[Ning-hsiang]. A county in Hunan province, China, the site of repeated finds of bronze ritual vessels and large bells. These objects date from the latter part of the Shang dynasty but often differ in style from Shang bronzes found at Anyang. Many similar bronzes have been unearthed along the middle and lower course of the Yangzi River, suggesting that this region was the seat of bronze-using powers partly independent of the Shang court to the north but indebted for their knowledge of metalworking, and no doubt for much else, to an earlier southward expansion of the Shang civilization that took place during the Erligang phase (see Pan-
The Macmillan dictionary of archaeology, Ruth D. Whitehouse, 1983Copied