Archaeology Magazine - June 1972 - 73

try a good couturier on the date, model
and place of origin of a dress, or a
commercialpackage by a specialist in
packagedesign.A product is created by
the brain that designsthe machine that
makesit, and even the machine has its
signature- no two typewriterstype exactly alike.
Following the introduction of the
Signposts,we cometo the burden of the
book, which is An Alphabetical Guide
to The Artifacts. It is hard to quibble
with the alphabet as a familiar system
of ordering key identity words. But let
us examine the table of contents and
the author's dilemma, to say nothing
of his conscience,as we recall our preferred title to the work: Armor; Bayonets; Beads; Bellarmines;Bells; Bottles,
Glass Liquor; Bottles, Glass, Pharmaceutical; Bottles, Pottery, Bricks and
Brickwork;Buckles;Buttonsand Sleeve
Buttons; Candlesticksand Lighting Accessories;Ceramics,American; Ceramics, British; Ceramics,European; Chamber Pots, Bedpans,and ClosestoolPans;
- and so on to
Clocks and Clockcases
Porcelain, Chinese; . . . Stoneware,
Rhenish; Tiles, Delft and Other Wares;
Roofing; Tobacco Pipes and Smoking
Equipment; Toys; Wig Curlers. Might
not it have been a little more forthright to list ALL the ceramic articles
under CERAMICS,all the glassarticles
under GLASS, and the metals and
wood by similar categories?
Sufficeit to say the glassand ceramic
description, however discovered, are
very satisfactory,and so are someof the
others, such as the coins, tokens and
jettons. But alas! The solitarychampion
of the A's is ARMOR, and it rates four
lines and one reference,that happily to
Harold L. Peterson'sArms and Armor
in Colonial Americas itself a most fulsome book. Bayonetsand Firearms and
Gunflints fare a little better, but not
much. Only one type of Britishbayonet
is cited, and no miquelet lock. As for
the rest, what you do not find in the
speedyalphabet-Tableof Contents,you
may search in the index. But you won't
find a number of things there, either,
such as spectacles (or glasses,eye- or
eyeglasses),which are very useful for
dating and derivation,and are frequently encounteredin Colonialdetritus. But
then, a book of a 1000 pages couldn't
have held the lot. The book is carefully
edited and nearly free of annoyingslipups, such as acknowledgmentto the
Dutch tile expert and author of Dutch
Tiles as Korf Dingeman. He is Dingeman Korf.
John L. Cotter

Funde in Alt-China: Das Welterleben im ältesten China
by Carl Hentze. 300 pages, 48 plates
with manyblackand white photographs,
92 text figures, 1 chart, bibliography
,
maps on endpapers, frontispiece in
color. Musterschnidt-Verlag,
Göttingen, Germany 1967 (Sternstudender
Archäologie,6) DM 19,80
Probablyno other area in the world has
undergone such an intensive archaeological program as did mainland China
between the years 1949 and 1966 (the
establishmentof the Communistregime
and the advent of the Great Proletarian
Cultural Revolution).Carefullyplanned
surveysand full-scaleexcavationsin all
parts of the country plus salvage archaeology resulting from numerous engineering projects, all carried out at a
feverish pace, produced a tremendous
bulk of artifacts and a torrent of publications. Those seeking a survey of this
very important period in Chinesearchaeology will be sadly disappointed by
this book. The title of the series,Sternstunden de Archäologie, perhaps absolvesthe author from any blameon this
score.
Hentze is well known to students of
early China through his publications
over the past thirty years on symbolism
in early Chinese art. Because his primary concern is symbolism,he skipsthe
Palaeolithic period entirely in spite of
the recent progress made in this field,
the most outstanding event of which
was the discoveryof a hominid rival to
the well-knownPeking Man. This Middle Pleistoceneoccupant of northwest

China is calledSinanthropuslantianensis
after the city of Lan-t'ien where a fossilized mandible and skullcap were
found in 1963 and 1964.Chinesescientists say that because of certain more
primitive features it is older than
Sinanthropus pekinensis recovered by
the Nationalistsin the 1920s.This important recent find certainly could be
classifiedunder Sternstundenbut it has
been ignored becauseit offers no material for symbolism.An equally serious
omissionin his treatment of the Neolithic stage is his failure to mention the
important excavation at Miao-ti-kou,
Honan province, which demonstrated
that there were not two independent
Neolithiccultures in China, as had long
been believed, but that one was a developmentof the other.
Those familiar with Hentze's earlier
works will find much familiar material
in this new volume although he states
(page 22) that this book "brings to the
specialist results of researches that I
have not publishedelsewhere."The fact
remains, however, that numerous passages in this book are paraphrases or
restatements from his earlier publications, and a number of the illustrations
have also appeared in his other works.
His treatment of one aspect of the early
bronze ritual vesselnamed ku is typical
of this. This tall, slenderdrinkingvessel
stands on a high hollow foot and often
has a cruciformhole through this base.
In the present work Hentze says (pages
83-84) that this is for the entrance and
exit of the soul, and in his Bronzegerät,
Kultbauten, Religion im ältesten China
der Shang-Zeit, published in 1951, he

Year
College

in
Inc.
Athens
A year's study of Greek civilization,September 25, 1972 to June 1, 1973,
for collegestudents concentratingin the classicsor allied fields.
Faculty in 1971-72: A. R. Burn and Franz J.
Tritsch in history; Judith Perlzweig-Binder,
Anastasia Dinsmoor, and Nicholas Yalouris in
art and archaeology;AlexisDiamantopoulosin
literature; H. D. F. Kitto and Harry L. Levy
in ancient Greek; Dimitri Nianiasin philosophy.
Byzantine studies, courses in modern Greek.
Extensivetravel within Greece.
For information write to: Mrs. George N.
Hatsopoulos,American Representative,College
Year in Athens,Stonehedge,Lincoln,Massachusetts 01773 or to Mrs. GeorgeS. Phylactopoulos,
*
Director, College Year in Athens, 24 Kritis
Street, Kephissia, Athens, Greece.
241

Archaeology Magazine - June 1972

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Archaeology Magazine - June 1972