CAMBRIDGE, ENGLAND — “The Search for Immortality: Tomb Treasures of Han China” on view at the Fitzwilliam Museum through Nov. 11 is one of those landmark shows that shed new light on a crucial historical period in one of the world’s great civilizations.

The discoveries made in the past three decades by Chinese archaeologists have yielded so much datable evidence that books dealing with Han China must be rewritten.

The tour de force achieved by the curator of the show, James Lin, with the backing of the director of the museum, Timothy Potts, is to have brought to the West some of the art treasures that lay the foundations on which our understanding rests of the Han age in the second and first centuries B.C....