MANTICARTS / STUDY PATH
Sources: bones, manuscripts and Dunhuang
Build a material-led historical method distinguishing objects, transcriptions, transmitted texts and modern editions.
Study sequence
A question can lead to bones, slips, manuscript rolls, printed books and digital images. Medium affects observable details, survival and circulation. Connect historical claims to particular materials, then ask how broadly each can support an inference.
Materials often have several time layers: events described, textual formation, copying or printing, collection and modern editing. Editorial ordering and readings are valuable contributions, whose attribution, arguments and alternatives should remain visible.
Digital collections make cross-institutional discovery easier, but research still needs item records, shelfmarks, sides and image provenance. A portal overview is not evidence for a particular manuscript, and a conceptual illustration cannot establish an object's features.
CURRICULUM
Four connected units
- 01
Bibliography and editions
Establish identity and locators for an actual item.
OUTPUTCollection source card
- 02
Image-number and interpretation
Separate the material, editorial interpretation and your inference.
OUTPUTThree-layer annotation
- 03
A procedure reconstruction lab
Reconstruct supported steps and list gaps separately.
OUTPUTBounded reconstruction
- 04
Prepare a study portfolio
Organize citations, image rights and revisions.
OUTPUTMaterial study dossier
CAPSTONE
Bring the work together
For one publicly discoverable item, prepare an identity card, layered dates, reading differences and a carefully bounded historical claim.
Portfolio methodCONNECTED DOSSIERS
Explore the specialist dossiers
龟卜与骨卜
A pyromantic decision system using prepared turtle shell or animal bone whose cracks were interpreted; it is the earliest Chinese divinatory institution documented by a large surviving archive.
数字卦与先秦筮法
Excavated traditions in which numbers such as one, four, five, six, eight and nine directly formed line positions, revealing a plurality of methods before and alongside standardized yin-yang lines.
五兆卜法与敦煌事项占
A family preserved in Dunhuang fragments using five signs, phase-generative numbers, invocations and topical statements for illness, marriage, lost objects, travelers and other daily questions.
谶纬、图谶与预言文献
Political prophecy through riddles, mandate tokens, images, scriptural correspondence and historical cycles; a major object for the study of legitimacy and textual rewriting.
占梦与解梦书
Interpretation of dream people, animals, objects, actions, colors, directions or puns through symbol, inversion and analogy, spanning court office, religious experience and popular dictionaries.
求签、签诗与杯珓
A common temple and popular religious practice drawing numbered lots or casting crescent blocks. Within the relevant faith tradition, results are interpreted as divine responses through poems, allusions or affirmative-negative-laughing signs.
Open self-study path · 2026-10-24. Exercises are editorial material; references appear in each unit. Images are thematic illustrations. Study records are separate from formal assessment and credential procedures.