Prehistoric Painted Pottery of Xinjiang

Summary

Ever since the 1970s, painted pottery has been discovered in large quantities at cemeteries and occasionally settlements on the southern and northern foothills of the Tianshan Mountain. Organizing them into four Early Iron Age (ca. 1300-200BC) regional cultures: Yanbulake in the Hami region, Subeixi in the Turfan region, Chawuhu in the Kaidu Valley, and Yili Valley in the eponymous region, this paper characterizes the stylistic distinctions of the painted pottery of them. The Yanbulake culture, for instance, features the ware types of jars and bottles with double handles as well as the motifs of rhombi and triangles, whereas the Chawuhu culture features those of spouted jars and chessboard and thunder designs. Furthermore, this paper considers the possible origins of the painted pottery: while some motifs seem to derive from local textiles, some ware types are reminiscent of leather-made vessels. The painted pottery of Xinjiang, as a whole, manifests intimate connections with the Hexi Corridor. This paper sees no impact of the Harappa culture in Indian Subcontinent and Tripol’e in the Black Sea coast, but it acknowledges inspiration from the Namazga and Chust cultures of Central Asia.

SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology and Center for Digital Antiquity Collaborative Program to improve digital data in archaeology. If you are the author of this presentation you may upload your paper, poster, presentation, or associated data (up to 3 files/30MB) for free. Please visit http://www.tdar.org/SAA2015 for instructions and more information.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• New Insights into Painted Pottery from Northwest China

Keywords

Spatial Coverage