Last year (1999), the People's Republic of China celebrated its fiftieth anniversary, and made well known the progress of many national projects. Among them, relevant to this column, is the “Xia-Shang-Zhou Chronology Project,” which aims at establishing an absolute chronology of the historical events before the first year of Gonghe
[i.e., 841 b.c.e.]. Meanwhile, last year was also the centennial of the discovery of the Oracle Bone Inscriptions. Many related conferences and events were held. Among them, during the last few years, has been the investigation of several walled settlements that predate the Yinxu period. Moreover, in early 2000, the largest urban site of the Shang dynasty was discovered to the northeast of Yinxu. Though its details have not yet been fully reported, much attention has been focused on this discovery.