Neolithic China
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Glasgow Museums has a collection of approximately 46 objects from Neolithic China. These date from c. 7000 to 2000 BC. This collection contains high-quality funerary urns. These were buried in tombs, used to hold grain that would provide food for the dead in the afterlife. They all belong to the earliest painted pottery culture of the Gansu Yangshao Period, and are associated with the cultures of Banshan and Machang in north-west China. Notably, many of these urns were collected by the Glaswegian shipping clerk Neilage Sharp Brown, and later acquired by Sir William Burrell. The collection also encompasses a fine collection of jade pendants and axes that are associated with the ritualistic Hongshan and Longshan cultures situated in north-east China, in the present-day Shandong province. The first Chinese Neolithic site to be discovered was found in the 1920s by the Swedish archaeologist Dr Johan Gunnar Anderson, in Gansu province in north-west China. He later found another 50 Neolithic villages and burial grounds. Objects from these sites illustrate the way of life, beliefs and artistic skills of Neolithic people in north-west China. They represent the beginning of what was to become the standard funerary practice of many succeeding generations in China.
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