Wuwei Bronze Cannon

Gansu Province. It bears no inscription, but has been dated by historians to the late Western Xia period between 1214 and 1227 through contextual evidence. The gun contained an iron ball about nine centimeters in diameter, which is smaller than the muzzle diameter at twelve centimeters, and 0.1 kg (0.22 lb) of gunpowder in it when discovered, meaning that the projectile might have been another co-viative.^[2] Ben Sinvany and Dang Shoushan believe that the ball used to be much larger prior to its highly corroded state at the time of discovery.^[3] While large in size, the weapon is noticeably more primitive than later Yuan dynasty guns such as the Xanadu Gun and Heilongjiang hand cannon, and is unevenly cast. A similar weapon was discovered not far from the discovery site in 1997, but is much smaller in size at only 1.5 kg (3.3 lb).^[4]