CHINA ARQUEOLOGIA golden-age-chinese-archayeolog

kind of graphic notation. These marks, present on the pottery remains throughout a wide spectrum
of Banpo sites, from Jiangzhai and Banpocun in eastern Shaanxi province, westward to
Dadiwan, are a further demonstration of the remarkable network of communications sustained
for many centuries over the entire geographic territory settled by this early culture. LF-H
1 In southern China, on the other hand, rice agriculture,
associated with an entirely different cultural system,
centered in the Hanzhou Bay region, reaches back almost
as far into the past. The Hemudu and Majiabang people of
the south lived along the marshy shores of the bay in
wooden houses built on stilts, and their way of life was
clearly very different from that of their contemporaries in
the north.
2 While scholars generally agree that Yangshao comprises
several regional cultures and developmental stages the
question of whether these represent discrete "cultures" or,
rather, phases of a single culture remains the subject of
debate (see the essay by Zhang Zhongpci, pages 519-525;
Dai 1998, and Sun 1998).
3 Zhongguo 1963; Xi'an 1988; Zhongguo 1983^
4 Chang 1986,119.
5 Gansu 19833, i -13, color pi. i; pis. i - 3. The earliest, called
"Dadiwan I" belongs to the same pre-Yangshao cultural
horizon found to underlie the Banpo strata at Beishouling.
Among the objects from the Dadiwan I level, we find
again examples of the earliest vessels with painted decoration,
bearing a single band of red paint around the rim
(Gansu 19833, i -13; color pi. i; pis. i - 3. The Banpo phase
at Dadiwan (Yangshao early phase) is followed at the
beginning of the fourth millennium by the Miaodigou
culture (Yangshao middle phase), and later by the
Shilingxia (Yangshao late phase) (Gansu 1983^ 22-30).
The site was occupied again during Longshan times.
6 Gansu 1983^ 15-19, 30. A second building (F 901), probably
constructed during the early Longshan period, consisted
of a main room seventeen meters long at the front
and eight across, flanked by additional rooms on the sides
and at the back. A covered portico at the front was supported
by two rows of posts set on stone footings (Gansu
1986, i -12; color pi. opposite page 16; pis. i - 2). The
anslysis of the excavated remains suggests that the Dadiwan
structures had hipped roofs and double eaves. These
traits, as well as the interior support structures, establish
them as precedents for the remarkable public buildings at
the early Bronze Age sites of Erlitou and Panlongcheng,
which inaugurated the tradition of Chinese palace architecture
(Gansu 1986,11).
7 Zhongguo 1983^ 119, fig. 100 (M 169); Gansu 19833, pi. 2:3.
8 Zhongguo 1963, pi. 160; Xi'an 1988, 273, fig. 198 (Jiangzhai
Phase III); Zhongguo Shaanxi 1984, 481-487.
57 YANGSHAO CULTURE! BANPO