Page 97 - The Golden Age of Chinese Archaeology: Celebrated Discoveries from the People’s Republic of China

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Terra-cotta torso of a pregnant woman
Height 5 (2)
Hongshan Culture, c. 4700-2920 BCE
From Dongshanzui, Kazuo, Liaoning Province
Liaoning Provincial Institute of Archaeology,
Shenyang

In 1979, archaeologists excavated a round, altarlike
stone structure and a square stone structure at
Dongshanzui. Surrounding the round stone struc-
ture, 2.5 meters in diameter, nearly twenty frag-
ments of terra-cotta figures were discovered,
including a half-life-size figure, sitting cross-legged
with its hands clasped together in front of the body,
and this terra-cotta torso of a small, naked pregnant
1
woman ; the latter and a similar torso in particular
2
have intrigued scholars. In 1963, a tiny pottery
sculpture of a naked torso was excavated at Xishui-
3
quan, Chifeng, Inner Mongolia, but attracted little
attention. The Chinese did not, apparently, have a
tradition of sculpting naked figures comparable, for
example, to classical Greek and Roman sculpture.
Anatomically detailed, naked pottery or wooden
funerary figures were fashioned during the Han
dynasty, but their bodies were clothed. 4 Sculptures
from this period exhibit subtle differences in facial
features that served to distinguish one figure from
another. Among the most famous of these are the
terra-cotta figures from the pits near the Qin First
Emperor's mausoleum (cats. 123-128).
The artist of the Hongshan torsos stands out
in his adept representation of the human form. In
comparison, other contemporary sculpture is more
primitive and naive (fig. i). Perhaps because of the
artist's skill and the uniqueness of sculpted repre-
sentations of nudes, this figure and another (not
exhibited here) have been admired as China's own
version of Venus; she is sometimes identified as a
fertility goddess. 5
An unbaked clay female head excavated from
the female spirit temple also relates to the Hong-
6
shan sculpture. The head's proportions are realis-
tic and her expression affable. Her eyes were inlaid
with turquoise, while her slightly opened lips con-

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