Technologies in Bamboo Slips

Bamboo slips or bamboo strips (Chinese:简牍) were the most important form of book in ancient China before the invention of paper. Ancient Chinese people chopped bamboo into small slips (Chinese: 简), used knife to smoothen the surface, and baked the slips over fire to kill the hidden insect eggs. Two or three holes were punched on each bamboo slip, and ropes were used to tie the slips through the holes into rolls or pages (Chinese:册).

Bamboo slips had profound impact in the Chinese book history. The terminologies, the writing format, and the Chinese characters all inherited the traditions from the bamboo slips period. The first usage of bamboo slips was found during the Warring States Period (475-211 BC) and lasted until the Northern and Southern dynasties (420-589 AD). Numerous famous ancient Chinese books were able to survive until today due to the inventions of bamboo slips, including The Analects of Confucius, Classic of Poetry, and Book of Documents. The most recent discovery were Tsinghua Bamboo slips, a collection of 2388 bamboo slips donated to Tsinghua University by an alumnus. The most astonishing finding is a decimal multiplication table for multiplying numbers up to 99.5.

The advancement in technology enhanced our knowledge of these bamboo slips in many different ways. This wiki page will briefly discuss in four different parts how new technologies enable archeologists to better study bamboo slips: conservation, authentication, image acquisition, and image post-processing.