Vessel of the Yangshao culture. China, Neolithic period, 2nd millennium BC.

Vessel of the Yangshao culture. China, Neolithic period, 2nd millennium BC.
Polychrome terracotta.
Measurements: 15 x 19,5 x 19,5 cm.

Vessel made of ceramic decorated with black pigments forming undulations. It presents a typology typical of this culture, with globular belly and narrow base.

Already in the Neolithic period the culture in China is sedentary and agricultural, which favors the production and consumption of ceramics. Pottery will therefore have, from this period, a fundamental role in Chinese culture. The special pottery skills of this people are also related to the existence of very rich quarries in central and southern China, which provided excellent materials for this art. Thus, from very early on, good firing kilns, complex glazes, etc. were developed in China.

The Yangshao was a Chinese Neolithic culture that developed along the central course of the Yellow River between 5000 and 3000 BC. It is now known mainly for its pottery painted with engobes, red, white and black, alone or in combination, depicting geometric designs, animals or human faces. Unlike the later Longshan culture, the Yangshao culture did not know the potter's wheel. Most of the archaeological remains discovered come from burial enclosures, which were always located on the outside of a wide strip, which we do not know if it had a defensive or merely symbolic function, as a separation between the world of the living and the dead. Among the many juxtaposed phases of the Yangshao culture, the most important, categorized according to the differences in their pottery are: Banpo phase (4800 - 4200 B.C., central plain), Miaodigou phase (4000 - 3000 B.C., successor of the previous one), Majiayao phase (3300 - 2000 B.C., in Gansu), Banshan phase (2700 - 2300 B.C., successor of the previous one) and Machang phase (2400 - 2000 B.C.).