Page 77 - The Golden Age of Chinese Archaeology: Celebrated Discoveries from the People’s Republic of China

spheres of the circle follow an almost imperceptible
curve from one side to the other, producing the
effect of a dome-shaped surface. The design is
completed by multiple tangential lines painted
just beneath the rim, which converge at three equi-
distant points along the wall's circumference. The
point of convergence to the right of the figure's
head is marked by a hooklike flourish. A section on
the left side of the bowl, where the frog's front foot
is located, and a smaller section on the right have
been restored.
Whether the figure at the center of the Shizhao-
cun bowl is meant to be a frog or a turtle is not
entirely certain. While the round body and possibly
8 the head might suggest a turtle, the legs and the
three-toed feet do not. Two similar images painted
Painted pottery bo bowl on the interior of a Banpo bowl from the Jiangzhai
site at Lintong, in Shaanxi province, are clearly
1
Height 5 (2), diam. 16.5 (2 / 2 ) 2
Neolithic Period, Majiayao Culture those of spotted frogs.
(€.3000-2500 BCE) This vessel and the following guan jar (cat. 9)
From Shizhaocun, Tianshui, Gansu Province were both excavated in the 19805 from the impor-
tant stratified site of Shizhaocun, near Tianshui,
The Institute of Archaeology, CASS, Beijing located just south of the Wei River in eastern
Gansu. The site revealed six superposed strata,
1
Within this small, rounded bowl is the figure of documenting a sequence of cultural phases and
a froglike creature, who is seen from above, as their associated ceramic traditions spanning
if it had been captured and put inside. The vessel a period of three millennia, from approximately
and its figural decoration are thus integral to each 5000 to 2000 BCE. The present bowl was recovered
other, the one serving playfully as a setting or con- from the second stratum, along with a pointed-
text for the other. The creature's back is shaped as bottom water flask decorated in the same manner
a broad oval containing a large circle at the center, as cat. 6. Both these vessels are regarded as some-
which is divided down the middle by three lines what older than the guan, which was unearthed
into two hemispheres, filled by a dense network of from a different location at the site. 3 LF-H
intersecting diagonal lines. The small rounded head
is almost entirely black, save for the circular eyes 1 Excavated in 1982 (T 244.3:16); published: Zhongguo
Ganqing 1990, 577-586, pi. 1:3-4; Goepper 1995, no. 5;
and the mouth, which appear in reserve. The two
Rawson 1996, no. 4.
front legs, ending in three toes each, curve forward, 2 See Xi'an 1988, 2: color pi. i.
seeming to press against the vessel wall; the rear 3 Zhongguo Ganqing 1990, 577-586.
legs mirror them, turning back toward each other.
The asymmetrical relationship between the oval
outline of the figure and the circular shape it con-
tains, as well as the fact that the oval is placed
slightly aslant in relation to the head, endows the
creature with a hint of animation. In an equally
subtle manner, the lines separating the hemi-

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