The Banpo Museum is located in a modern building some three miles
to the east of Xi'an City in Shaanxi Province. It is near the bridge
that crosses the river, long renowned as one of the famous eight rivers
of Chang'an. The Museum was built in 1958 and is the first museum
built for a 'mankind site,' a habitation site of early man. Its name
comes from its location on the northern side of Banpo Village. The
site marks a settlement that dates to the matrilineal clan commune
period of the Neolithic period. Before its discovery in the twentieth
century, it had been lying in wait for some 6,000 years.
A bottle with sharppointed bottom unearthed in Banpo
The arrangement of the Neolithic village was quite organized. At the
center of the settlement was a 160-square meter-large room that was
surrounded by many smaller rooms. All of the doors of these faced
the inside larger room, reflecting the clan spirit of a cohesive group.
Around the village was a 300-meter long trench or ditch that was used
to keep wild animals from attacking. To the east was a ceramic-making
area and to the north was the cemetery district. Inside the town were
some 46 houses. Some were square, some round, some half-submerged
in the ground, some on the surface. These houses already used traditional
Chinese wall-construction methods and can be called precursors of
later Chinese architecture that used wood and earth.
In a reconstruction of a Banpo room are exhibited production tools
and daily utensils that were used by Banpo people. On the walls are
hung animal skins and pointed-bottom vessels for getting water. A
mat is spread beside the hearth on the floor - the scene of ancient
man's life is suddenly spread before our eyes: members of the clan,
under the direction of the old grandmother, are just in the process
of making a fire. Or outside, hunters are taking aim and firing their
arrows or are vigorously throwing out flying balls, pursuing a frightened
spotted deer. By the river, fishermen are in the process of catching
fish, in the virgin forests, women and children, holding bone spades,
are gathering wild fruits. As the sun goes down in the west, the village,
sparkling with kitchen fires, shows women roasting meat, using stone
grinders to grind meal, using bone needles to sew hemp-fabric clothes.
Artists are focusing on painting or impressing patterns into ceramic
vessels; old grandmothers are carefully distributing the cooked food
to the others: some people are putting gathered vegetables and grains
into vessels for storage.
A basin of human face and fish pattern unearthed in Banpo. Part of
the Banpo Residence Site.
In the northern part of the Banpo Village is the cemetery district
where adults were buried. Some 174 graves have been discovered, lined
up in regular order, but exhibiting different burial customs. Banpo
people mostly died around the age of 30. On the eastern side of the
town is the Public Kiln for firing pottery. Six kilns have been found
to date. At the beginning, the pottery making was carried out in the
open. By the time of Banpo, people had invented two main types of
horizontal and upright kilns. Banpo ceramic production used both fine-grained
clay and sandy coarse clay; the fine-grained was of three types depending
on its use. Banpo people used realistic methods of painting to decorate
their ceramics, with sketched designs to exhibit the characteristics
of various animals.
Around twelve different kinds of markings or symbols have been found
on pottery fragments or on vessels at the site. Together they comprise
the main types of strokes used in Chinese characters, such as upright,
cross-wise, hooked, and so on. Writing did not exist at the time,
but these marks or symbols almost certainly contained their own meanings
for people at the time. A number of daily articles are also exhibited
in the museum, such as stone axes, finely made fishhooks, fish?bone
forks, sharp bone needles, and all kinds of ornamentation made of
stone, bone, and ivory. |
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