Page 79 - The Golden Age of Chinese Archaeology: Celebrated Discoveries from the People’s Republic of China

THE H O N C S H A N During the fifth and fourth millennia BCE, a prehistoric culture, currently known as the Hong-
shan, developed in northeastern China and coexisted with the Yangshao culture. 1 Concentrated
C U LT U R E in present-day western Liaoning province and southeastern Inner Mongolia, its geographic
range extended east to the western edge of the Liao River in Liaoning province, west to north-
ern Hubei province, south beyond the line now formed by the Great Wall, and north past the
Xilamulun (or Western Liao) River as far as the Mongolian Steppe. Evidence from the southern
and western peripheries shows that there were contacts between the Yangshao and the Hong-
shan cultures. 2
The identification of the Hongshan culture has been a process spanning nearly a century.
In the early 19005, Japanese and French expeditions conducted surveys in what we now know to
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have been the culture's geographic periphery. In 1921, the Swedish archaeologist J. G. Anders-
son recovered remains from a cave at Shaguotun (in the area of Jinxi, Liaoning province), which
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he identified as a Neolithic sacrificial site. In 1935, Japanese archaeologists under the supervi-
sion of Kosaku Hamada (1881-1938), excavated ruins at a site in Chifeng, Inner Mongolia,

called Hongshanhou (literally, "the rear area of the red mountain") that yielded stone tools and
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pottery vessels identified by Japanese scholars as prehistoric relics; Chinese archaeologists of
the 19405 believed that these finds were those of a "blended culture" that reflected interactions
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between the Yangshao of central China and northern microlithic cultures. In the 19505, Chi-
nese archaeologists began to identify such remains as those of a distinct culture, which they
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termed Hongshan after the type site. The finds suggested to some scholars that the Hongshan
had developed under the influence of the Yangshao culture — even that they represent a phase
of the Yangshao (although the latter identification remains the subject of debate).
Finds from the late 19705 and early 19805 dramatically broadened our understanding of
the Hongshang culture. Rescue surveys and excavations conducted in Liaoning province during
the 19705 discovered various type of jade carvings — coiled dragons, owls, turtles, cloudlike
plaques — and painted pottery cylinders, which archaeologists have dated to the Hongshan
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culture. Planned surveys and excavations rendered since 1979 at Dongshanzui of Kazuo, and
Niuhelian (both in Liaoning province) have yielded similar jades from stone tombs, as well as
terra-cotta figures placed near a circular altar, and clay sculptures from what is believed to have
been a female spirit temple (Nushenmiao). 9 Jades and human sculptures constitute the predomi-
nant artifacts of the Hongshan culture.
So far, more than four hundred Hongshan sites have been identified in the region of Inner
Mongolia, while more than one hundred sites have been discovered within Liaoning province. 10
Large-scale excavations and surveys at Niuheliang (where the counties of Lingyuan and Jianping

meet) of Liaoning province have found more than twenty sites dated to the late period of the
Hongshan culture — the fourth millennium BCE; sixteen of these sites have been designated "lo-
calities"; thirteen of these localities are stone-covered burial mounds. The mounds, built on top,
or on the high slopes of small hills — sometimes one to a hill, sometimes several — often contain

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