Making the Majiayao Culture Complex

The Departments of Anthropology and East Asian Languages and Cutlures Present:

Ling-yu Hung

Washington University

Thursday, March 03, 2011

5:00 pm

Glenn Black Laboratory of Archaeology

Auditorium (GL 101)

                                             

Making the Majiayao Culture Complex:

Pottery Production in NW China ca. 5300–4000 BP

The Majiayao Culture is famous for its stunning painted pottery vessels. First discovered in the 1920s in NW China, these Neolithic painted pottery vessels have become one of the most popular icons used to depict the rich material culture of ancient China. Today, many museums throughout the world hold Majiayao painted pottery vessels in their collections. However, while we know much about the pottery, research on this culture has been limited to cultural histories that emphasize chronology and trait-list classification. These approaches present the Majiayao Culture as static and simplify the social and economic complexity of the people who composed this society. Although scholars commonly assume that Majiayao painted pottery vessels were made by specialized craftspeople, the social and economic processes behind the production of these vessels have long been overlooked. This presentation focuses on recent firsthand attribute and physicochemical analyses of hundreds of ceramic vessels and samples selected from multiple sites in Gansu, Qinghai, and Sichuan provinces. These data are supplemented with settlement pattern and mortuary analyses of thousands of published sites and burials. Results of this multidimensional research provide new information about the complex pottery production and consumption systems of local and regional societies of the Majiayao period, and contribute new insights into the dynamic social relationships among Neolithic village-scale communities in NW China.

Ling-yu Hung is a PhD Candidate in the Art History and Archaeology Department at Washington University in St. Louis. She holds M.A. degrees in Anthropology (Washington University) and Archaeology (Peking University, China), and a B.A. in Anthropology (National Taiwan University, Taiwan). She specializes in East Asian Archaeology, with a focus on the development of social complexity in prehistoric mainland China and Taiwan. Working with experts from different disciplines, she is currently involved in three international collaborative archaeological projects in China. Her dissertation investigates pottery production in late Neolithic NW China, with funding support from Washington University, the Luce Foundation, and the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation.

Reception to Immediately Follow Talk – Glenn Black Lab