Page 118 - The Golden Age of Chinese Archaeology: Celebrated Discoveries from the People’s Republic of China

THE L I A N C Z H U The Liangzhu culture is named after a small village near Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, where
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archaeologists first discovered prehistoric artifacts in 1936. Subsequent fieldwork and
C U LT U R E ac ademic research have mapped out an extensive distribution of some three hundred sites in
southern Jiangsu, northern Zhejiang, and Shanghai and established a chronology spanning
the period from 3200 to 2000 BCE. The discovery and recognition of Liangzhu and the cultures
that preceded it have had a profound impact on Chinese archaeology, fundamentally altering
the diffusionist theory that treated the Yellow River valley as the sole center of all prehistoric
cultures and prompting scholars to consider a multitude of regional cultures as contributors
to the formation of Chinese civilization.
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The Liangzhu economy was primarily agricultural. The cultivation of rice in the lower
Yangzi River valley dates back to around 5000 BCE. By the third millennium BCE, farming
had reached an advanced stage: the residents of Liangzhu had developed sophisticated farming
tools and had begun to practice irrigation. Hunting and gathering, fishing, and animal hus-
bandry rounded out the subsistence economy, and, together with rice farming, constituted

a high-yielding, diverse, and above all, secure blend of resources that provided the surpluses
necessary for many handicraft industries, including stoneworking, pottery, basketry, woodwork-
ing, textile crafts, and jade carving.
The Liangzhu were the most advanced of their contemporaries in the craft of stonework-
ing. Stone tools — plows, weeding hoes, sickles, chisels, knives and arrowheads — were well
made and smoothly finished; battle axes (typically with a large perforation, a thin blade and
a lustrous polish) represent the highest technological achievement. Other Liangzhu crafts
demonstrate a comparable level of technical sophistication. Wheel-thrown pottery vessels have
graceful silhouettes, thin and even walls, and smooth surfaces; most are colored black and dec-
orated with fine engravings, but some have painted surface patterns. Textiles found at a Late
Liangzhu site at Qianshanyang in northern Zhejiang include ramie and silk, the latter finely
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and skillfully woven from a cultivated thread, indicating an advanced stage of sericulture. At
Qianshanyang, archaeologists discovered woven bamboo objects — baskets, bins, buckets, and
floor mats — that display a rich variety of weaving patterns, some of which are still in use to this
day. Lacquer had been developed by the Middle Liangzhu period (c. 2800-2400 BCE); traces
on pottery vessels and woodwork indicate that Liangzhu craftsmen used colored lacquer as a
surface coating and for decoration. A recent excavation in northern Zhejiang province has

yielded several pieces of lacquerware; an extremely thin-walled wine cup (2-3 millimeters, in-
cluding the wood core), inlaid with small pieces of jade, retains its original red color. 4
Recent finds from a dwelling site at Longnan, Jiangsu province, suggest that Liangzhu
residences were concentrated on riverbanks, where the inhabitants had easy access to water for
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domestic and agricultural use, as well as for transport. The houses were semi-subterranean,
with pounded-earth floors and straw-thatched roofs raised on wooden posts, and were sur-
rounded by pigpens and storage pits. Remains of what appears to have been a pounded-earth

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