ORIGINAL ARTICLE Lead isotope ratio analysis of lead ingots and bronze wares unearthed from Yinxu Qiang Li 1 | Guofeng Wei 1 | Haiyan Huang 2 | Jigen Tang 3 | Bingjian Zhang 4 1 School of History, Anhui University, Hefei, China 2 Fuyang Museum, Fuyang, China 3 Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, China 4 Department of Cultural Heritage and Museology, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China Correspondence Guofeng Wei, School of History, Anhui University, Hefei 230039, China. Email: weidun1975@126.com Funding information This research was supported by the National Social Science Fund of China (grant number 21BKG019). Abstract This study gives the element compositions and Pb iso- tope ratios of three lead ingots and three bronze arte- facts unearthed from Yinxu, Anyang, Henan province, and two lead vessels from Zhengxiaozhuang tomb, Anhui province, China. The results of composition analysis show that three lead ingots in Yinxu may be the primary product of lead smelting. The lead wares unearthed in Zhengxiaozhuang tomb could be a kind of Mingqi-funerary replicas. The results of Pb isotope analysis indicate that the culture exchanges between the Central Plains and the Jianghuai area in the late Shang dynasty. The decrease of bronzes with the highly radiogenic lead is consistent with the increase of Pb content in Yinxu bronzes simultaneously, which could be related to the change of lead source. KEYWORDS cultural exchange, highly radiogenic lead, Jianghuai region, Pb isotope, lead wares INTRODUCTION Yinxu is the last capital of the Shang dynasty in China. It has long been the focus of archaeolo- gists’ research on the nature and process of state formation in the Early Bronze Age in China (Campbell, 2009; Cheung et al., 2017; Liu & Chen, 2012; Trigger, 2003). The late Shang period represented by the Yinxu was a peak of Chinese bronze casting. The bronzes unearthed in the Yinxu were famous for their quantity and exquisiteness. It also had a significant influence on the bronzes of other regions in China at the same time and was the core of Chinese bronze cul- ture (Gao, 2006). At present, scholars have performed systematic research on the bronze wares unearthed in Yinxu, mainly focusing on chronology, decoration, artefact assemblages and tech- nological analysis. While a large number of bronze wares were unearthed, the kind of special Received: 25 September 2021 Accepted: 31 August 2023 DOI: 10.1111/arcm.12915 © 2023 The Authors. Archaeometry © 2023 University of Oxford. Archaeometry. 2023;1–12. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/arcm 1