Neolithic Chinese Jades

Abstract

Until very recent times the study of Neolithic jade-working in China owed everything to theory and deduction. In consequence, many of the ideas of even the most learned and sincere scholars were of a tentative nature in the absence of a sound basis. Now the picture can be drawn with a new confidence and accuracy, based upon the reliable archaeological dating techniques of carbon 14 and thermoluminescence measurement of items of pottery and carbonized organic remains that have been excavated with jades and from jade culture levels. For over 40 years a steady programme of scientific and controlled archaeological excavation and analysis in China has furnished new, incontrovertible and often startling evidence of the age immediately preceding the introduction of bronze metal and the written word.