Analysis On Pottery Dou In Songze Culture

The prehistoric archaeology culture in the Taihu lake region has undergone Majiabang culture, Songze culture and Liangzhu culture, and Songze culture serves as a connecting link in its prehistoric culture development sequence, which is the consensus in academic community. Currently, the research on Songze culture mainly focuses on its staging research, and the vessels research which referred is also concentrate on the type comparison of the periodical division of vessels arrangements, it is rare to make a certain vessel as a cut-in point in one research. So far, none specific study has done yet on the unearthing situation of the pottery dou in main tombs of Songze culture, so choosing the pottery dou in the tombs of Songze culture as the subject of study, is of certain innovation and exploration.In the second part of the article, the distribution situation of Songze cultural sites has been introduced. According to the report, there are more than 60 Songze cultural sites in current. Referring to the excavation and liquidation of various historic sites, the scope of research are those classic sites in good condition and with a large quantity of tombs and unequivocal laminated relations. In addition, considering the academic community has not yet coincided with names of vessels such as pottery dou and taking into account of every factor, in this article, the vessels whose width is obviously greater than its height are classified into ring foot plate, and those with almost the same width and height of ring foot or those upper ring foot greater than nether one are classified into pottery Gui. In other words, the subjects of this thesis are the vessels of equal or greater height than its width, as well as with an obvious bell shape ring foot. And this made the shape of pottery dou in this research clear. Taking Nanhebang site as a ruler, the article generalizes the shape characters and decorating style of pottery dou in each period. Also, combining the unearthed situation of pottery dou in other main sites, as well as comparing with those pottery dou unearth in Nanhebang site, the author found out relative early and late relationship, and had a macro-understanding on pottery dou’s specific shape and decorating style of each period in Songze Culture.In the third part of the article, through screening, a typological study has done on the 300 completely or renewably unearthed pottery dou in Songze culture. Firstly, according to plate shape of pottery dou, they are classified into 4 major types as followings:bowl-shaped dou, plate-shaped dou, dish-shaped dou and pot-shaped dou. Bowl-shaped dou are usually with contracting or straight mouth, and all with arc belly. Plate-shaped dou are generally exposure, with arc folded belly, and its edge can be exposure or contracting. Dish-shaped dou have quite shadow plate, with arc straight belly. Pot-shaped dou’s plate are in contracted shaped. Then, according to the shape of the ring foot, they can be divided into the sub type of the horn-shaped ring foot, segmented ring foot, waist-contracted dou handle and short-horn-shaped ring foot. Through classifying by shape and situation, we can learn the logical evolution rules of pottery dou’s shape as well as its decorating style. And combining the shape features and decorating style, the author stated the rule of development and evolution of pottery dou in Songze culture.Plate-shaped dou with slender and high handle are the main form of pottery dou in Songze culture. Early dou plates are large and shallow, most are in folded-belly form; Later dou plates are of narrower diameter, folded-belly degree gradually become smaller, tending to arc belly, and their oblique belly getting deeper. There are two main types of the slender dou handle, waist-contracted dou handle are common at early time, later segmented dou handle appeared. The development rules of the waist-contracted dou are, bell-shaped slender and high with fluent lines from top to bottom in early stage; and longer dou handle, more obvious waist and harder curl line in waist in middle stage; later, dou handle become thicker and longer, and softer curl line in waist. The development rules of the segmented dou are, the early dou handle can be divided into three parts, the first part is advanced and of drum shape, then the first part gradually degraded and disappeared at last, and two-parted dou handle appeared. Finally it evolves into a bell-shaped dou handle with no segmentation. Horn-shaped ring foot run through the whole Songze culture, and can mainly been divided into high horn-shaped ring foot and short horn-shaped ring foot, and grading phenomenon appeared in both middle and late period. The change in decorating style is obvious, and its early decorating style can still reflected the style of Majiabang culture, with relatively single decorations, usually the combination of string, edge and engraved hollow, which are separated from each other, stack-up, and the engraved hollow can in shape of circle, triangle, rectangle and long strip. In the middle stage, it is prevailing to decorate the waist-contracted dou handle with diagonal triangle, which are separated by string patterns. And in the middle-late stage, the combined pattern of circle and triangle with arc sides is popular and soon became the mainstream of the time.In addition, through the simple comparison with the unearthed pottery dou of the same period from Jianghuai region, Wanjiang region and Ningshao Plain, the author find the similarity in decorative style and shape and structure, and speculate that there is a close communication and interaction relationship between Songze culture and its neighboring cultures.The last part did a statistic work on the pottery dou’s unearthed situation of each period, finding its increasing importance as a growing number of pottery dou in funerary objects. And according to the statistics of the tomb owners’gender and age, as well as the different pottery dou number of the different level of tombs, explored the difference of the social group reflected by the funerary potteries in Songze culture. The higher the level, the more the number of funerary objects, the number of burial potteries is a symbol of owner’s wealth during his or her lifetime. In addition, by analyzing the specially-shaped pottery dou in tombs, learned that pottery dou has turned from functional vessels to the practical ritual funerary objects during its development process.The study above, on the one hand, has a systematic understanding on development and evolution on pottery dou in Songze culture, on the other hand, according to the relationship between the unearthed situation of tomb and its level, infer the importance of pottery dou in funerary objects and prehistoric society, which provides a new idea to the research of other funerary objects.