EA-XINGLONGGOU-001 - archaeological find
Xinglonggou (Aohan Banner)
China - Aohan Banner, Chifeng, Inner Mongolia; Xinglonggou site, Xinglongwa culture (~8000 BP) - East Asia
Function not recorded Candidate only
玉匕形器 Chinese
Source term: yu bixingqi (jade bi-shaped object)
匕形器 (bǐxíngqì): 'bi-shaped object' — an elongated spoon- or tongue-shaped blade named after the ancient Chinese bi eating-spoon; thin nephrite blades pierced at one end.
Xinglonggou, a village of the Xinglongwa culture in the dry hills of Aohan Banner, is one of the places where archaeologists have caught jade-working itself in the act — eight thousand years ago its people were grinding and drilling nephrite a short walk from where they lived. From House 22 come two of the thin, tongue-shaped jade blades that Chinese archaeology calls bi-shaped objects: narrow strips ground to a slender section and pierced at the upper end by a small drilled hole, photographed cleanly enough that the form is beyond doubt. Everywhere else in this early world the little blades turn up mostly on the bodies of the dead, which is why they are read as ornaments; here they belong to a house floor in a village of makers.
- Object
- Two jade bi-shaped blades from House 22 at Xinglonggou, the Xinglongwa-culture village ~13 km from the type-site where the CASS Institute of Archaeology (2001–2003 excavations, Liu Guoxiang) also documented early jade-working. A published photograph captioned to House 22 shows a narrow, rounded, cream-colored nephrite blade with a single biconically drilled hole at the upper end — a textbook member of the end-pierced thin-blade class, here from a house/settlement context rather than a grave. Date: Xinglongwa culture, ~8200–7400 cal BP; no separate radiocarbon isolated for House 22.
- Function
- Catalogued within the Xinglongwa ornament repertoire.
- Map confidence
- low - Xinglonggou site, Baoguotu area, Aohan Banner, Chifeng, Inner Mongolia; village-level published locations.
- Source location
- Sohu 2021 captioned photographs