Sets of ritual bronzes are the most impressive surviving objects from the Chinese Bronze Age. Being from around 1650 BCE, they were deposited as grave goods in the tombs of royalty and the nobility, and were evidently produced in very large numbers, with documented excavations finding over 200 pieces in a single royal tomb. They were produced for an individual to use in ritual offerings of food and drink to his ancestors in family temples or ceremonial halls over tombs, or rather ritual banquets in which both living and dead members of a family participated; early literary records speak of these. On the death of the owner they would be placed in his tomb, so that he could continue to pay his respects in the afterlife; other examples were cast specifically as grave goods.