Investigating the tool marks on oracle bones inscriptions from the Yinxu site (ca., 1319-1046 BC), Henan province,...

Oracle Bone Inscriptions in the Shang dynasty (1600-1046 BC) are the earliest well-developed writing forms of the Chinese character system, and their carving techniques have not been studied by tool marks analysis with microscopy. In this study, a digital microscope with three-dimensional surface reconstruction based on extended depth of focus technology was used to investigate tool marks on the surface of four pieces of oracle bones excavated at the eastern area of Huayuanzhuang, Yinxu site(ca., 1319-1046 BC), the last capital of the Shang dynasty, Henan province, China. The results show that there were two procedures to carve the characters on the analyzed tortoise shells. The first procedure was direct carving. The second was "outlining design," which means to engrave a formal character after engraving a draft with a pointed tool. Most of the strokes developed by an engraver do not overlap the smaller draft, which implies that the outlining design would be a sound way to avoid errors such as wrong and missing characters. The strokes of these characters have different shape at two ends and variations on width and depth of the grooves. Moreover, the bottom of the grooves is always rugged. Thus, the use of rotary wheel-cutting tools could be ruled out. In most cases, the starting points of the strokes are round or flat while the finishing points are always pointed. Moreover, the strokes should be engraved from top to bottom. When vertical or horizontal strokes had been engraved, the shell would be turned about 90 degrees to engrave the crossed strokes from top to bottom. There was no preferred order to engrave vertical or horizontal strokes. Since both sides of the grooves of the characters are neat and there exists no unorganized tool marks, then it is suggested that some sharp tools had been used for engraving characters on the shells. Microsc. Res. Tech. 79:827-832, 2016. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.