Shijiahe culture
The Shijiahe culture (Chinese石 家 河 文化, pinyin Shijiahe Wenhua, English Shijiahe Culture) was a Neolithic culture in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River in China. Famous are the found there clay figures of people and animals ( pictures ).
The name derives from the 1955 in the large village Shihe石 河镇of Tianmen天门市, Hubei Province discovered site. We have discovered several dozen sites, mostly under the term " Shijiahe - sites " ( Shijiahe Yizhi qun石 家 河 遗址 群Group Sites at Shijiahe ) are summarized.
The distribution of Shijiahe culture was the middle north of the Jianghan plain, mainly in the area of Hubei Province, in the north and south it extended as far to the southwest of the province of Henan and the northern part of Hunan Province; it is dated to a period of about 2600 to 2000 BC.
Rice cultivation was at the center of their economic life. In the Dengjiawan - site (邓 家湾 遗址) in Tianmen copper nuggets and the raw material malachite were found for the copper melt, it is the earliest known metal relics on the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, they show the occurrence of copper smelting.
In the Jadeschnitzkunst there are new developments, the art of erosion is well controlled.
In the Dengjiawan - site thousands of small terracotta figurines were unearthed: various birds, quadrupeds, fish, soft-shelled turtles, domesticated animals and kneeling, a fish -holding human figures.
The graves are rectangular Erdgräber ( tukeng ) and urn ( wengguanzang ), in some there are plenty of grave goods, in other lower jaw bones of pigs were also buried, suggesting strong social contrasts.
In the center of Shijiahe - sites is the old, surrounded by earthen ramparts and ditches town Shijiahe. The upper layer of the eponymous site belonged to Qujialing culture.
The Shijiahe - site ( Shijiahe Yizhi石 家 河 遗址) in Tianmen is since 1996 on the list of monuments of the People's Republic of China (4-15 ).