Li, Hollow-Legged Tripod

This pottery li tripod—which was originally used as a cooking vessel—belongs to the lower stratum of the Xiajiadian culture that flourished in northeast China. Comparable examples with similar shape and proportion have been excavated in Inner Mongolia. A ceramic shape invented and borrowed from central China, li tripod appeared at a later date in the northeast, with limited examples from the late Neolithic period. As an artifact representative of the lower Xiajiadian culture—which was contemporary with the Shang dynasty in central China where bronze production had already been highly developed—pottery li tripod was popular in the northeast during the Bronze Age and was widely spread from the Liaodong to the Liaoxi regions, including Inner Mongolia.