Pottery production at the Miaodigou site in central China: Archaeological and archaeometric evidence

• Published in: Journal of archaeological science, reports reports, 2022-02, Vol.41, p.103301, Article 103301
• Main Authors: Li, Tao, Li, Pengfei, Song, Haichao, Xie, Zichen, Fan, Wenquan, Lü, Qin-Qin
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Central China; Centralized production; Compositional uniformity; Miaodigou; Painted pottery; Regional production center
• ISSN: 2352-409X
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jasrep.2021.103301

•The Miaodigou site was crucial for understanding the formation of ‘Early China’.•Specialized pottery production is long assumed but inadequately discussed.•We discuss pottery production at Miaodigou using archaeological and archaeometric evidence.•The centralized production of pottery is proposed for the Miaodigou site. The Miaodigou culture in central China had far-reaching influence across much of the Late Neolithic China, leading to the formation of some would call ‘Early China’. Its exquisitely painted pottery with highly stylized patterns is especially well-known to East Asian archaeologists. The Miaodigou culture is represented by archaeological remains of Phase I (3800–3300 BCE) of the Miaodigou site in present-day Sanmenxia City of Henan Province. While a high level of specialization in pottery production has long been assumed for the Miaodigou site (and the culture as well), it has not been systematically demonstrated and discussed. The present study focuses on the Phase I utilitarian pottery—most of which are plain but some are painted—recently unearthed from the Miaodigou site. By combining archaeological and archaeometric evidence, including chemical compositional analysis (hhXRF) and mineral identification (XRD), we, for the first time, discuss pottery production at the very center of the Miaodigou culture. We reveal an overall compositional uniformity in the Miaodigou utilitarian pottery that largely exists across different pastes, colors, vessel forms, form-deduced functions, stages, and spatial units. Our results attest to the high intensity and technological continuity of pottery production at the Miaodigou site, confirming that the site was a regional production center through much of the Miaodigou culture period. We suggest that the centralized production of pottery had taken place at the Miaodigou site.