Sources of Shang History: The Oracle-Bone

Why this matters here

Keightley’s Sources of Shang History reconstructs Shang political and ritual practice from oracle-bone inscriptions—divination by crack, royal questions, and archived answers about ancestors, campaigns, and harvests. Before Certainty Arrives uses that material culture to show authority becoming sacred: decisions recorded in fire and fracture before open argument, with ritual order protecting coordination across generations. Keightley establishes epigraphic and historical method; the book asks how sacralization stabilizes authority that reduces uncertainty for the group.