{"id":"EA-XIAONANSHAN-001","label":"Two Xiaonanshan jade blades, one pierced","people_or_site":"Xiaonanshan (Raohe)","country_current":"China","historic_region":"Raohe County, Shuangyashan, Heilongjiang; Xiaonanshan site on the Ussuri River, early jade horizon (c. 7250–6650 BC)","macroregion":"East Asia / China","local_name":"玉匕","source_term":"yu bi (jade bi-shaped blade)","source_language":"Chinese","object_description":"Two jade bi-shaped blades (M1:23, M1:24) among the 67-piece jade assemblage of tomb M1 at Xiaonanshan, a hill on the west bank of the Ussuri River near the Russian border. M1:23 is a flat, finely polished strip pierced near the top by a small (~0.2 cm) biconically drilled hole; M1:24 appears unperforated. The tomb's jades — 45 rings, 11 slit rings, beads, an axe, a spear, a hairpin and the two bi-blades — belong to a burial horizon that recent radiocarbon dating places around 7250–6650 BC, roughly a millennium before the Xinglongwa jades and about a thousand kilometres further north.","function_summary":"Catalogued within an early jade ornament set.","attestation_type":"archaeological_find","source_key":"xiaonanshan_m1_yubi","source_type":"archaeological_report","source_url":"https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/char-2020-0007/html","page_or_plate":"Chinese Archaeology 20(1), 2020; 边疆考古研究 14 (line drawings, items 34–35)","map_confidence":"low","plot_status":"candidate_only","coordinate_basis":"Xiaonanshan hill, SE of Raohe county town, west bank of the Ussuri River, Heilongjiang; site-level coordinate from the 2023 Antiquity paper on the site's Palaeolithic component (not tomb-specific).","jade_complex_role":"anchor","blurb":"On a low hill above the Ussuri River, where China now meets the Russian Far East, a looted grave exposed in 1991 by men rebuilding a watchtower gave up sixty-seven pieces of worked jade — and when archaeologists returned to Xiaonanshan between 2015 and 2019 they found a burial ground so old that it pushed the origins of systematic jade-working back to around nine thousand years ago, a thousand years before the famous jades of Xinglongwa and a thousand kilometres to the north. Among the rings and slit earrings of tomb M1 lay two slender jade blades. One, catalogued M1:23, is a flat polished strip drilled through near its tip by a hole no wider than two millimetres; the other has no hole at all. They are classed as ornaments, as such blades always are. But the pierced one is a thin blade made to hang, and perhaps swing, from a single end hole — and here it appears at the very dawn of jade, at the edge of the known world of its makers: the earliest and northernmost member of the series.","pull_quote":"","pull_quote_translation":"","pull_quote_cite":"","term_gloss":"玉匕 (yù bǐ): 'jade bi' — the bi-shaped blade, an elongated tongue of jade pierced at one end; here in the earliest known jade-working tradition of Northeast Asia.","cls":"unknown","class_label":"Function not recorded","color":"#6B7884","is_candidate":true,"flags":[],"f_jade_complex":true,"f_women_taboo":false,"f_women_special":false,"f_snake":false,"f_archaeology":true,"archaeology_kind":"object","date_display":"c. 7250–6650 BC","date_qualification":"","date_basis":"burial_horizon","date_confidence":"high","date_citation":"xiaonanshan_m1_yubi, Chinese Archaeology 20(1), 2020; 边疆考古研究 14 (line drawings, items 34–35)","sources":[{"citation":"Heilongjiang Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, 'The excavation of Zone III of the Xiaonanshan site in Raohe County, Heilongjiang Province in 2015,' Chinese Archaeology 20(1) (2020); Zhao Binfu, Sun Mingming & Du Zhanwei, 《饶河小南山墓葬出土玉器的年代和性质》, 边疆考古研究 14 (2014), items 34-35; Kumbani, Bradfield, Rusch & Wurz, 'A functional investigation of southern Cape Later Stone Age artefacts resembling aerophones,' Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 24 (2019)","url":"https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/char-2020-0007/html","archive":"https://web.archive.org/web/20240513202131/https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/char-2020-0007/html"}],"source_citations":"Heilongjiang Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, 'The excavation of Zone III of the Xiaonanshan site in Raohe County, Heilongjiang Province in 2015,' Chinese Archaeology 20(1) (2020); Zhao Binfu, Sun Mingming & Du Zhanwei, 《饶河小南山墓葬出土玉器的年代和性质》, 边疆考古研究 14 (2014), items 34-35; Kumbani, Bradfield, Rusch & Wurz, 'A functional investigation of southern Cape Later Stone Age artefacts resembling aerophones,' Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 24 (2019)","source_display":"Heilongjiang Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, 'The excavation of Zone III of the Xiaonanshan site in Raohe County, Heilongjiang Province in 2015,' Chinese Archaeology 20(1) (2020); Zhao Binfu, Sun Mingming & Du Zhanwei, 《饶河小南山墓葬出土玉器的年代和性质》, 边疆考古研究 14 (2014), items 34-35; Kumbani, Bradfield, Rusch & Wurz, 'A functional investigation…","date_citation_display":"Chinese Archaeology 20(1), 2020; 边疆考古研究 14 (line drawings, items 34–35)","object_display":"Two jade bi-shaped blades (M1:23, M1:24) among the 67-piece jade assemblage of tomb M1 at Xiaonanshan, a hill on the west bank of the Ussuri River near the Russian border. M1:23 is a flat, finely polished strip pierced near the top by a small (~0.2 cm) biconically drilled hole; M1:24 appears unperforated. The tomb's jades — 45 rings, 11 slit rings, beads, an axe, a spear, a hairpin and the two bi-blades — belong to a burial horizon that recent radiocarbon dating places around 7250–6650 BC, roughly a millennium before the Xinglongwa jades and about a thousand kilometres further north.","function_display":"Catalogued within an early jade ornament set.","confidence_display":"low","attestation_label":"archaeological find","etymology_hedge":"","people_key":"xiaonanshan","display_name":"Two Xiaonanshan jade blades, one pierced","image":{"full":"assets/objects/jade_candidates/local_review/ea-xiaonanshan-001-plate-photo.jpg","thumb":"assets/objects/jade_candidates/local_review/thumbs/ea-xiaonanshan-001-plate-photo_thumb.jpg","credit":"","license":"","source_page":"https://www.city.awara.lg.jp/mokuteki/education/kyoudo/kyoudorekishishiryo/kankoubutu/p011700_d/fil/forum1.pdf","rehosted":true,"representative":false,"caption":"The pierced jade blade from Xiaonanshan tomb M1, its tiny hole at one end."},"slug":"ea-xiaonanshan-001-xiaonanshan-raohe"}