Page 61 - China, 5000 years : innovation and transformation in the arts

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The cong is the most idiosyncratic of all jades. It
may be defined by its shape: a tube that is prismatic
on the outside and circular and open from top to
bottom inside. The Neolithic jade cong is decorated
with animal and/or semihuman masks on the

prismatically shaped corners of its outer square. In
later ritual texts the cong is also defined as a symbol
of the earth.

Liangzhu jades derive almost entirely from burials, Fig. 3. Mound remains of the earthen outdoor altar at
evidently of a ruling, religious elite. These differ
from Hongshan burials not only in their larger and Yaoslian ,Yuhang county, Zhcjiang Province. Neolithic
more complex jade assemblage, but in their design; period, Liangzhu culture (ca. 3600-ca. 2000 bce).

they were part of a man-made earthen mound with

raised outdoor altar (figs. 3-4). Apparently, such

raised earthen mounds with jade-filled burials

functioned initially as outdoor ritual altars and
subsequently as burial grounds called jitan mudi
("joint sacrificial and burial centers") and were
locally described as tuzhu jinzita ("earth-
constructed pyramids"). 22

Recently, it has been proposed that Sidun, in

Jiangsu Province, and possibly twenty other related

burial-ground mounds were part of larger city- I CEMETERY 1
II CEMETERY 2
states that were cosmologically designed in the fol III CEMETERY 3
IV CEMETERY 4
form of the cong, the ritual jade implement

(figs. 2B, 4A:2, 23 At present, however, only El
5).

Sidun, Zhaolingshan, and Mojiaoshan appear to

possess adequate features that qualify them as —sm
candidates for this ideal plan (fig. 4A). 24 The L^JJ

IV III

proposed plan encompasses a central earthen altar

and four axially located burial grounds as well as

many residences and defensive moats: the Sidun

mound complex measures 900,000 square meters in tl^
area, and the mound proper is over 100 meters
BURIAL CENTER
wide and over 20 meters high. 25 This design
CLAN BURIAL AREA
conjures up the look of today's surviving Angkor SACRIFICIAL ALTAR
HUMAN AND ANIMAL
Wat in Cambodia, Tikal in Guatemala, and the SACRIFICIAL AREA

religious structure called "Bright Hall" (mingtang)

with circular moat (piyong) mentioned in later

Chinese ritual texts. 2 '' In any case, what emerges in

the archaeological data is a new and extremely

sophisticated phase of settlement: a city-state with

spiritual center, outlying towns, a defensive system,

and competitive arts serving both religious and

political needs. This archaeological evidence of the

Liangzhu culture defines the heart of the so-called

Jade Age, not only in the sophisticated architectural

design of a spiritual center but because over 90

percent of the ruling elite's burial goods were jades.

For protohistoric Chinese the cong was evidently AREA EXCAVATED
more than a talisman; it appears to have been a
mechanism of ritual and spiritual control. Fig. 4. Reconstruction of i. \:n outdoor altar at Sidun,
Positioned in four directions, it symbolized the Jiangsu Province, with (A:z) drawing ofjade cong. and
power to petition or exorcize spiritual and demonic (B) outdoor altar at Zhaolingshan, Jiangsu Province.
forces in a universe that was conceived as Neolithic period, Liangzhu culture (ca. 3600-ca. zooo
prismatically square. It is no accident that the
shamanic jangxiang, or u'tt, the major exorcizer of

JADE AS MATERIAL AND EPOCH 59