Qijia culture
The Qijia culture ( Chinese 齐家 文化 , Pinyin Qíjiā Wénhuà , English Qijia Culture ) was a Neolithic to Chalcolithic culture in China that existed between about 2000 and 1600 BC. Existed and possibly developed copper processing. It was after the 1924 discovered locality Qijiaping named (齐家坪) located in the area of greater community Qijia of the circle Guanghe in the province of Gansu is located. The first discoveries of remains of the Qijia culture go back to the Swedish archaeologist Johan Gunnar Andersson .
The Qijia culture was widespread in Gansu , west of Qinghai , south of Ningxia, and west of Inner Mongolia on the banks of the Yellow River and its tributaries, the catchment area of the Wei He , Tao He , Daxia He, and Huang Shui rivers . A total of about 350 sites are known. The carriers of the Qijia culture settled in villages with adjoining cemeteries, their houses were rectangular and built at ground level, with some of them sunk into the ground inside. The fireplaces were round or square and were partly inside and partly outside the houses. The walls were made of wattle and daub, while the roofs were supported by pillars and beams. The dead were buried in individual graves, with grave goods in the form of stone or bone tools, oracle bones , pig jaws or ceramic vessels placed in the graves. In the cemeteries, rocks and remains of sacrificial animals were found in a circle.
At sites of the Qijia culture mainly yellow or yellow-brown ceramics ( xini hongtao细 泥 红陶 and jiasha hongtao夹砂 红陶 in the Chinese typology) with comb or furrow decorations were found. Typical of Qijia ceramics are jugs with a flattened bottom, a narrow neck, two curved, vertical handles and a widened beak. Some ceramic objects are painted with black muddy clay, with rhombic, checkerboard or reticulate patterns dominating, patterns with stylized frogs appear less often. Ceramic lids with knobs that are modeled on animal heads were also found. The tools of the Qijia culture were mainly made of stone and bone: knives, spoon-shaped eating utensils and axes made of bone were found. In addition, copper and bronze devices began to appear. It is possible, but not certain, that the Qijia culture was the origin of copper processing in Gansu. Around 50 copper artefacts were found in four sites , including tools such as knives, awls , chisels and hatchets, as well as jewelry such as finger rings and earrings. The objects were either forged or cast in molds with two valves , the copper was sometimes alloyed with lead or tin . A round mirror three millimeters thick and 89 millimeters in diameter, on the back of which there are two concentric star-shaped patterns, is an example of the development of copper processing by the Qijia people. Excavations in the Huoshaogou site , which is counted as a successor culture to Qijia, uncovered significantly more copper objects. The Erlitou culture may have adopted the technique of processing copper from the Qijia culture and developed it further.
While Anderson was of the opinion that he had found the earliest Neolithic Gansu culture with the Qijia culture , later excavations and radiocarbon dating have shown that Qijia was a successor to the western Yangshao culture and eastern at about the same time as later phases of the Longshan culture the distribution area of the Qijia culture existed.
The Qijiaping site (Qijiaping yizhi, 齐 家坪 遗址) has been on the list of monuments of the People's Republic of China (4-21) since 1996 . Another site is the Dahezhuang site (Dàhézhuāng yízhǐ, 大 何 庄 遗址) in the south of Dahezhuang in Yongjing , also in Gansu Province.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d Blent L. Pedersen: Qijia . In: Jane Turner (Ed.): The dictionary of art . tape 25 . Grove, Oxford 1996, ISBN 1-884446-00-0 , pp. 782 .
- ^ A b Robert Bagley: Shang Archeology . In: Michael Loewe and Edward L. Shaughnessy (Eds.): The Cambridge History of Ancient China . Cambridge University Press, 1999, ISBN 978-0-521-47030-8 , pp. 139-142 .