{"id":"EA-XINGLONGWA-001","label":"Xinglongwa type-site jade bi-shaped blades (匕形器)","people_or_site":"Xinglongwa (type-site)","country_current":"China","historic_region":"Aohan Banner, Chifeng, Inner Mongolia; Xinglongwa site, type-site of the Xinglongwa culture (c. 6250–5450 BC)","macroregion":"East Asia / China","local_name":"玉匕形器","source_term":"yu bixingqi (jade bi-shaped object)","source_language":"Chinese","object_description":"Elongated tongue-shaped nephrite blades from the Xinglongwa type-site — the moated Neolithic village that gives the culture its name, with 170+ semi-subterranean houses inside an oval ditch. The bi-shaped jades are one of the site's standard jade forms alongside slit rings (jue): a long strip with one face slightly concave and the other convex, ground to a thin lens section and pierced near one end by a small perforation. Museum specimens attributed to houses 201, 125 and 128 show clean, symmetrical blades a few centimetres long with a single biconical end hole. Most excavated examples lay on the neck, chest or abdomen of the dead and are read as pendants or garment ornaments. Date: Xinglongwa culture, c. 6250–5450 BC.","function_summary":"Catalogued as pendants or dress ornaments.","attestation_type":"archaeological_find","source_key":"xinglongwa_jade_bixingqi","source_type":"archaeological_report","source_url":"https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%85%B4%E9%9A%86%E6%B4%BC%E9%81%97%E5%9D%80","page_or_plate":"Yang, Liu & Tang 2007 catalogue; museum display photographs (Sohu)","map_confidence":"low","plot_status":"candidate_only","coordinate_basis":"Xinglongwa site, ~1.3 km SE of Xinglongwa village, Baoguotu/Xinglongwa Town, Aohan Banner, Chifeng, Inner Mongolia; coordinates from the Chinese-Wikipedia site record.","jade_complex_role":"anchor","blurb":"Xinglongwa, in the dry hills of Aohan Banner in southeastern Inner Mongolia, is the moated village that gave its name to one of the oldest jade-working cultures on earth: eight thousand years ago its people lived in more than a hundred and seventy pit-houses ringed by an oval ditch, and buried some of their dead beneath the house floors with worked nephrite. Among those jades, beside the famous slit earrings, is a plainer thing — a long, thin, tongue-shaped blade, one face gently hollowed and the other curved, ground to a slender lens and pierced at one end by a single small hole. Chinese archaeologists call it a bi-shaped object, 匕形器, and read it as a pendant or a dress ornament, because it is found lying along the neck, chest and belly of the buried. It is the same blade that recurs across the whole Xinglongwa world — most richly at Chahai, a sister village to the east, where thirteen were found, among them three graded pairs — large, medium and small — laid in a single house burial.","pull_quote":"","pull_quote_translation":"","pull_quote_cite":"","term_gloss":"匕形器 (bǐxíngqì): 'bi-shaped object' — an elongated spoon- or tongue-shaped blade named after the ancient Chinese bi eating-spoon; in the Xinglongwa culture, thin nephrite blades pierced at one end.","cls":"unknown","class_label":"Function not recorded","color":"#6B7884","is_candidate":true,"flags":["snake"],"f_jade_complex":true,"f_women_taboo":false,"f_women_special":false,"f_snake":true,"f_archaeology":true,"archaeology_kind":"object","date_display":"c. 6250–5450 BC","date_qualification":"","date_basis":"cultural_phase","date_confidence":"medium","date_citation":"xinglongwa_jade_bixingqi, Yang, Liu & Tang 2007 catalogue; museum display photographs (Sohu)","sources":[{"citation":"Yang Hu, Liu Guoxiang & Tang Chung (邓聪), 《玉器起源探索——兴隆洼文化玉器研究及图录》 (Chinese University of Hong Kong Press, 2007); 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://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%85%B4%E9%9A%86%E6%B4%BC%E9%81%97%E5%9D%80","archive":"https://web.archive.org/web/20260130054337/https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%85%B4%E9%9A%86%E6%B4%BC%E9%81%97%E5%9D%80"}],"source_citations":"Yang Hu, Liu Guoxiang & Tang Chung (邓聪), 《玉器起源探索——兴隆洼文化玉器研究及图录》 (Chinese University of Hong Kong Press, 2007); 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":"Yang Hu, Liu Guoxiang & Tang Chung (邓聪), 《玉器起源探索——兴隆洼文化玉器研究及图录》 (Chinese University of Hong Kong Press, 2007); Kumbani, Bradfield, Rusch & Wurz, 'A functional investigation of southern Cape Later Stone Age artefacts resembling aerophones,' Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 24 (2019)","date_citation_display":"Yang, Liu & Tang 2007 catalogue; museum display photographs (Sohu)","object_display":"Elongated tongue-shaped nephrite blades from the Xinglongwa type-site — the moated Neolithic village that gives the culture its name, with 170+ semi-subterranean houses inside an oval ditch. The bi-shaped jades are one of the site's standard jade forms alongside slit rings (jue): a long strip with one face slightly concave and the other convex, ground to a thin lens section and pierced near one end by a small perforation. Museum specimens attributed to houses 201, 125 and 128 show clean, symmetrical blades a few centimetres long with a single biconical end hole. Most excavated examples lay on the neck, chest or abdomen of the dead and are read as pendants or garment ornaments. Date: Xinglongwa culture, c. 6250–5450 BC.","function_display":"Catalogued as pendants or dress ornaments.","confidence_display":"low","attestation_label":"archaeological find","etymology_hedge":"","people_key":"xinglongwa","display_name":"Xinglongwa type-site jade bi-shaped blades (匕形器)","image":{"full":"assets/objects/jade_candidates/local_review/ea-xinglongwa-001-h201.jpg","thumb":"assets/objects/jade_candidates/local_review/thumbs/ea-xinglongwa-001-h201_thumb.jpg","credit":"Xinglongwa site excavation photograph; original publication not identified, rehosted from a sohu.com feature article (2021)","license":"In copyright — rights holder not identified; rehosted at low resolution for non-commercial research","source_page":"https://www.sohu.com/a/446658674_695096","rehosted":true,"representative":false,"caption":"Xinglongwa House 201 jade bi-shaped blade (匕形器) — front, back and lenticular side profiles","additional":[{"full":"assets/objects/jade_candidates/local_review/ea-xinglongwa-chahai-001-fig6.png","thumb":"assets/objects/jade_candidates/local_review/thumbs/ea-xinglongwa-chahai-001-fig6_thumb.png","alt":"Two elongated, willow-leaf-shaped jade blades of the Xinglongwa culture, each pierced near its narrow top, shown against a dark background.","credit":"China Cultural Relics News (中国文物报), 23 April 2024","license":"In copyright — newspaper figure, rehosted at low resolution for non-commercial research","source_page":"http://www.zhongguowenwubao.com/portal/DigitPager/paperDetail/publishdate/2024-04-23/paperId/20663/id/104845","rehosted":true,"representative":false,"caption":"Two more willow-leaf jade blades of the Xinglongwa culture, each pierced at its narrow top."}]},"slug":"ea-xinglongwa-001-xinglongwa-type-site"}