Chinese jar, Neolithic period, painted earthenware, HAA

Xindian culture () was a

Bronze Age The Bronze Age is a historic period, lasting approximately from 3300 BC to 1200 BC, characterized by the use of bronze, the presence of writing in some areas, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the second pri ...

culture in the

Gansu Gansu (, ; alternately romanized as Kansu) is a province in Northwest China. Its capital and largest city is Lanzhou, in the southeast part of the province. The seventh-largest administrative district by area at , Gansu lies between the Tibet ...

and

Qinghai Qinghai (; alternately romanized as Tsinghai, Ch'inghai), also known as Kokonor, is a landlocked province in the northwest of the People's Republic of China. It is the fourth largest province of China by area and has the third smallest po ...

provinces of

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

. Xindian culture is dated ca. 1500–1000 BCE, a radiocarbon testing of an artefact produced a date around 1000 BCE,''Cihai'' ("Sea of Words"), Shanghai cishu chubanshe, Shanghai 2002, , p. 1885 which roughly corresponds to the

Western Zhou The Western Zhou ( zh, c=, p=Xīzhōu; c. 1045 BC – 771 BC) was a royal dynasty of China and the first half of the Zhou dynasty. It began when King Wu of Zhou overthrew the Shang dynasty at the Battle of Muye and ended when the Quanrong noma ...

period of the Central Plain area (in the middle and lower course of the

Yellow River The Yellow River or Huang He (Chinese: , Standard Beijing Mandarin, Mandarin: ''Huáng hé'' ) is the second-longest river in China, after the Yangtze River, and the List of rivers by length, sixth-longest river system in the world at th ...

Geography

The Xindian culture is named after a site discovered in 1923–24 in Xindian,

Lintao County Lintao County ) is administratively under the control of Dingxi, Gansu province. History Until the 20th century, Lintao was known as Didao (). The Battle of Didao was fought in the area in 255 CE, during the Three Kingdoms era. In the 8th ce ...

. The culture was mainly located in Gansu in the middle and lower course of the

Tao River Tao River () is a right tributary of China's Yellow River. It starts in Xiqing Mountains () near the Gansu–Qinghai border, flows eastward across Gannan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, and then northward more or less along the border between Di ...

and

Daxia River The Daxia River () is a tributary of the Yellow River in southern Gansu Province in China's west. The Daxia River starts in eastern Huangnan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Qinghai, then flows easterly through northern Gannan Tibetan Autonomo ...

, and in

in the basin of the Huangshui River.

Cultural context

Xindian culture was predominantly agricultural, with breeding pigs and cattle, at the sites of the culture were found bronze castings and traces of copper smelting production."Синьдянь"

Great Soviet Encyclopedia The ''Great Soviet Encyclopedia'' (GSE; ) is one of the largest Russian-language encyclopedias, published in the Soviet Union from 1926 to 1990. After 2002, the encyclopedia's data was partially included into the later ''Bolshaya rossiyskaya e ...

(in Russian) Some small bronzes have been discovered at Huizui in Lintao county. They include knives, awls and buttons. Xindian culture belongs to the painted pottery cultures found in Central Asia, India, and China, among others. Xindian culture postdates the

Qijia culture The Qijia culture (2200 BC – 1600 BC) was an early Bronze Age culture distributed around the upper Yellow River region of Gansu (centered in Lanzhou) and eastern Qinghai, China. It is regarded as one of the earliest bronze cultures in China. T ...

; the pottery evidence demonstrates a cultural continuity, p. 901. though genetically it is not related with it. The shape of some Xindian culture pottery vessels, as well as the decorative patterns on pottery reveal correlations with the Tangwang culture. In the same area in close proximity are distributed early sites of the contemporary neighboring

Siwa culture The Siwa culture () was a Bronze Age culture in southeast Gansu Province, China. It was discovered by Swedish geologist Johan Gunnar Andersson in 1924 at Mount Siwa () in Lintao County, hence its name. It flourished circa 14th to 11th century BC ...

, though Xindian culture and Siwa culture followed their own paths of development. The later Xindian culture expanded westward and came closer to the

Kayue culture Kayue culture () was a Bronze Age culture in Northwest China in the area of the upper reaches of the Yellow River and its tributary Huang Shui (Tib. ''Tsong Chu''). It was discovered in 1923 in the villages Kayue () and Xiaxihe () of Yunguchuan H ...

, it was possibly absorbed by the Kayue culture.

Notes

External links

Xindian wenhua
- ''(In Chinese)''
A rare large Neolithic painted pottery jar Xindian culture, c. 1500 - 1000 BC

Xindian Culture Painted Pottery
{{Gansu topics Bronze Age in China History of Gansu History of Qinghai Archaeological cultures of China 15th-century BC establishments