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Painted pottery gang urn
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Height 47 (18'A), diam. at mouth 32.7 (12 A),
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diam. at base 19.5 (7 /s)
Neolithic Period, Henan Yangshao Culture
(c. 3500-3000 BCE)
From Yancun, Linru, Henan Province

The National Museum of Chinese History, Beijing

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The realistic images painted on this vessel are a
surprising — and seemingly unique — departure
from the geometric patterns that had dominated
painted ceramics in the Central Plains area during
the preceding millennia. This vessel is from the very
end of the Henan Yangshao period, when painted
pottery, supplanted by a new tradition of unpainted
gray and black wares emphasizing silhouette, had
all but vanished throughout the region. This vessel
from Linru, just south of Yanshi, also takes us east-
the faunal remains at Banpo sites, the lack of tusks ward along the Yellow River into the area where the
on the faces on the Wangjiayinwa and Jiangzhai earliest Bronze Age settlements were later to arise.
vessels indicates that these images are pigs, rather Nearly the full height of the vessel's wall is
than boars. 5 occupied by the separate images of a long-legged
The graves at the Wangjiayinwa settlement, white wading bird, probably a heron, shown with
unlike those at other Banpo sites, have a small, a fish hanging from the tip of its beak, and, to the
rounded compartment extending outward from right, a large, hafted axe (fig. i). The remarkably
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the burial pit on the occupant's left side. These natural, lifelike appearance of the bird owes in part
compartments were designed to hold the ceramic to its being depicted without the heavy black con-
vessels, which normally would have been placed tour lines seen on the fish and the axe, and to the
in the burial pit itself. The unusual nature of these particular care with which the long beak and knees
burials suggests the emergence of local variations are portrayed. An incised line dividing the upper
in the westernmost regions of the Banpo cultural and lower mandibles adds to the realistic effect.
system during its final phase. LF-H The only unnaturalistic element — the treatment of
the eye as a large black circle with a dot inside —
1 Excavated in 1981 (M 53:7); published: Gansu 19845, 1-17,
58; pi. 2:2; Zhang i99ob, cat. no. 23; color pis. 5; 25, far left. conveys a sense of watchful alertness and engages
2 Gansu 19845, 7; Xi'an 1988,1:243; Wagner 1992, us directly in its line of vision. The axe, on the other
1:32-33; 2: pi. 3:2-3. hand, is described with a view to technical detail,
3 See Zhongguo 1963, color pi. 1:2.
4 Xi'an 1988, 2: color pi. 10. Two water jars with baluster- and even includes a description of the woven
shaped necks from late Banpo burials (M 262 and M 315) leather grip wrapped about the haft.
at the site of Longgangsi, near Nancheng, in southwestern But the highly descriptive nature of these
Shaanxi province, exhibit similar designs, except that the
faces on these vessels seem to be human; see Shaanxi images should not lead us to mistake them as mere
1990,119, fig. 84:1 - 2; 169, fig. 111:4 - 5; pi. 80:1 - 3. decoration. The combination of these two osten-
5 Zhongguo 1963, 257-258; Zhongguo 1983^ 146-150; sibly incongruous images suggests instead that they
Xi'an 1988, i, 521-525.
6 Gansu 19845, 4, fig. 7; 5, fig. n. were symbolic in intent. In all probability, the image
of the white heron signified a place name or the

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