It was a flowering that occurred during the reign of the Dian Kingdom, which after its decline was absorbed by the Eastern Han Dynasty as a prefecture. The Dian Kingdom simply disappeared into obscurity.

Starting in 1955, however, three archaeologists from the Yunnan Provincial Museum began a trial excavation in Shizaishan, near the city of Dianchi, that turned up a growing trove of bronzes.

The breathtaking fruits of these architectural searches are on display at the Hong Kong Museum of History courtesy of the Yunnan museum, which has been staging a nationwide tour of 118 funerary items. It is the second major tour of Chinese artefacts at the museum in recent months, and provides a valuable connection for Hong Kong's citizens to their Chinese past.

It is an exhibit that is well-curated and flows easily through the exhibit hall, with extensive narratives and adequate maps to tell the story of when and where the Dian Kingdom rose and fell. Two massive reproductions of the best of the smaller burial pieces have been scaled up by the museum staff to provide drama.

Although many of the pieces are small, to go into graves with their owners, there are enough large ones to provide a gratifying experience.

Given that thousands of items were buried, there is plenty of material here to give a relatively clear picture of a kingdom and culture that has largely disappeared. Indeed, what the archaeologists found grew into a 50-year excavation of hundreds of graves in more than 30 ruins and burial sites.

These excavations, in a widening geographical area, ultimately tell the detailed story of an animist society built on agriculture, with bronze farming implements intricately decorated with distinctive regional features.

Because of the remoteness of the Dian Kingdom, in the western part of the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau of undulating mountain ranges, an art style all of its own emerged that resembles little else in China.

The bronzes often reflect cultural influences of the northern prairies, southern China, Southeast and Central Asia, according to Dai Zongpin of the Yunnan museum. One bronze male figurine, 51 centimetres high and holding a 104-cm bronze parasol probably used to shield an interred figure, has Japanese overtones, according to Naomi Szeto, who helped curate the exhibit.

Among the 118 pieces on loan are 21 that have been classified as first-class national treasures by the State Administration of Cultural Heritage.

The most important of these, and visually the most striking, is a 76-cm-long bronze table figure of a female ox protecting her calf as a lion gnaws on her hindquarters. Szeto said legend has it that the piece, discovered in a tomb in Lijiashan, Jiangchuan province in 1972, was created by a workman seeking to create a gift that would take the emperor's lecherous mind off the workman's fiance.

It is hardly the only spectacular piece in the exhibition, however. Another is a 250-kilogram bronze coffin from the Warring States period that was found in Xiangyun county, Yunnan province, in 1965.

The coffin, which obviously held a royal figure, is in seven large bronze plates, extensively etched with animal figures. Dated between 475 BC and 221 BC, it is an indication of how far advanced the Dian Kingdom was in the use of bronze. The coffin is designed to resemble a traditional Yunnan home, raised to avoid moisture, perhaps an effort to ``cheat the dead'' and fool the spirits into believing it was a home for someone alive, thus delaying the occupant's descent into the underworld.

Much of the Dian culture revolved around hunting and so the title of the exhibition, ``Hunting and Rituals: Treasures from the Ancient Dian Kingdom of Yunnan''. Many of the pieces in the show are decorated with hunting scenes, with prey including tigers, leopards, wild board, deer, monkeys and others.

Often hunters are depicted either on foot or horseback, or sometimes fighting animals with their bare hands.

Among the most graceful of the pieces is a war club studded with scores of teeth and topped by a tiny bronze dog. Another imaginative piece is a reticulated serpent whose coils become a basket in which to burn resin blocks.

Containers for cowrie shells, which the Dian used as a currency, abound in the show. Many are topped with detailed bronze depictions of battles, animals fighting and other scenes. Intricately etched, they often contain locking devices inside to keep their contents from thieves.

Hunting and Rituals: Treasures from the Ancient Dian Kingdom of Yunnan, Hong Kong Museum of History, 100 Chatham Road South, Tsim Sha Tsui, until February 21

john.berthelsen@globalchina.com