Zhukaigou culture

The Zhukaigou culture (朱 开沟 文化) was a late Neolithic and early Bronze Age culture (up to about 1500 BC ) of the Ordos Plateau in Inner Mongolia, China.

The type locality was at Ejin Banner (Inner Mongolia ) discovered and excavated from 1977 to 1984. The Zhukaigou culture is the probable precursor of the Bronze Age section of the Ordos culture, and thus one of the first cultures of the northern region, as with an expansion in the northern and central Inner Mongolia, northern Shaanxi and northern Shanxi, with the Ordos region center. The introduction of metal processing is assumed at the end of the 3rd millennium BC, the same time is a higher quality in ceramics production to watch.

The Zhukaigou culture was divided into five phases, corresponding chronologically with the late stage of the Longshan culture, the early, middle and late stage of the Erlitou culture and the early stage of Erligang culture. The early phase was influenced by the Longshan culture, whereas the mean phase was influenced by the Qijia culture, as show in this period, the first bronze artifacts in the legacies of Zhukaigou. They were farmers, mainly cultivated millet and sheep, pigs and cattle bred.

Be artifacts of the Shang - type suggest that around the middle of the 2nd millennium BC were contacts between the Zhukaigou and the Shang, or that were spreading northwards. Ritual vessels of the Shang came in the Erlitou (ca. 2.100-1.800/1500 ) and the Erligang period (ca. 1500-1400 ) to the Zhukaigou.

The end of the Zhukaigou it is assumed dated bronze objects from domestic production by about 1500 BC. For this last period of Zhukaigou is a mixture of bronze objects from typical northern daggers, typical Shang ge (戈) dagger - axes and knives, which show characteristics of both cultures, typical.

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