Page 103 - The Golden Age of Chinese Archaeology: Celebrated Discoveries from the People’s Republic of China

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Pottery zun urn with incised pictograph

Height 59.5 (23 y 4), diam. 29 (nVs)
Dawenkou Culture, c. 4300-2500 BCE
From Yuchisi, Mengcheng,
Anhui Province
The Institute of Archaeology, CASS, Beijing

For students of the origins of Chinese civilization,
the pictographs on the zun urns of the Dawenkou
culture are an important source of information.
Their similarity to Early Bronze Age inscriptions has
made these pictographs especially significant to
scholars working on the emergence of writing. If
the Dawenkou pictographs are true writing, they
would make it possible to ascertain the nature of
the Dawenkou culture.
In 1973, Yu Xingwu (1896-1984) first construed
the pictograph on a zun urn of the Dawenkou
culture as the character dan, meaning daybreak
1
or sunrise. The 1974 Dawenkou archaeological
report published six pictographs from Dawenkou,
Lingyanghe, and Qianzhai, all in Shandong
2
province. Since then, a series of similar discoveries
— at Lingyanghe, Dazhujia, and Hangtou in Shan-
3
dong province have been reported. An excavation
at Yuchisi, Mengcheng, Anhui province, is under-
way at this time. Several different pictographs on
burial zun urns unearthed at this site are identical
to those found in Shandong province, including the
typical "sun-fire (or moon)-mountain" seen here.
The furnishings that accompanied this zun, exca-
vated from Tomb 215 in 1995, included pottery ding,
guan, and hu vessels. 4
To date, more than twenty individual picto-
graphs have been found, 5 all dating to the late stage
of the Dawenkou culture — the third millennium
6
BCE. Some pictographs were found outside of the
Shandong area. Their stylized form is advanced —
well beyond simple pictures, marks, or decoration
— and they are very close to bronze or oracle-bone
inscriptions, which are indisputably recognized as
true early Chinese writing. The meaning of these
pictographs must have been widely known within
the Dawenkou culture.

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