Pottery Production,Circulation And Society Complexity Of Mid-Late Dawenkou And Longshan Cultural Period,Northern Shandong Province

The problem of social complexity is the focus of Chinese archaeological research in recent years.The view that social complexity is a process of social development has become a consensus among archaeologists.The characteristic of various stages and social levels in this process,as well as the motivation for social complexity,are the key and difficult point discussed by scholars.At present,the ultimate problem of social complexity is always associated with the origin of the state at the political level.To some extent,the study of social complexity is even equivalent to the discussion on the origin of the state.Therefore,it can also be said that the problem of social complexity is to discuss the stage features of social production and life and their interrelations in the process of human social evolution.According to historical materialism,the economic foundation determines the superstructure and the productive forces determine the relations of production.It is theoretically feasible to take social and economic activities as the entry point to discuss the complicated issues of regional society,which is also the consideration at the beginning of this study.The aims of this study is not only to deeper dig the traditional pottery production technology,but also to rethink about the ancient social and economic situation.It starting with the systematically analyzes of the changes of pottery production technology,organization and circulation in northern Shandong province,then discusses the relationship between the development of pottery craft industry and social changes from the perspective of economics based on the evolution of regional settlements.Specifically,the problems involved mainly include:the pottery production technology in different stages from the middle and late period of Dawenkou culture to the period of Longshan culture in norther Shandong province;Characteristics of pottery production organization in different periods;Whether there was large-scale pottery circulation and directivity of luxury pottery and common pottery in Longshan culture period;Whether the problems and directivity of luxury pottery and common pottery in Longshan culture period;Whether the production and circulation of pottery were strictly controlled by the social elite;The relationship between pottery production and social development,etc.In addition to the above academic purposes,it is also hoped that through the application of new ideas and new methods,to provide a new case of methodology for the study of pottery archaeology in China in the future.This study adopts different research methods for different research contents.Among them,ethnological materials are living fossils to understand the past society.In order to accurately identify and understand the unearthed pottery production technical problems,the author has specially carried on the anthropological investigation to the traditional pottery workshop in the research area,and then combined with survey data from home and abroad,making trace observation to analysis pottery making technology of different periods in northern Shandong province.In order to verify the conclusion,simulation experiments on some typical pottery molding processes were carried out,and a batch of empirical data were obtained.For the discussion of pottery production organization.qualitatively and quantitatively analysis methods of European and American archaeological research were used as a reference to analyze the problems of production organization.Specifically,it is discussed from the natural background,social background,direct evidence and indirect evidence of pottery production.The analysis of pottery origin and circulation is a focus and highlight of this study.Petrographic analysis is mainly used in this part,Pxrf,XRF and XRD are used to verify the results of petrographic analysis from the perspective of chemical composition.The combination and mutual verification of the two methods have obtained good analysis results and some interesting conclusions.The following conclusions are drawn from this study:First,Pottery production of Jiaojia and Dinggong sites both obtained raw materials from nearby sites,but for different types of ware,raw materials were processed accordingly.In the process of pottery forming,the traditional wheel forming technology can be further subdivided into the coiling and wheeling technique(coiling-wheeling forming technique)and pure wheeling technique.The coiling technique was used in most kind of Dawenkou pottery,other technology such as coiling-wheeling forming technique,pure wheeling technique only used in few later potteries.Coiling technique also used in some early Longshan pottery,but generally speaking,the coiling-wheeling forming technique was the mainly pottery forming method in the whole Longshan period.The usage rate of pure wheeling forming technique is gradually increasing in fine pottery and small coarse pottery of mid-late Longshan culture.The decoration of Dawenkou culture pottery is mainly to make up for the defects of forming technology,while the decoration of Longshan pottery has beautification function and it shows the standardization of production in decoration type and decoration position.In the firing process,both Dawenkou and Longshan culture exist room-kiln.But the former-kiln wall is disposable and has only one fire-path,while the latter kiln-wall is mostly fixed and has more than one fire-path.It shows the development of fire technology in the two periods.In a word,the pottery production in these two periods reflects the development process of pottery production technology from the highest stage of coiling-made pottery,the enlightenment stage of wheeling pottery to the highest stage of wheeling pottery.The quantity and scale of pottery production remains of Jiaojia site indicate that there was no large-scale specialized production,but it was also beyond the scope of low-level family production.By comparing the quantitative analysis results of other regions,indirect evidence shows that pottery production at this time was roughly on the same scale as domestic industry.Besides,the indirect evidence also indicate that the production scale was gradual decline from the middle to late Dawenkou cultural periods.However,the pottery production technology of the same period was constantly developing.In combination with the changes of tombs,city walls and other relics in the site,it can be seen that the changes of social relations affected the fluctuation of pottery production.The pottery in the early stage of Longshan culture at dingong site included some hand-made clamshell pottery,but the production scale remained between the individual workshop and the core workshop in the early and middle stage of Longshan period.In the late period of Longshan culture,however,due to the interference of external factors,the production of pottery deteriorated,probably at the level of ordinary individual workshops.The changes of pottery production activities from middle and late Dawenkou culture to Longshan cultural in northern Shandong were synchronized with its social fluctuations reflected by other relics in various sites.It can be seen that the social situation is an important factor affecting the economic development of handicraft industry.Through the analysis of pottery origin,it is found that the pottery of each site in Longshan period of north Shandong is mainly produced independently.Among them,coarse pottery of Dinggong site is made with sands from Xiaofu river and clay from its site.While the fine pottery was made with clay from its site directly.The inclusions of coarse pottery from Tonglin site is mainly composed of coarse sands and felsic minerals.Coarse pottery of Qianbu,Lizhai,Ximatai,Shijia,Baojia and other sub-settlements showed diversity in the types of inclusions.Besides,like Dinggong site,part of potteries from these sites also contain a large number of well-rounded carbonate rocks.From the natural specimens,geological environment and the river trend around the site,it can be basically determined that these pottery inclusions came from the sediments flowing through the nearby sites,that is,each site has the resources to produce sand-containing pottery independently.In addition,in the east part of our research,there was a small part of pottery communication in the direction of east and west from early to late Longshan period.Chemical component analysis also verified the conclusion.Besides,there exists a kind of white pottery circulated from Tonglin site around to Dinggong site,while Dinggong and Chengziya sites also exist another kind of white pottery circulation.So the Dinggong site looks like an important point of communication between east and west.In the late prehistoric northern Shandong province,on the premise of the development of social productivity,the settlement and the population surge,but also with the miniaturization of social basic economic unit,the miniaturization of the production unit,broke through to the bondage of blood as the link of the social organization structure,brings the diversification of social and economic life and laborer status,the increase of market demand to further promote the products,so as to promote producers to change the original mode of production and management in order to meet market demand.Among them,the change of production system is mainly reflected in the change of raw materials,forming and firing technology.This technological change is accompanied by the complexity of production management,control and language,which reflects the role of technological change in pottery production in promoting social development.Circulation system analysis shows that pottery production in Longshan period of northern Shandong has always been scattered in each settlement,and no production settlement has been developed into a regional production or circulation center.Although there was communication between the east and west,its scale was limited,so the pottery was not the main carrier of cultural communication in Longshan culture period.In addition,when we try to look at the social control system of Longshan culture from the perspective of pottery production and circulation,we can find that when the social and political stratification developed in the period of Longshan culture,the elite class had a relatively limited influence on the economy of pottery-making industry,and it was such a loose economic environment that contributed to the increase of social accumulation in this period,and then created the relatively mild population composition and social situation in the period of Longshan culture.