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Everything about Oracle bone

Shells and bones used for divination in ancient China

Oracle bones are pieces of ox scapula and turtle plastron which were used in pyromancy – a form of divination – during the Late Shang period in ancient China. Scapulimancy is the specific term if ox scapulae were used for the divination, plastromancy if turtle plastrons were used. A recent count estimated that there were about 13,000 bones with a total of a little over 130,000 inscriptions in collections in China and some fourteen other countries. Wikipedia →

🧭 Start here: a 6-step reading path

  1. Read the overview: Oracle boneA 5-minute orientation
  2. Skim a recent paper: Dynamic Dataset Augmentation for Deep Learning-based Oracle Bone Inscriptions RecognitionInfluential work since 2022
  3. Pick up a classic book: Jia gu wen liThe most-reprinted book on the subject
  4. Read the landmark paper: HWOBC-A Handwriting Oracle Bone Character Recognition DatabaseCited 39 times
  5. Go sideways: Oracle bone scriptA closely related topic
  6. Go sideways: Shang dynasty religious practitionersA closely related topic

📖 Definitions

Noun A piece of turtle shell or bone used for divination during the late Shang dynasty of China.

🗂️ The subject at a glance

  1. Discovery
  2. Official excavations
  3. Publication
  4. Dating
  5. Shang divination
  6. Evidence of pre-Anyang pyromancy
  7. Other sites
  8. After the Shang

🏆 Landmark papers (most cited)

🆕 Influential since 2022

📚 Books worth reading

Ranked by number of editions on Open Library, a rough measure of how lasting a book is.

🔗 Related topics