CHINA ARQUEOLOGIA golden-age-chinese-archayeolog

FIG. i. Bird-fish-axe design
on the urn. After Yan 1981,
79' fig-1-
name of a clan associated with it. 2 The axe likely
served as an honorific attribute, indicating rank or
status. Taken together, the axe and heron may have
identified the vessel's owner, or the person for
whom it was made.
The images painted on the Yancun vessel appear
to be related to the pictographs occasionally
incised on vessels of approximately the same date
associated with the Dawenkou culture of Shandong
province (compare cat. 23). On vessels from two
high-status Dawenkou burials at the Juxian site of
Dazhujia (M 17, M 26), and from other burials at the
nearby site of Lingyanghe, there occur two sorts of
graphs. The first type shows a circle above a crescentlike
shape, which may also be combined with
a third element, which is either flat or rounded at
the bottom and rises to three or five symmetrical
peaks at the top. Based on their similarities to
characters in the Shang oracle-bone texts, these
elements are generally read as "moon," "fire," and
"mountain," respectively, and they are generally
regarded to make up a place name. The second
category, which may occur singly or in association
with the first type, is made up of graphs that represent
ritual implements, including hafted axes and
hafted adzes, and others that appear to be scepters.
3 Archaeological evidence of cultural transmission
between Yancun in Henan and the Dawenkou
sites in Shantong is sufficient to suggest an actual
link between the kind of images painted on the
Yancun gang and those incised on the Dawenkou
vessels. 4
The Yancun and Dawenkou images bear a striking
similarity to some of the earliest inscriptions
on bronze vessels, which date to the period of the
first-generation rulers at Anyang, around 1300 BCE.
Several of these bronze vessels recovered from the
large royal tomb M i at Wuguancun at Anyang carry
an inscription consisting of a central graph, equivalent
to the modern character for dan, flanked on
either side by two back-to-back human figures in
profile, which make up the character bei, or "north."
These two combined graphs are followed by another,
depicting a hafted bronze halberd, with the
modern reading ge. On the evidence of the oraclebone
texts, the first part of the inscription is read
Bei Dan, or Northern Dan. Although Bei Dan itself
is only rarely mentioned in the oracle-bone texts,
Western Dan, Eastern Dan, and Southern Dan
occur with some frequency. 5 The identification of
the first element in the Wuguancun inscriptions
as the name of a place (or a clan) lends credence to
the interpretation of the Yancun and Dawenkou
images as place names. The hafted axes and adzes
on the Yancun and Dawenkou vessels, like the
hafted halberd on the Wuguancun bronzes, would
seem to function as honorifics. The importance of
the heron and the axe on the Yancun vessel thus
resides not only in the naturalistic rendition of the
images, but in the evidence they provide for a nascent
stage in the history of graphic notation in
China. 6
The vessel, of a reddish buff ware, was finished
on a slow wheel and then coated with a thin white
slip before it was painted. Six hook-shaped lugs
below the rim, two of which have been broken off,
enabled a lid to be tied in place.
LF-H
66 LATE PREHISTORIC CHINA