Qinghai painted pottery information

Qinghai is known as the Kingdom of Painted Pottery, and Liuwan is known as the Hometown of Painted Pottery. It is a very concentrated place where painted pottery is unearthed in the world, and it is also the largest primitive clan settlement site and tomb group discovered and excavated in China so far.

1974 In the spring, villagers in the eastern agricultural area of Qinghai Province discovered an ancient cultural site while digging a canal. Subsequently, a mobile medical team of China People's Liberation Army learned about the cultural relics unearthed in Liuwan from the Provincial Cultural Bureau and sent samples such as pottery. This is the tomb of Gong * *, a famous primitive clan in Liuwan, Ledu. The Cultural Relics Group of the Provincial Cultural Bureau immediately organized on-the-spot investigation and collected some cultural relics such as painted pottery pots with beautiful shapes and unique patterns. One of them, like a painted pottery pot, attracted the attention of cultural relics archaeologists. The Provincial Bureau of Culture submitted a written report, suggesting an archaeological excavation of the cemetery. Approved by National Cultural Heritage Administration and Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. In the middle of July of the same year, the excavation of Liuwan cemetery officially began. According to textual research, Liuwan Cemetery belongs to Neolithic ancient human tombs, located on the platform of the north bank of the middle reaches of Huangshui River. According to the field survey, it is 450m long from north to south and 250m long from east to west, with a total area of112500m2. After seven years of hard excavation and arrangement, the Institute of Archaeology of China Academy of Sciences and the Qinghai Archaeological Team have excavated more than 1730 tombs here, and unearthed 37,925 cultural relics, including more than 1700 painted pottery relics. This 1730 tomb contains four types of Majiayao culture, such as Banshan, Machang, Qijia and Xindian, belonging to the Neolithic Age and lasting for 1500 years. The comprehensive disclosure of cemeteries has preliminarily clarified the distribution law and time sequence of these four cultural types of tombs, providing a number of relatively new and good physical examples for studying the origin of private ownership and class.

Most of the tombs in this cemetery are on the second step in the north of Liuwan Village. Its scope starts from Liu Ma Highway in the east, reaches Shagou in the west, relies on Liuwanpingding in the north and reaches Daxia Canal in the south. The cemetery is high in the north and low in the south, surrounded by east-west platforms, with a total area of 1 12500 square meters. Most of the tombs are vertical-hole earthen pit tombs, which are rectangular or rounded on the plane, followed by soil cave tomb, with a pyramid-shaped mound and a convex plane. Insert wooden sticks and boards at the entrance of the tomb and seal the door. This tomb is the earliest known soil cave tomb in China. There are many wooden coffins in the tomb, which have two shapes, one is trapezoidal wooden coffins with big heads and small heads, and the other is rectangular wooden coffins with wooden boxes, that is, a log is cut in the middle, which looks like a wooden boat. Its burial methods include single burial and joint burial of two or more people, with a maximum of seven people.

The way of burial in this cemetery is very special. Among them, the tombs of many people in the Mid-levels are mostly layered, and there is no separation between people. There are men and women, old and young, and there is a big age gap. It seems that two generations have been buried. Machang-style tombs are mostly buried side by side, adult men and women are buried together, and adults and children are buried together. Most of the tombs in Qijia culture are buried side by side, but the burial style of men and women is different from that in the past: men are mostly upright on their backs, and women are mostly sideways or bent over, which seems to be a couple's grave.

Burials in this cemetery generally have funerary objects in different quantities. There were only two or three pieces in the early stage and nearly a hundred pieces in the later stage, reflecting the polarization between the rich and the poor at the end of primitive society. Its funerary objects include not only production tools such as stone axes, spears, chisels and knives, but also various household appliances made of pottery. Among them, there are painted pottery urns in the Mid-levels, and there are pottery bowls, pots, two-ear pots and one-ear pots in Qijia culture. Painted pottery pots and gourd-shaped painted pottery pots unearthed here have naked faces and unique shapes, which are rare in the world.

Racecourse culture was named after it was first discovered in Minhe Racecourse Plateau in Qinghai in 1924. Widely distributed in western Gansu and Hehuang area of Qinghai, about 4000 years ago. Among the painted pottery unearthed in Liuwan, Machang is the most abundant and precious, and its quantity, beautiful shape and numerous patterns are the highest among other ancient cultures. Unearthed painted pottery pots have various patterns, such as parallel stripes, zigzag patterns, vortex patterns, gourd patterns, four-circle patterns and six-circle patterns. Some painted pottery symbols are also unique. Pottery is the daily necessities of our ancestors. Painted pottery itself is an art, which is not only a sign of advanced pottery-making technology, but also the crystallization of ancient people's wisdom. The surface of painted pottery is orange-red or purple-red, with geometric or animal-shaped patterns of black lines, which is more colorful and gorgeous. The shapes of painted pottery are mainly pots, pots, cans, urns, beans and bowls, which are novel and diverse.

More than 0/000 Machang-style tombs were excavated in Liuwan Cemetery, accounting for 60% of the total tombs. Due to the identity of the owner of the tomb and the different possessions, the scale of the tomb and the number of painted pottery buried with it are also different, which can be generally divided into three types: large, medium and small. There are more than 0 pieces of pottery 10 in small tombs, and there are only more than 30 pieces at most. There are about 50 or 60 funerary objects in medium-sized tombs, and more than 70 can be described as large tombs. The excavated Tomb 564 is about 5 meters long, 3 meters wide and 3 meters deep. The owner of the grave is a man in his forties. Many cultural relics are buried in this tomb. Excluding stone knives, axes, chisels and a turquoise ornament, only pottery has 9 1 piece, among which painted pottery is absolutely dominant.

On May 28th, 2002, China Liuwan Painted Pottery Museum was successfully completed. The museum is divided into two floors, which looks like a dancing painted pottery basin unearthed in Qinghai. The museum covers an area of 5,845 square meters, with a building area of 2,222 square meters and an exhibition area of 1.500 square meters, with a total investment of 4.5 million yuan.

Liuwan Cemetery is the largest and most intact primitive clan social cemetery in the Yellow River valley of China. Painted pottery land has therefore become an important symbol of Neolithic culture in Qinghai Province. The newly-built painted pottery museum will display a large number of representative painted pottery with different cultural types, patterns, shapes and ornamentation, among which there are many treasures of ancient painted pottery art in China.