The cultural form of the late Neolithic Age, Dawenkou Culture
The Dawenkou Culture (4300 BC - 2500 BC) is a typical cultural form of the patriarchal clan society in the late Neolithic Age. . Centered on the Taishan area, it stretches from the coast of the Yellow Sea in the east, to the eastern part of the Luxi Plain in the west, to the south bank of the Bohai Sea in the north, and to the present-day Huaibei area of ??Jiangsu Province in the south. A small number of such remains have also been discovered in Anhui and Henan provinces. Because it was first discovered in Dawenkou, people named the cultural relics represented by the Dawenkou site "Dawenkou Culture". The discovery of the Dawenkou Culture pushed the history of primitive culture in the lower reaches of the Yellow River forward by more than 2,000 years from the Longshan Culture more than 4,000 years ago. In the late tombs of the Dawenkou Culture, couples and couples with children were buried together. This marked the end of the matrilineal society where only the mother was known but not the father, and the beginning or the entry into a patrilineal clan society.
The Dawenkou Culture dates from approximately 4040 BC to 2240 BC, and lasts for about 2000 years. According to the stratigraphic stacking relationship and relic characteristics, it can be divided into three phases: early, middle and late. There are muddy and sand-added pottery. In the early period, red pottery was dominant. In the later period, the proportion of gray and black pottery increased, and white pottery and eggshell pottery appeared. Mainly handmade, later developed into wheel-made pottery, with a firing temperature of 900-1000°C. The types of utensils include tripod, kettle, bean, bean, zun, single-eared cup, goblet-shaped cup, high-collared jar, kettle with back, etc. Many pottery has a smooth surface and is decorated with scratches, string patterns, basket patterns, circles, triangular prints, holes, etc. Painted pottery is rare but full of characteristics. The colors are red, black and white, and the patterns include circles, geometry, flowers and leaves, etc.
The Dawenkou Culture was first discovered in 1959. After excavation, it was determined to be the remains of the late Neolithic Age. The archaeological community is about to name the Dawenkou site and similar cultural relics as the Dawenkou Culture. Subsequently, the Dawenkou Cultural Site in Shandong was excavated several times in 1974, 1977, and 1978. The site is rich in connotations, including tombs, house sites, cellars, etc. The unearthed daily utensils mainly include tripods, beans, pots, pots, bowls, plates, cups and other utensils, which are divided into painted pottery, red pottery, white pottery, gray pottery and black pottery. Especially the painted pottery vessels have fine and well-proportioned patterns and regular geometric patterns. The production tools include finely ground stone axes, stone adzes, stone chisels and ground bone tools, and the finely ground bone needles are almost comparable to today's needles. The tombs are mainly buried with people lying on their backs and stretched out. It is a common custom to bury tusks along with them. Some also bury pig heads and bones to symbolize wealth.
The discovery of the Dawenkou Culture found the origin of the Longshan Culture in Shandong, and also provided important clues for the study of the original culture in the Huanghuai River Basin and the coastal areas of Shandong, Jiangsu and Zhejiang.
[Edit this paragraph] Characteristics
(1) Mainly agricultural production, animal husbandry, supplemented by hunting and fishing. Numerous village ruins of varying sizes have been discovered. The locations chosen for the village ruins range from mesas near the river banks to highlands in the plains. Agriculture is mainly based on planting millet. In a cellar at the Sanlihe site, 1 cubic meter of carbonized millet was found. A large number of bones of cattle, sheep, pigs, dogs and other domestic animals were also unearthed.
Dawenkou Cultural Site Excavation Site
(2) Most of the houses are above-ground buildings, but there are also a few semi-underground houses. A nearly square house from the Dawenkou Culture was excavated at the Chengzi site. The foundation was 4.65 meters long from east to west, 4.55 meters long from north to south, and the door faced south. The construction method is to first dig a 0.5-meter foundation trench on the ground, and fill the trench with soil and compact it. There are dense post holes in the base of the wall, and there are four post holes in the interior. In the Dawenkou Culture tombs in Dadunzi, a model of a pottery house was also unearthed. The facade is rectangular, with short eaves and a pointed roof. It has an open door at the front and windows on three sides. The door and surrounding walls are engraved with the image of a dog. One piece has a triangular facade, with a door at the front and windows on the left, right and back walls. The other piece is circular in cross section, with a short eaves, a pointed roof, five kidneys, and no windows. These pottery house models provide us with a quite vivid representation of the shapes of Dawenkou cultural houses.
(3) The ash pits of the Dawenkou Culture include circular vertical holes and oval vertical holes, which may have been originally used as cellars for storing things. There are also irregular-shaped ash pits whose mouth is larger than the bottom.
(4) The production tools of the Dawenkou Culture are still mainly stone tools, with some bone tools, horn tools and clam tools. Stone tools include shovels, adzes, axes, chisels, knives, daggers, spears, etc. Some stone shovels and stone axes have round holes drilled into them. There are also some stone shovels and stone adzes with handles. Bone weapons include sickles, fish darts, arrowheads, daggers and spears. Horned weapons include hoes, darts, arrowheads, and daggers. Clam vessels include sickles and arrowheads. There are also a small number of pottery net pendants and pottery spinning wheels. There are some changes in the stone tools, bone tools and horn tools, and they can be divided into early, middle and late phases according to the layers in which they were unearthed.
(5) The pottery making technology of Dawenkou Culture has been greatly improved compared to before. There are four types of pottery: red pottery, gray pottery, black pottery and white pottery. The pottery decoration is most distinctive with carvings and weaving patterns. Common patterns include tapered patterns, additional pile patterns, string patterns, scratched patterns and basket patterns. There is not much painted pottery. The painted pottery is painted in black and red with geometric patterns such as parallel lines, chords, leaves, petals, and eight-pointed stars. Three-legged pottery and ring-footed pottery are popular. The shapes of the vessels include pot-shaped tripod, bowl-shaped tripod, pot-shaped tripod, back pot, long-necked pot, deep-belly pot, high-handled bean, etc. High-handled cups and white pottery are the most characteristic pottery in Dawenkou culture. In the early, middle and late periods, the color, decoration and shape of the pottery changed slightly. In the early days, the pottery color was mainly red pottery, with some gray pottery and black gray pottery.
In the middle period, red pottery decreased and gray pottery increased, including some black pottery and white pottery. In the late period, the number of black pottery increased greatly, and there were also a small amount of red pottery, gray pottery and white pottery. The production method of pottery was mainly hand-made in the early period, and wheel-making gradually increased in the later period. Pottery decorations include conical thorn patterns, scratched patterns and a small amount of painted pottery in the early stage. The painted pottery mostly has black colored line stripes and leaf vein patterns. The main shapes of the vessels include cauldron-shaped tripods, bowl-shaped tripods, pot-shaped tripods with small mouths and handles, and flat-bottomed bowls with narrow mouths. There are also pottery bowls with colorful decorations on the upper abdomen, high-handled beans, high-handled goblets, and double-eared pots. In the middle period, additional pile patterns, basket patterns, embossed patterns and carved patterns appeared, as well as painted pottery with black ocher and red colors. Painted pottery patterns include straight lines, diagonal lines, petal patterns composed of arcs, and eight-pointed star patterns. The types of pottery in the middle period increased significantly compared with the early period. They mainly include pot-shaped tripods with small mouth and deep belly, bowl-shaped tripods, bowl-shaped tripods, pots with small mouth and deep belly, flat-bottomed pots, three-legged scorpions, narrow-mouthed bowls, and high-handled trumpet-shaped base beans. Small-mouthed long-necked neti pot, ring-footed statue, high-handled cup, basin, Gui, spoon and colander, etc. Late pottery decorations include string patterns, additional pile patterns, basket patterns, carving patterns, etc., while painted pottery is mainly decorated with scroll patterns. The types of utensils include pot-shaped tripods, thin belly-backed pots (including white pottery), wide-shouldered pots, high-handled beans, bag-footed pots (including white pottery), three-footed pots, high-handled beans, cups with handles, long-necked pots, etc.
(6) The sculptures and handicrafts of Dawenkou Culture are not only numerous in number, but also of high artistic level. Most of them are funerary objects in tombs. The sculptures include carved ivory tubes, ivory congs, ivory combs, carved bone beads, carved bone tubes, bone combs, carved ivory decorations, bone tubes inlaid with turquoise, carved bone daggers, perforated jade shovels, jade beads, and ceramic animals. These sculptures are very finely made and have beautiful shapes. They are distinctive works of art in Dawenkou culture.
(7) The tombs of the Dawenkou Culture are mostly buried in centralized cemeteries. The tombs in each cemetery are arranged in order, and the heads of the deceased are in the same direction. Most of the tomb chambers are rectangular pits with vertical pits. Some have only coffins, but some have both coffins and coffins. The burial style is generally for a single person to be buried with his or her body stretched out, but there are also two or more people buried together. Many people were buried together, ranging from three to as many as twenty-three people. Two persons were buried together in tombs, including those of the same sex and those of opposite sexes. And there are primary burials or secondary burials in joint tombs. In addition, some headless burials, corpseless burials and "move-out burials" (that is, moving part of the bones in the tomb to other places, while still retaining some of the skeletons of the deceased in the original burial tomb) were also discovered. Burial styles include bent-limb burial, prone burial and overlapping burial. Most of the tombs do not contain any burial objects. Among the tombs with burial objects, the number of burial objects varies greatly. The least is 1 or 2 pieces, the most is more than 100 pieces. For example, Dawenkou M10 is the tomb of an elderly woman. The tomb pit is 4.2 meters long from east to west and 3.2 meters wide from north to south. There is a two-story platform and a painted coffin at the bottom of the tomb. The funerary objects include 3 strings of 77 stone ornaments decorated on the head and neck, 1 jade arm ring and 1 jade ring, 1 jade shovel on the abdomen, 2 ivory carved cylinders, 1 bone carved cylinder, ivory Comb 1 piece. There are more than 90 pieces of pottery (including 38 pieces of white pottery, polished black pottery, and painted pottery), as well as pig heads, animal bones, crocodile scales, etc. The disparity in funerary objects reflects the increasingly serious gap between rich and poor in society.
[Edit this paragraph] Type
As for the type of Dawenkou Culture, the archaeological community currently has different opinions. Some people have proposed that it can be divided into three types: "Qinglian Gang", "Liu Lin" and "Huating". Some people also think that it can be divided into three types: "Dawenkou", "Dadunzi" and "Sanlihe". The three types of the latter classification are now briefly introduced below:
(1) Dawenkou type: including Dawenkou cultural sites in Tai'an, Jining and other areas in central and southern Shandong. The sites that have been excavated include Tengzhou Gangshang, Qufu Xixiahou, Zoucheng Yedian, Yanzhou Wangyin and other sites. The characteristics of this type are reflected in the shape of pottery, such as cauldron-shaped tripods, large-hole weaved high-handled beans, back pots, cylindrical cups, laks, Zun-shaped vessels, ring-foot bottles, bag-foot cups, cups with ears, etc. Representative. The tombs are mainly single ones with their heads facing east, with their bodies stretched out and their limbs upright, and there are also a small number of burials with their bodies bent on their backs and their bodies bent over. Most of the deceased people held tusks in their hands. There are also a certain number of same-sex burials in Wang Yin's early tombs.
(2) Dadunzi type: named after it was first discovered in Dadunzi, Pi County, northern Jiangsu. Mainly distributed in the northern Jiangsu area north of the Huaihe River. The excavated sites include Liulin in Pi County, Huating in Xinyi, and Erjian Village in Lianyungang. The most representative types of pottery include tripods, kettles, beans, back pots, three-legged jars with handles, gui-shaped vessels, alms bowls, goblet-shaped cups, high-circle-footed cups, and jars. The burial style is also mainly based on single people with their heads facing east or northeast, lying on their backs and their limbs straight. The dead often hold tusks in their hands. In some tombs, stone rings are placed between the eyes of the deceased.
(3) Sanlihe type: named after the representative Sanlihe site in Jiaozhou, Shandong. Mainly distributed in Weifang, Shandong and Rizhao and other places. The excavated sites include Rizhao Donghai Valley, Anqiu Jingzhi Town, Zhucheng Chengzi and other sites. Typical examples of pottery are cauldrons, jar-shaped tripods, kettles, single-eared long-necked pots, double-eared long-necked pots, slender bottles, large mouth folded shoulder statues, single-eared cups, high-handled cups, folded-belly bowls, etc. There are fewer beans and cylindrical cups. The burial style is mainly for a single person to be buried with his head facing west and northwest, with his body stretched out and his limbs straight. There are also many joint tombs in the Chengzi site, with overlapping burials, and the deceased often held swerk or clam vessels in their hands. Some deceased persons had stone axes, clam vessels, black pottery cups, conches, etc. placed on their arms. Some of the dead still had jade in their mouths. It is common for people to be buried with pig mandibles.
[Edit this paragraph] Development
Dawenkou culture is a primitive culture distributed in the lower reaches of the Yellow River and the Jianghuai region in my country.
In 1959, hundreds of tombs were excavated at the Dawenkou and Baotou sites at the junction of Tai'an and Ningyang counties in Shandong, and a large number of unique cultural relics were unearthed. Later, sites and tombs of the same type of culture were continuously discovered in the vast areas of Shandong and northern Jiangsu. This was the Dawenkou Culture. Dawenkou Culture has gone through a long-term development process, and based on the excavated materials, it can be preliminarily divided into three phases: early, middle and late.
During the Dawenkou Culture period, the gender of workers in social production has undergone great changes. This can be well illustrated by the changes in the stone shovels, stone axes, stone adzes and spinning wheels that were buried with men and women. After the middle period of the Dawenkou Culture, it was mainly men who were buried with stone shovels, stone axes, stone adzes and other production tools, while it was mainly women who were buried with spinning wheels. This shows that men have become the main bearers of social production, especially agricultural production, while women are engaged in domestic work such as textiles. Society has developed from the matrilineal clan commune stage to the patrilineal clan commune stage.
In the late Dawenkou Culture, with the development of production, private ownership had appeared. Domestic pigs are an important chattel of the Dawenkou clan. There are many pig heads and pig mandibles buried in some Dawenkou tombs. The pig heads and mandibles buried with the tomb should have been the private property of the tomb owner during his lifetime. In addition, the private property buried with the deceased includes pottery, production tools and various decorations.
The emergence and development of private ownership will inevitably lead to the polarization of rich and poor, and the emergence of rich and poor people within the clan. The tombs of the middle and late Dawenkou Culture clearly reflect this evolution. Judging from the scale of the tombs, there are differences between large tombs and small tombs. From the perspective of funerary objects, the difference is even greater. There are two groups of tombs that can be compared: a group of seven tombs with relatively rich funerary objects, with a maximum of 77 and a minimum of 19, including pottery, jade, pig heads, etc.; The other group of four tombs has very poor burial objects, with only 17 pieces in total, including pottery, spinning wheels, tusks, etc. It can be seen that the gap between rich and poor has become very obvious.
Black pottery and white pottery are two new varieties that appeared in the pottery industry in the middle and late Dawenkou Culture, reflecting the significant progress in pottery technology at that time. At this time, pottery was made using quick-turn pottery carts. The pottery cart consists of a wheel disc and an axle. When in use, one person turns the wheel to make it rotate rapidly, and another person uses the centrifugal force formed by the rotation of the pottery wheel and the dexterous movements of his hands to shape the clay into the required vessel. Using a quick-turn pottery car to make blanks can produce large quantities and good quality. Firing technology has also improved. The kiln chamber is enlarged, the fire mouth is narrowed, and the number of fire channel branches and kiln grate holes is increased to make the heat distribution more even. At this time, the technology of tightly sealing the kiln at high temperature was used to restore the iron element in the clay. Some of the clay was mixed with charcoal, so the fired pottery was mostly black. White pottery is made from kaolin clay, and efforts are made to maintain the purity of the clay during production, so it is fired white. The emergence of white pottery is of great significance, as it laid the technical foundation for the production of future porcelain. Some of the white pottery has patterns on it.
Based on the excavation of the Dawenkou Cultural ruins, especially the excavation of tombs, there are currently three different views on the social development stage of the Dawenkou Culture:
One believes that private ownership has It is established that monogamy has been consolidated and should be in the final stage of patriarchal clan society.
Another theory is that the grave goods in the tomb vary greatly, and writing has appeared, indicating that it should be the primary stage of slave society.
The other is based on the Dawenkou tomb materials, which believe that it should be in the transitional stage from matrilineal clan society to patrilineal clan society.
[Edit this paragraph] Society
Economy: The agricultural production of Dawenkou Culture was mainly millet cultivation. Residents raise pigs, dogs and other livestock, and also engage in fishing, hunting and gathering. Production tools include stone axes, shovels, knives, and arrowheads, and bone horn hoes, darts, fishhooks, and arrowheads. The pottery industry became more developed, and small pottery began to be produced using the wheel-making method. Most of the pottery is tripod-shaped, ring-footed and flat-bottomed. There are also round-bottomed pottery, mainly including tripods, beans, goblet-shaped cups, pots, high-handled cups and ladles. Stone tools, jade wares, bone, horn and tooth wares and inlaid handicrafts are also very prosperous. The unearthed jade axes, petal-patterned ivory tubes, openwork ivory combs, etc. are exquisitely made and have a high level of craftsmanship.
Resident customs: Artificial deformation of the occipital bone and extraction of a pair of upper lateral incisors during adolescence were popular among residents at that time. Some had small stone balls or pottery balls in their mouths for a long time, causing indentation and deformation of the jaws. It is also popular to place a perforated tortoise shell on the waist of the deceased, and the deceased holds a tusk or tusk hook-shaped device. These customs are rare in other prehistoric cultures in China.
Tombs: In the early tombs of the Dawenkou Culture, there were no burial tools, and wooden coffins appeared in the middle and late periods. In the early days, there were same-sex burial tombs that reflected the strong blood relationship between clan members. In the middle and late periods, there were burial customs after the patriarchy was established. The couple is buried together in a tomb. In Dawenkou Cemetery, 133 tombs were excavated in 1959, which were equivalent to the middle and late Dawenkou Culture. The large, medium and small tombs here are very different. The tombs are not only large in scale, but also often have wooden coffins and burial tools. The funerary objects are rich and exquisite, such as clean white pottery, jet-black and slightly shiny black pottery, and elegant painted pottery, as well as jade, stone, ivory, bone, etc. The pits of small tombs are narrow, and some only have a pottery tripod or an additional tusk buried with them. The sharp contrast between the large and small tombs shows that private ownership has emerged and the differentiation between rich and poor has emerged. At sites such as Lingyang River, Dazhu Village, Hangtou and Zhucheng Qianzhai in Ju County, pottery inscriptions engraved on pottery statues were also found, which attracted the attention of archaeologists and paleographists. Dawenkou Culture originated from Beixin Culture (see Qingliangang Culture) and was succeeded by Shandong Longshan Culture.
The race of the residents of this culture is generally believed to be the Dongyi tribe in ancient China.
The Dawenkou Culture is one of the important relics of the late Neolithic Age. It was named after it was first discovered at the Dawenkou site in Tai'an County, Shandong Province. Its distribution range borders the Bohai Sea in the north, Jiangsu and Anhui, and Jiangsu and Anhui in the south. Moving west to Henan, it started in 4300 BC and developed into the Longshan Culture of Shandong around 2500 BC. The pottery of the Dawenkou Culture has obvious characteristics. The residents have a popular custom of tooth extraction during adolescence. This is the birthplace of the tooth extraction custom of ancient ancestors on the southeast coast of China. The social and economic development of Dawenkou Culture has reached a high level. Many of the carved symbols that have been discovered are believed to be ancient hieroglyphs. The society at that time had a serious polarization between the rich and the poor, private ownership gradually formed, and the entire society was close to the threshold of a class society.
The picture shows red pottery, 22.5 cm high. It was unearthed in Yedian Village, Yishan Town in 1971. It is made of sand-filled red pottery and hand-shaped. Oval mouth, slightly extravagant, beak-like flow, slender neck, round belly, wide handle, three cone-shaped feet.