Neolithic Period

Late Stone Age China evolved from the Mesolithic era where people were hunters and fishermen to the Neolithic Period when they settled down into villages and began to learn farming and pottery making. Neolithic sites have been identified in three major areas of north central China - Peiligang ( a village near Louyang), Yangshao (a village near the juncture of the Wei and Yellow rivers east of Xi'an), and Banshan (a village near the head of the Yellow river west of Xi'an).

The Yangshao culture lasted from approximately 5000 to 3000 B.C. Some of the finest samples of this pottery where unearthed in Banpo, a village just east of Xi'an. The Banpo potters made a thinly potted, coarse grey or red pottery, burnished and painted in black geometric designs. Pottery was made by coiling strips of clay without evidence of the potter's wheel. Shapes were mainly funerary urns with wide mid-sections and slender bases with handles luted low on the sides. Some of the designs are made of concentric circles, parallel bands, lozenges and squares. The bottom half is usually undecorated and may have been set in the sand to prevent it from overturning.

Later Neolithic finds at Banshan and Majiayao to the west of Banpo date to a much later period (c. 2400 B.C.) and tend to be unburnished and beautifully painted in black swirling patterns. The prolific number of excavated Neolithic sites has yielded some extraordinary samples of this type of pottery and the current market has a wide variety of pieces available.

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