Archaeology Magazine - January/February 1982 - 61

(Above)The remainsof theLate Yangshao housesat Ta-ho-ts'unarepreserved
in the Ta-ho-ts'unMuseum.(Middle)A
restored po bowlfound in a Late Yangshao dwelling.Height,21.3 centimeters.
(Below)A rare twin hujar recovered
from a Late Yan-shaodwelling.Height,
20 centimeters.

beauty of the perfect wheel-made shape
was preferred over the earlier ones with
incised, pricked or impressed surfaces.
One thin-walled kuan container with a
small mouth and a swelling ovoid body
has minimal surface decoration, consisting of two series of closely spaced
lines, three on the shoulder and two
lines at the widest point on the belly.
Other undecorated pottery vessels from
Ta-ho-ts'un include the ting tripod caldrons. Two round-bottomed ones succintly demonstrate the origin of such
tripods. Adding three legs to a kuan container when a cooking vessel was
needed must have come as an afterthought. Later when the demand for the
ting tripod caldron increased, it was
made expressly as such. The three legs
then became an integral part of the vessel in both form and style.

Interestingly, the Neolithic descendants at Ta-ho-ts'un seemed to have favored a type that was most practical as a
cooking utensil. An early form is the
Late Yang-shao tall-necked, convexbottom ting, which Chinese archaeologists believe developed from the fu, an
ancient caldron form. Hand-coiled and
finished on a turntable, it can be classified as one of the best Yang-shao red
ware products. From the practical point
of view, however, the somewhat constricted opening still cannot be compared with the type that has a wide open
mouth. The two Late Yang-shao pieces,
one made of sand-tempered red clay and
the other of fine-grained gray clay, are
excellent specimens of this second type.
Their bodies, characterized by a short
upright wall and an everted broad rim,
may have been modeled on the p'en ba-

sin. The gray clay example from the later Transitional period is definitely an
improved version of the p'en-shaped
caldron. The legs are still shorter than
the height of the body, but the convex
bottom is now flatter and the upright
body is taller. These same features later
found their final form in the typical
bronze ting tripod caldron of the Shang
dynasty.
Vessels that represent precedents to
Shang pottery and bronze ware were
found in the Lung-shan stratum which,
at Ta-ho-ts'un, the Chinese archaeologists have divided into an early and a
late phase. Most outstanding among the
few gray clay pieces recovered are the
ku beaker and the pei cup. Both come
from the Early Lung-shan stratum and
show that although gray pottery predominated at that time, the prevalent
pottery-making technique still consisted of the primitive hand-coiled as
well as the advanced wheel-turned
methods. The handmade ku vessel,
measuring 10.5 centimeters in height
and bearing two very simple, closely
spaced grooves at the base, is a splendid
prototype of the Early Shang bronze ku
beaker, a number of which have surfaced in Honan in recent years. The pei
cup does not have a Shang bronze counterpart, but certainly forecasts the high
achievement of the classic Shan-tung
Lung-shan ware. The eggshell thin
wall, the low ringed foot, and the gently
everted rim characterize an expertise in
pottery making unique to China
throughout its ceramic history.
The importance of Ta-ho-ts'un in the
reconstruction of China's ancient civilization will become even more evident
when archaeologists complete the excavations there. Yet even now, a tantalizing amount of archaeological evidence
points to a diffusion of culture from the
northern province of Honan to the
neighboring cultures known today as
Ch'ing-lien-kang (or Ta-wen-kou) and
Ch'u-chia-ling, which occupied the eastern areas of the lower Yellow River, the
Huai River and the lower Yangtze
River, and the southern area of the middle Yangtze, respectively. Pottery, the
most plentiful of Neolithic remains, is
the key factor in analyzing these cultural interrelationships. The same decorative methods and patterns in fact occur among the painted red ware of
Ch'ing-lien-kang. Even more astonishing is the similarly potted deep incurving rim of the po bowl. So identical are
the po pieces in these two cultures that
one is inclined to believe that they were
made by the same potter or by members
of the same workshop. Other unique
links are seen in the p'en-shaped ting
tripod, tou stemmed bowl and ku
beaker. When excavations are completed, Ta-ho-ts'un certainly will shed
more light on the complex interrelationships of the Neolithic cultures of China.
1982
January/February

Archaeology Magazine - January/February 1982

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Archaeology Magazine - January/February 1982