Research On Prehistoric Pottery Making Process And Composition In Gouwan Site

Gouwan site is located in the east of Zhangying village,Shangji town,Xichuan country,Henan province.It is of in the middle reaches of Han River,which is the transition zone between Central plains culture and Jianghan culture.From July 2007 to August 2009,the archaeology department of Zhengzhou university carried out archaeological exploration and excavation on the Gouwan site,and a large number of pottery artifacts were unearthed.It provide important material information for the study of pottery in the region and the information of exchanges between different archaeological culture.This paper selected 357 pottery samples from the pre-historic period of the Gouwan site as the research object.By XRD,Stereomicroscope,and X-ray fluorescence spectrometer,the composition of the sample phase,structure,and chemical composition are detected.It will achieve microscopic analysis of the pottery production process and gain information of raw materials or origin of pottery.This paper is divided into five parts to study the Neolithic pottery industry on Gouwan site.The first part mainly summarizes the current situation of the pottery research by using modern science and technology methods in the academic community,and puts forward the research mening and research methods.The second part is to test the phase composition and lithofacies structure of samples and analyze the pottery making craft by using instruments such as XRD,a Stered microscope.The third part is to test the main elements of samples and get information on pottery clay raw material types and origin sources by X-ray fluorescence spectrometry and using multivariate methods such as Factor analysis and Cluster analysis etc.The fourth part is combining the macroscopic process of pottery and the distribution of pottery in the settlement space,which is linked to the ancient human social structure,namely is to restore the development of two different cultural systems in Hanshui River region.The fifth part is the conclusion of this paper.The main conclusions are as follows:(1)There are similarities and differences on pottery making processes in the prehistoric culture of the Gouwan site.In general,in addition to the mica pottery,quartz and feldspar are the most important components of the pottery.The difference is mainly in the particle size,roundness and raw material ratio of the clay matrix of the sand-clay pottery.Yangshao culture,the pottery is composed of minerals of various types and sizes,poor roundness,some clay bases are rough;Qujialing-Shijiahe culture,the size of the particicles is comparable,the roundness is mostly subangular or sub-circular and the clay matrix is relatively fine;the third phase of the Wangwan culture,the particle sizes are different,the roundness is better and the individual sample carcass have holes.(2)Mostly,the pottery clay raw materials belong to ordinary fusible clays,which proves that its production processes are completed of the prehistoric period of Gouwan site to some degree.(3)There are lots of the painted pottery artifacts in the second and third period of Yangshao culture of the Gouwan site.It is shown that the red pigment is mainly hematite;the black pigments are mainly made from maghemite,magnetite,hematite,manganese ore containing iron and manganese minerals,zinc-iron spinel etc;the white pottery coating is mainly calcite.It proves that the ancient potters had already realized the coloring effect of ircon and manganese in the second phase of Yangshao culture,and further developed in the thid phase of Yangshao culture.In this paper,the scientific and technological research on the pottery in Gouwan site not only completes the pottery production system operation chain from the raw material selection to the firing process,but also provides a basis for the rise and fall of the Central Plains culture system and the Jianghan culture system in the middle reaches of the Han River.