This gallery explores more than 3,000 years of Chinese history and culture through surviving artefacts.
The importance of writing to Chinese society from the 15th century BC is a key theme and a wall case devoted to the topic charts the development of writing in China from its earliest inscriptions on animal bones to literary and administrative texts written on stone, bamboo, silk and paper. Bronze, ceramic and jade artefacts from pre-Dynastic China through the Shan, Zhou and Han dynasties are displayed in cases on the opposite wall.
