CHINA ARQUEOLOGIA golden-age-chinese-archayeolog

FIG. i. Jade blade incised
with goggle-eyed design;
length 18 (/Vs); Shandong
Longshan culture; unearthed
in 1963 from
Liangchengzhen, Rizhao,
Shandong province. After
Liu 1972, 57, fig. 2.
Originally, the tomb's single occupant lay encased
in a wood coffin within an outer wood coffin. The
plaque and pin lay beside the skeleton's head and
neck. The coffin also contained a creamy white jade
pin of a finely articulated, hooklike form beside the
shoulder and three jade ritual weapons (one blade,
two axes) near the hips. Other grave goods included
approximately 980 very thin turquoise plaques,
bone implements, and black and gray earthenware
tripods, jars, and handled cups.
Whether this composite ornament was worn
in life or made exclusively for burial, whether intended
as a separate hairpin or as an insert in a
fabric headpiece, is unknown. Whereas the form
of the pin is so far unique, the plaque's attenuated,
hooked silhouette and vaguely masklike decoration
invite comparison with an intriguing variety of jade
images. These include goggle-eyed motifs incised
on a blade previously unearthed in Liangchengzhen,
Rizhao, in southeastern coastal Shandong
province (fig. i), 2 as well as human and monsterlike
faces depicted on plaques and blades in several
Chinese and Western collections. 3 Generally dated
to the third millennium BCE, these diverse facial
images — the excavated examples among them
found mostly in eastern-central China (Anhui and
Hubei provinces) — stimulate ongoing scholarly
debate as to their symbolic significance and
possible relation to jade designs of the Liangzhu
culture of the east coast area near present-day
Shanghai.
Throughout the third millennium BCE, a vast
complex of late Neolithic cultures occupied eastern
and central China. The types of wheel-thrown pottery
found in this tomb appear to be distinctive to
the late phase of the Longshan culture in Shandong
province. Two openwork pieces (variously identified
as jade or kaolinite) unearthed in 1991 from a tomb
in Sunjiagang, Lixian, in northern Hunan (near the
Hubei border) suggest that the Shandong Longshan
style of jade carving exemplified by this head
ornament may have extended farther south than
previously realized. 4 Although technically analogous
to this openwork plaque, the Hunan pieces
incorporate clearly zoomorphic silhouettes, such as
a bird or dragon. Whether these delicate openwork
carvings attest to a general diffusion of styles or to
a widespread distribution of styles originating from
geographically concentrated workshops remains to
be discovered. EP
1 Excavated in 1989 (M 202); reported: Zhongguo Shandong
587-594. See also Wenwu Jinghua 1992, pis. 60-61;
Rawson 1996, 58-59 (no. 21); Tang 1998, 3: pis. 73-74.
2 Liu 1972, 56 - 57, figs. 1-2.
3 Du 1994, 55-65.
4 Wenwu Jinghua 1993, pis. 45 - 46.
1O5 | DAWENKOU AND SHANDONG LONCSHAN
CULTURES