightest
symptoms, and on the instant removing the patient last attacked to
the hospital. I have seen nothing of the sort since ; but for the
timely aid of the Fever Hospital, the medical and other officers
 286 THE INNS OF OLD SOUTHWARK chap. brought in
contact with the disease would have had but a bad chance, and
once ahead among the close courts there might probably have been
a fearful epidemic. Having such numerous small colonies of the
poorest Irish stowed away in obscure and overcrowded corners and
alleys of St. George's parish, in which were our principal nests of
disease, I once made an attempt to enlist the clergy and others of
their great church in St. George's Fields in the cause of our local
sanitary work, but I met with small encouragement. By and by the
good sisters came, and I found them in this sense far more catholic
than the brothers, at least in their demeanour and appearance of
intelligent kindliness ; but doubtless a better spirit has since
prevailed. The desperately filthy and cruel habits of these colonies,
as I observed them, needed all the help their spiritual guides could
render ; it was, so to speak, barbarism in the midst of civilisation.
North of May Pole Alley, between it and the Greyhound, was the Red
Lion Inn, which disappeared towards the end of last century. A
foolish story is told in connection with this same Red Lion, which I
will briefly refer to, as it is an item showing the tone of the time. In
a MS. of the Spalding Society, 171 8, is this note, 'The Southwark
pudding wonder is over.' The facts are given in the History of
Signboards, Edition 1866, PP- 379. 380. and in Malcolm. The gist of
the matter is, that in May 1718, James Austin, 'inventor of the
Persian ink powder,' desiring to give his customers a substantial
proof of his gratitude, invited them to partake of an immense plum
pudding weighing 1000 lbs., a
 GREYHOUND 287 baked pudding of a foot square, and the
best piece of an ox roasted. The principal dish was put in the copper
'at the Red Lion by the Mint,' and had to boil fourteen days. From
there it was . brought to the Swan Tavern on Fish Street Hill,
accompanied by a band playing, ' What lumps of pudding my mother
gave me.' The drum matched the pudding, being 18 feet 2 inches
long and 4 feet in diameter, drawn by ' a device fixt on six asses.'
Finally, the monstrous pudding was to be divided in St. George's
Fields, but apparently the smell and the ' enough for all ' size of it
was too much for the Minters ; the escort was routed, the pudding
taken and devoured ; the whole ceremony being thus brought to an
end before Mr. Austin's customers could have a chance. In my
heterogeneous collection I have a picture of the gigantic pudding on
its way to meet the hungry thieves of the Mint. I have already
remarked that in the last century there was a Red Lion Street, which
ran from Counter Lane to the High Street, nearly opposite the White
Hart, and covered the site of John Crosse's brewhouse. A few yards
off to the north was the Greyhound Inn with its extensive yard. It
was noted for its carriers, who, a couple of centuries ago, as is the
case now in remoter parts of the country, were in the habit of
conveying not only parcels but passengers. Taylor in 1637 says,
'From Hanckhurst and Blenchley, and from Darking and Ledderhead,
they come to the Greyhound.' In 1732 they journeyed to and fro
from Eastbourne and other places as well. The Greyhound appears
in Rocque, 1746, intact, as it had been no one
 288 THE INNS OF OLD SOUTHWARK chap. knows how
long. Horwood, 1799, shows Union Street in the place of the
Greyhound, which has disappeared ; how this came about we shall
see. The opening of Blackfriars Bridge in 1 769 had precipitated the
question of this new street. The vestrymen of St. Saviour's felt a
little exercised in their minds as to how the new bridge would affect
their parish : ' Would it injure trade?' 'Would it lower house value?'
— like prudent men, they left the questions unanswered and
provided for the worst. The best way to meet the difficulty was, they
said, to open up a road through the Greyhound, and they petitioned
the House accordingly. In 1 78 1 the inn was taken down and the
new street was opened. Union Street being thus made, the Gwilts
built here two or three houses, of fine proportions and workmanship,
a contrast to the usual work done in these days, — as a rule, that is,
for of course good work can be and is done when the over-reaching
common way is set aside. In my time these good houses were
inhabited by the Gwilts themselves, and by a leading kindly physician
of Guy's, Dr. Barlow. Mr. Gwilt had here his wonderful museum of
local antiquities, rescued from underground, which had been buried
— many of them in Southwark — since Roman times. I have one of
them now before me, from a grave perhaps of the fourth century.
Even in the very limited share of such remains which has come into
my possession— beautiful pottery, combs, lamps, and what not —
we can see what a Roman settlement Southwark was. When I saw
Mr. Gwilt's collection long after his death, it was passing to ruin. The
rain was coming
 GREYHOUND 289 in through the broken roof, and almost
priceless valuables were being seriously damaged ; but I think the
collection was sold and dispersed in time to save the greater part of
it. Mr. Gwilt discovered many sepulchral remains under this very
spot, the Greyhound yard. Next door, as it were, west of Mr. Gwilt's,
was the old Cross Bones burying -ground or single woman's
churchyard, briefly mentioned before. It was first used probably
soon after the time of Henry II., for the women of the stews on the
Bankside, who were denied burial in consecrated places. On the east
side of Mr. Gwilt's house the Nonconformists, who had worshipped at
Deadman's Place, erected their new chapel ; a substantial brick
building, in dimensions about 40 feet by 42. It had in the usual style
three galleries. The first brick was laid 9th May 1787, by the
minister's son; the opening services were held 2d January 1788.^
1782, Union Hall, opposite Mr. Gwilt's house, was begun as a Court
of Justice for trivial cases and for the recovery of small debts; the
magistrates were said to have sat previously at the Swan Inn,
afterwards the wholesale warehouses of Mr. Owen Marden, No. 48
Borough High Street (doubtless the Black Swan alluded to, p. 118).
On the demolition of the Town Hall at St. Margaret's Hill, the County
Sessions were several times held at this place. Adjoining was the
Surrey Dispensary for relief of the sick poor, with advice and
medicine supplied without cost to them. It had been 1 Hanbury, in
his Historical Research, contends that the Deadman's Place
community had formed the first Congregational church in England,
say from before 1 600. U
 290 THE INNS OF OLD SOUTHWARK chap. carried on
before this in Montague Close, and was removed hither from that
place. The Greyhound at the first must have opened out into St.
George's Fields, very sparsely populated up to that time. And here I
note a few instances more or less in connection with sport, but
whether they have aught to do with this Greyhound, in fact or in
name, or the Greyhound with them, I know not. There was formerly
plenty of sport to be had in and about Southwark — coney warrens
at Star Corner, Bermondsey, and at Paris Garden ; hawks at
Bermondsey Abbey. A local gamekeeper was in later times regularly
appointed at a salary ; hawks and dogs were, to judge from the
dealing that took place in them, Southwark specialties. Gamekeepers
were appointed in and about Southwark. We have : 1608. —
Thomas Tower, a grant of office of gamekeeper for Southwark, etc.
161 2. — Ellis Holambe, grant of office to keep the game, Southwark
to Lambeth Marsh, for life. 1657. — 'Captain Potter's salary,
gamekeeper of Southwark, and ten miles about.'-' 1661-62. —
Warrant for gamekeeper in Lambeth and Southwark ; wages, is. per
day, and 26s. 8d. for livery. Bearing on this subject, among ancient
tenures, is this one : Thomas English, 1 2 Henry VII., held an annual
rent of ;^io with appurtenances in the vill of Southwark, which he
was to receive in fee from the farm of the vill by the hands of the
sheriff of London, the farmer of it, by grand serjeantry, namely by
service of keeping a greyhound or harehound at command of the
king.^ I must not omit to mention a 1 Public Records, s. d. 2
Harleian MS. 5174, pp. 18, 19.
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