CHINA ARQUEOLOGIA golden-age-chinese-archayeolog

5
Painted pottery gang urn
Height 47 (18'A), diam. at mouth 32.7 (12 3 A),
diam. at base 19.5 (7 5 /s)
Neolithic Period, Henan Yangshao Culture
(c. 3500-3000 BCE)
From Yancun, Linru, Henan Province
The National Museum of Chinese History, Beijing
the faunal remains at Banpo sites, the lack of tusks
on the faces on the Wangjiayinwa and Jiangzhai
vessels indicates that these images are pigs, rather
than boars. 5
The graves at the Wangjiayinwa settlement,
unlike those at other Banpo sites, have a small,
rounded compartment extending outward from
the burial pit on the occupant's left side. 6 These
compartments were designed to hold the ceramic
vessels, which normally would have been placed
in the burial pit itself. The unusual nature of these
burials suggests the emergence of local variations
in the westernmost regions of the Banpo cultural
system during its final phase. LF-H
1 Excavated in 1981 (M 53:7); published: Gansu 19845, 1-17,
58; pi. 2:2; Zhang i99ob, cat. no. 23; color pis. 5; 25, far left.
2 Gansu 19845, 7; Xi'an 1988,1:243; Wagner 1992,
1:32-33; 2: pi. 3:2-3.
3 See Zhongguo 1963, color pi. 1:2.
4 Xi'an 1988, 2: color pi. 10. Two water jars with balustershaped
necks from late Banpo burials (M 262 and M 315)
at the site of Longgangsi, near Nancheng, in southwestern
Shaanxi province, exhibit similar designs, except that the
faces on these vessels seem to be human; see Shaanxi
1990,119, fig. 84:1 - 2; 169, fig. 111:4 - 5; pi. 80:1 - 3.
5 Zhongguo 1963, 257-258; Zhongguo 1983^ 146-150;
Xi'an 1988, i, 521-525.
6 Gansu 19845, 4, fig. 7; 5, fig. n.
The realistic images painted on this vessel 1 are a
surprising — and seemingly unique — departure
from the geometric patterns that had dominated
painted ceramics in the Central Plains area during
the preceding millennia. This vessel is from the very
end of the Henan Yangshao period, when painted
pottery, supplanted by a new tradition of unpainted
gray and black wares emphasizing silhouette, had
all but vanished throughout the region. This vessel
from Linru, just south of Yanshi, also takes us eastward
along the Yellow River into the area where the
earliest Bronze Age settlements were later to arise.
Nearly the full height of the vessel's wall is
occupied by the separate images of a long-legged
white wading bird, probably a heron, shown with
a fish hanging from the tip of its beak, and, to the
right, a large, hafted axe (fig. i). The remarkably
natural, lifelike appearance of the bird owes in part
to its being depicted without the heavy black contour
lines seen on the fish and the axe, and to the
particular care with which the long beak and knees
are portrayed. An incised line dividing the upper
and lower mandibles adds to the realistic effect.
The only unnaturalistic element — the treatment of
the eye as a large black circle with a dot inside —
conveys a sense of watchful alertness and engages
us directly in its line of vision. The axe, on the other
hand, is described with a view to technical detail,
and even includes a description of the woven
leather grip wrapped about the haft.
But the highly descriptive nature of these
images should not lead us to mistake them as mere
decoration. The combination of these two ostensibly
incongruous images suggests instead that they
were symbolic in intent. In all probability, the image
of the white heron signified a place name or the
64 | LATE PREHISTORIC CHINA