Page 69 - The Golden Age of Chinese Archaeology: Celebrated Discoveries from the People’s Republic of China

THE YANGSHAO Although the Majiayao culture was first identified by the Swedish archaeologist J. G. Andersson
in the early 19205, much remains unknown about it, and it continues to yield surprises. 1
CULTURE: In Gansu, as elsewhere in China, Majiayao enjoys a unique position because of the extra-
ordinary quality of its painted wares. These ceramics, which comprise a wide range of shapes,
MAJIAYAO from tall wide-mouthed storage jars and slender water containers to basins with gracefully
everted rims, are of an unrivaled elegance. Even more remarkable are their highly dynamic
painted designs, applied to the smooth, finely burnished surfaces. These designs are executed
in multiple parallel lines, often involving spiral-based configurations, and they are used to
decorate all manner of things, even children's pottery rattles. 2 Figural decoration, seen on
three of the Majiayao vessels in the exhibition, is, however, exceptional (cats. 6, 8, 9). Concen-

tric markings visible around the inner surfaces of the rims indicate that the vessels were
finished on a fast wheel. The wheel may also have been employed in the application of the
painted decoration.
Less is known than we might wish about the culture that sustained this exceptional ce-
ramic tradition and about the people in whose daily lives these vessels played a role. Generally
speaking, they were agriculturalists who lived in small villages and tilled their fields on the loess
terraces above the rivers and streams that cut through the area. Their dwellings, implements,
and the shapes of many of their vessels have much in common with the broad continuum of
fourth-millennium painted pottery cultures stretching eastward as far as present-day Henan
province. The cultural distinctiveness of Majiayao, on the other hand, is readily perceptible in
the straw-colored ware of their ceramics, which contrasts with the red ware typical of this re-
gion, and in the distinctive designs that decorate them.
The Majiayao sites are distributed from Lanzhou eastward along the Wei River roughly
to Shaanxi province, and westward along the upper reaches of the Yellow River and its tributar-
ies into Qinghai province. The combined evidence of stratigraphical sequences at several sites
in the Tianshui area has established that the Majiayao culture in this region was preceded by
a series of earlier cultures, including Banpo, as well as Miaodigou and Shilingxia. Majiayao, in

turn, was replaced at the end of the third millennium by the roughly contemporary and inter-
3
related cultures known as Keshengzhuang II and Qijia. The radiocarbon dates for the Majiayao
finds in this region cover a broad span of time, from the mid-fourth millennium to the early
centuries of the third millennium. 4
One of the most instructive Majiayao sites is Linjia, in Dongxiang, southwest of Lanzhou,
where excavations in 1977, revealed the foundations of some twenty-seven dwellings and a num-
5
ber of ashpits. The settlement was occupied, continuously or repeatedly, for a considerable
period of time, during which dwellings were abandoned and replaced by ones that were gener-
ally larger and more substantial.
The house foundations are roughly square in shape with a central hearth and a single
doorway leading to a small vestibule built at the front. During the earlier period, the founda-

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