Page 71 - The Golden Age of Chinese Archaeology: Celebrated Discoveries from the People’s Republic of China

until about the year 2000 BCE, when it appears in association with the Qijia culture. For the
present, however, the possibility of some form of metalworking during the late phase at Linjia
is an issue perhaps best left open.
More is known about the Majiayao dwellings than about their cemeteries. One Majiayao
burial, however, located at Hetaozhuang, near Minhe, in Qinghai province (M i), has attracted
considerable attention because of its unusually large size and the quantity of artifacts it con-
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tained. The burial pit itself was square, rather than rectangular, and measured four meters
on each side. On the chamber floor, at the depth of two and one-half meters, were discovered
the traces of a coffinlike construction made of wooden planks, which was about three meters
square — almost as large as the pit itself. For several reasons, including the fact that the skull
was missing from the skeletal remains, the archaeologists have concluded that M i was the
secondary interment of an individual who had been removed from an earlier grave and given
a final (and presumably more opulent) burial. In all, the Hetaozhuang burial contained 36
pottery vessels, many of them closely similar in their decoration to those unearthed from
Linjia, along with 215 bone beads, and 10 of turquoise. The remains of a sacrificed sheep and
the skulls of several pigs were also found in the grave.

Further discoveries of Majiayao ceramics have been made only very recently at Zongri,
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near Tongde, in eastern Qinghai province. This site, which is of great interest, has yielded over
200 burials and a number of ash pits. Some of these graves contained the traces of timber
coffins large enough to accommodate four or five pottery vessels, in addition to the human
remains.
The contents of the tombs were surprising in several regards. In many of the tombs, in-
cluding M 157 and M 192, finely potted basins and storage vessels decorated in the Majiayao
style were accompanied by other vessels of a totally distinct type with regard to their ware, their
shapes, and their decoration. These vessels, called "Type C" by the archaeologists, are made
from a coarse siliceous clay and coated with a clay slip. They take the form of often imperfectly
shaped amphora-like storage vessels, simple rimless bowls, and one-handled jugs. Their com-
paratively crude decoration, executed in a purplish red pigment, consists chiefly of parallel
rows of zigzag or scalloped lines, and other designs resembling tassels painted around the ves-
sel below the neck. The same patterns are used to decorate the interiors of bowls. 9
The coexistence of these two types of wares in the same Zongri burials points to the
presence of two separate cultural groups in this region, which must have been in close contact.
The most unexpected aspect of the M 152 and M 192 burials, however, is the very early date
assigned to them. The calibrated radiocarbon dates ascertained for tombs M 157 and M 192
are 3700 BCE ±140 and 3735 BCE ±225, respectively. 10 If these dates can be trusted, they would
indicate that the Majiayao culture was in existence fully five hundred years earlier than has
been previously assumed on the basis of radiocarbon dates determined for the Majiayao strata

at sites in Gansu province, such as Shizhaocun, and, in turn, they would require a reassessment

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