Broad-shouldered jar

Ceramic storage jars of this type have been unearthed in large numbers from both cemeteries and domestic settings at Neolithic culture sites along the upper reaches of the Yellow River valley. This jar’s large size, skillful decoration, and excellent condition suggest that it was intended as a grave object rather than for daily use. Hand-built using the coil method, in which ropes of moist clay were coiled and stacked to create vessel walls that were then beaten smooth with a paddle, the jar was dried to leather hardness before being painted with black and burgundy colored slips (liquid clays) and fired in a kiln. The vessel’s undecorated tapered foot suggests that it was meant to be set into the ground for stability; the potter therefore confined his dynamic, curvilinear designs to the upper portion of the vessel. The bold, abstract decoration on this jar’s shoulder has a surprisingly modern appeal that belies its 3rd-millennium BCE origins.