CHINA ARQUEOLOGIA golden-age-chinese-archayeolog

7
Painted pottery ping container
Height 26 (9 3 A), diam. at mouth 7 (2 ¥4)
Neolithic Period, Majiayao Culture
(c. 3000-2500 BCE)
From Lijiaping, Longxi, Gansu Province
Gansu Provincial Museum, Lanzhou
The purely geometric decoration on this water
container 1 is more fully representative of Majiayao
than the other three examples in the exhibition,
insofar as the vessels belonging to this tradition
rarely show figural designs. It is also the single
example where the calligraphic quality of the lines,
one of the most remarkable aspects of this style,
can be adequately appreciated.
The designs consist of radial spirals composed
of a series of circular nuclei centered along the
front and back of the vessel, and others along the
sides, which incorporate the ring-shaped lugs.
Circumferential lines at the base of the neck and
those at the bottom of the register function as
additional nuclei, so that the bundles of spiral
arms that radiate from the top of one nucleus to
the bottom of the next involve the entire decorated
surface in an endless spiralling motion. Filling the
interstices between the bundles of spiral arms are
smaller circles in reserve formed by the converging
arcs of three segmental triangles painted in black.
The full measure of this ceramic tradition can
only be realized among the thousands of other
vessels in this style — the gracefully shaped bowls
and handsome storage jars, created of this same
fine ware, whose carefully smoothed and burnished
surfaces are decorated in a seeming endless variety
of similar monochrome patterns rendered in multiple
parallel lines. Arguably the finest of all the early
Chinese ceramics, these remarkable vessels are
easily a match for Neolithic wares found elsewhere
in the world.
While the earliest datable evidence for this
ceramic tradition is presently found at the sites of
Shangsunjiazhai (cat. 6) and Zongri in Qinghai
province, it seems mainly to have been centered
at sites to the south of Lanzhou in the Dongxiang
and Linxia areas, and to the east along the upper
reaches of the Wei River. 1 The present example
from Longxi finds a close parallel in a fragmentary
ping with the same shape and decoration recovered
farther downstream along the Wei River, at the
Tianshui site of Shizhaocun. The ping was recovered
from the second stratum at Shizhaocun, as was the
following small bowl (cat. 8). LF-H
i
Excavated in 1971; published: Gansu 1979, no. 13; color pi.
6; Fitzgerald-Huber 1981, pi. 38, fig. 99; Li 1982, 5, upper
left; Zhang 1990^ cat. no. 133.
75 | YANCSHAO CULTURE: MAJIAYAO