Chinese Earthenware – Funerary Storage Jar, 2600 – 2300 BCE (Mike Ramey)

• Neolithic – agriculture discovered around 12,000 BCE, led to village life
• earthenware – made of clay
  • fine-grained soil formed when rock is weathered by mild acids
  • has plasticity when mixed with water (retains shape)
  • hardens when low-fired (1,000º C)
• Majiayao culture – Neolithic communities in the Upper Yellow River Valley of Northern China (now Gansu Provence)
• coiled then paddled, handles attached via incision and slip
• (potter’s wheel also Neolithic, though not in this region, but based on markings on the bottom, a wheel of some sort may have been used during the decoration step)
• decoration required invention of paintbrush – note brushstrokes that begin with pressure and complete with release
• decoration appears to contain symbolic elements (circle, cross, and tick marks) that are subject to interpretation along the following lines:
  • Majiayao was the 3rd of 8 phases of stylistic similarity in Gansu pottery decoration that stretched from roughly 5000 BCE to 256 BCE
  • calligraphy originated around 1200 BCE when pictographic symbols were selected from available sources to represent words, including circle for sun, cross for rice field, and tick marks for rain
  • suggesting that this pot was likely used for rice storage
• half of such jars have been found in household sites, half in burial sites
• they were not urns, which have no handles, so may have been gifts for the afterlife

The Funerary Storage Jar and Chinese Calligraphy: Citations
Mike Ramey, 1-31-2015

 When did calligraphy originate and how did it evolve?

“The development of Chinese characters can be loosely subdivided into four stages:

the primitive period (8000 – 3000 BCE), during which man expressed himself first in conventional signs that had a mnemonic function and later in designs that reproduced the world around him: pictographs.

The archaic period (3000 – 1600 BCE) includes the pre-dynastic period and the Xià dynasty, during which there was a transition from pictographs to ideograms, from direct to indirect symbols.

The historic period spanned 18 centuries – beginning with the Shang or Yin dynasty and ending with the fall of the Eastern Han (220 CE) – during which writing completed its evolution and took on its definitive form.

The contemporary period, beginning in 1949, had three main aims: to simplify characters, to achieve a common national pronunciation, and to be able to transcribe the characters into alphabetical letters.”

– Edoardo Fazzioli. Chinese Calligraphy From Pictograph to Ideogram: The History of 214 essential Chinese/Japanese Characters. New York: Abbeville Press, 1986, p. 11

 When did Majiayao pottery originate and how did it evolve?

“In this essay the place name Gansu refers to an area which includes all of present day Gansu province, the eastern part of Qinghai and the southern part of Ningxia. This area is situated at the extreme western end of the central Loess plain and links the high grasslands of Tibet and Qinghai with those of Inner Mongolia. The Yellow River and its tributaries water the area, making it important in the development of agriculture. From an early time agricultural societies, characterized by the making of painted pottery, have lived and developed here.”

The Neolithic painted pottery of Gansu is illustrated as adhering to a single, shared set of stylistic characteristics that, with minor variations, were passed down from each cultural phase to the next beginning in roughly 5000 BCE and lasting through the end of the Zhou dynasty (256 BCE).

• Banpo              5000 –
• Miaodigou       4000 –
• Majiayao         3290 – 2880
• Banshan          2655 – 2330
• Machang         2330 – 2055
• Qijia                 2050 – 1900
• Siba                 1950 – 1500
• Xindian            1500 – 256

The style was characterized by symbolic motifs, the most prominent of which represented the sun (birds and circles) and moon (toads and frogs), and a wide variety of wave-like geometric patterns.

“It is very clear that there is a process of development in the bird and frog motif through these various phases. In the beginning, motifs are lifelike, realistic and varied; later there is a process of schematization, regulation and standardization.”

Yan Wenming. “The Origin and Development of Gansu Painted Pottery.” In Chinese Archaeological Abstracts, Albert E. Dien, Ed., v. II, pp. 266 – 282. Los Angeles: University of California Institute of Archaeology, 1985. [Includes illustrations for each phase.]

Do the pottery symbols represent clans, occupation marks, or numbers?

 “Some symbols not only appear repeatedly on many vessels, they also appear on vessels from different archaeological sites. It would appear that these symbols, or a least a part of them, were possibly used in a consistent way to express certain meanings. In addition to being used as identification marks for individuals or groups, symbols of this type were possibly also used to express other meanings.”

– Qiu Xigui. Chinese Writing. Berkeley: University of California Institute of East Asian Studies, 2000, p. 32.

Were there correlates between pottery and calligraphic symbols?

“The variations in the amount of grave furnishings suggest a society at a sophisticated level; this is also indicated by the huge number of painted signs on pottery. At Liu-wan, at least 139 different signs can be isolated. Some of these signs are identical with specific characters in the early historic writing systems.”

“We have seen in the available record the use of signs and symbols on Chinese Neolithic pottery as early as 5000 BCE, and these must have been an important source of written characters when the ancient people began to use them.”

– Kwang-chih Chang. The Archaeology of Ancient China. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987, pp. 145-153, 295-6. [Includes illustrations of 67 symbols.]

Was Gansu spatially proximate to centers where calligraphy evolved?

“The Gansu region is one of the birthplaces of Chinese culture. … The 65,000 pieces of bamboo slips excavated in Gansu, the earliest book objects, have provided us with substantial evidence for research on the history of printing. … Bamboo slips, as the carrier of characters, followed bones or tortoise shells as antecedents to paper, and they were used extensively for writing after the decline of bones and tortoise shells and before the invention of paper. Bamboo slips have a history of nearly 2,000 years from the Shang dynasty (1700 BCE) to the Jin dynasty (300 CE).”

Yi Xumei and Lu Xiuwen. “The Calligraphy and Printing Cultural Heritage of Gansu.” In The History and Cultural Heritage of Chinese Calligraphy, Printing and Library Work, Susan M Allen, Ed., Berlin: De Gruyter Saur, IFLA Publication 141, 2010, pp. 45-70.