Page 26 - The Arts of China, By Michael Sullivan Good Book

l Pan-p'o-ts'un, Sherai. Neolithic
houses, reconstructed. After Kwang-
chih Chang.
houses excavated at Ta-ho-ts'un near Chengchow, the plaster
walls of which were actually baked to give them a hard and dura-
ble surface.
The Pan-p'o potters made both a coarse grey or red pottery and
a fine red ware burnished and then painted in black with geometric
designs and occasionally with fishes and human faces (see Fig. 5).
They seem not to have known the potter's wheel, but made their
vessels by coiling long strips of clay. From clay they also made
spindle whorls and even hairpins, but the finer objects such as
needles, fishhooks, spoons, and arrowheads were made of bone.
Part of the villages of Pan-p'o and Ta-ho-ts'un have been roofed
over and preserved as museums of Chinese Neolithic culture.
The painted pottery found first by Andcrsson, and later in
many other sites in Honan and Kansu, has not been matched in
quality and beauty by any Neolithic wares discovered since. It
consists chiefly of mortuary urns, wide and deep bowls, and tall
6