Page 113 - The Golden Age of Chinese Archaeology: Celebrated Discoveries from the People’s Republic of China

26b syncratic and even whimsical. These forms do not
reflect the strict symmetry of those on the other
vessel, and instead take shape as heavily outlined,
larger and smaller units painted in pink, which
move across the surface in waves, slowly following
one another. The erstwhile spiral nuclei, shaped as
squared ovals, hang like pastel bubbles under the
crests of the larger units. Against the open, whitish
ground above, smaller squared circles in the same
pastel hue float high up on the vessel wall. Together
with the smaller dark ovals between them these
shapes conceivably had meaning as celestial
forms. LF-H

1 Excavated in (a) 1981 (M 3015:42) (b) 1979 (M 3002:49);
published: (a) Zhongguo Shanxi 1983, pi. 1:1; (a and b):
Sugaya 1993 19, pi. 2:1-2; (b) Zhongguo 1993, pi. 4:2;
Zhongguo 1993, 45, fig. 36:2.
2 Zhongguo Shanxi 1983, pi. 5:1.
3 Zhongguo Shanxi 1983, pi. 5:1, 4. Examples of ceramic
stoves and the containers that fit them are known in the
same Shanxi area as early as Yangshao times (Zhongguo
1 1 :i
959'P -39 -3-5-6).

as the area of red paint begins to function simul-
taneously as ground and as an integral part of the
spiraling configurations.
A narrow band of ocher at the base of the
broad, flaring neck marks the upper limit of the
decorated frieze. Both the neck and the inner edge
of the rim are painted black. The strongly canted
base is left plain, revealing the buff-colored ware.
The vessel comes from tomb M 3015, one of the
most richly furnished of all the Taosi burials. 2
The second vessel (b), a larger version of the
first, has the same dramatic silhouette created by
the oblique planes of the shoulder and the base
and the sharp angle where they join. The strongly
receding base indicates that these vessels were
designed to rest in the circular openings of spe-
cially made ceramic stoves, which are found in the
same burials. 3
The painted designs on (b) have a character
all their own, which might be described as ideo-

112 LATE P R E H I S T O R I C CHIN A