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2021 (2)

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Book
Painted pottery production and social complexity in Neolithic Northwest China
Authors: --- --- ---
ISBN: 9781407358789 1407358782 Year: 2021 Publisher: Oxford BAR Publishing

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Abstract

This study focuses on Neolithic period Majiayao-style painted pottery from Northwest China, which is known for its high quality and beautiful décor. While much is known about the pottery, research on the associated Majiayao Culture has previously been limited to cultural histories that emphasize chronology and trait-list classification, leading to a static and simplistic view of past realities. This study instead focuses on the long-overlooked social and economic processes behind the production of these vessels. Attribute and physicochemical analyses of hundreds of ceramic vessels and samples selected from multiple sites in Gansu, Qinghai, and Sichuan provinces are combined with settlement pattern and mortuary analyses of thousands of sites and burials. By synthesizing these data, this study illustrates a positive correlation between regional density of settlement distribution, intensification of pottery production, and degree of social inequality in each phase. Rather than showing a simple linear process of increasing social complexity, however, distinct regional variations in each phase and significant regional fluctuations over time can be seen. The results of this study demonstrate that economic and social patterns related to Majiayao ceramics were far more complex than previously thought.


Book
Winter Pasture : One Woman's Journey with China's Kazakh Herders.
Authors: --- ---
ISBN: 1662600348 Year: 2021 Publisher: New York : Astra Publishing House,

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"Li Juan and her mother own a small convenience store in the Altai Mountains in Northwestern China, where she writes about her life among grasslands and snowy peaks. To her neighbors' surprise, Li decides to join a family of Kazakh herders as they take their 30 boisterous camels, 500 sheep and over 100 cattle and horses to pasture for the winter. The so-called 'winter pasture' occurs in a remote region that stretches from the Ulungur River to the Heavenly Mountains. As she journeys across the vast, seemingly endless sand dunes, she helps herd sheep, rides horses, chases after camels, builds an underground home using manure, gathers snow for water, and more. With a keen eye for the understated elegance of the natural world, and a healthy dose of self-deprecating humor, Li vividly captures both the extraordinary hardships and the ordinary preoccupations of the day-to-day of the men and women struggling to get by in this desolate landscape. Her companions include Cuma, the often drunk but mostly responsible father; his teenage daughter, Kama, who feels the burden of the world on her shoulders and dreams of going to college; his reticent wife, a paragon of decorum against all odds, who is simply known as "sister-in-law." In bringing this faraway world to English language readers here for the first time, Li creates an intimate bond with the rugged people, the remote places and the nomadic lifestyle. In the signature style that made her an international sensation, Li Juan transcends the travel memoir genre to deliver an indelible and immersive reading experience on every page."

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