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[[underline]] Chapter XVI. [[/underline]] 349. found on ancient pottery elsewhere, both painted and incised, and which has been called the "death pattern" because confined, apparently, to funerary are. [[superscript]] (313) [[/superscript]] This resemblance may of course be purely fortuitous; for ---------------------- [[superscript]] (313) [[/superscript]] See, for example, [[underline]] Bull. Mus Far Eastern Antiq. [[/underline]], No.I, Stock-Holm, 1929: Hanna Rydh, "On Symbolism in Mortuary Ceramics", pp. 71-120; ref. especially to pp. 72 [[underline]] sqq. [[/underline]]] --------------------------- in the present instance we did not have the complete design, nor could we tell whether the shard on which it occurred had belonged to a mortuary vessel. Its occurrence should however be noted; since a closely similar if not indeed identical pattern has been found on the prehistoric funerary painted pottery of northwestern China; [[superscript]] (314) [[/superscript]] and such a coincidence may --------------------- [[superscript]] (314) [[/superscript]] See the article cited in footnote 313; also the paper immediately preceding it, by Dr. J. G. Andersson, "^[[O]]n Symbolism in the Pre-historic Painted Ceramics of China" (same publication, pp. 65-69). --------------------------- point to the existence of an ideological continuum between the two areas concerned. The reverse or inner (concave) side of the above shard bore the imprint of some rather finely woven textile, with threads running about 35 to the inch. This impression indicated that at the time when the vessel was made, the inhabitants of the region already possessed a fairly well developed technique of true weaving. It may be stated in this connection that according to the ancient records, the [[underline]] Yü kung [[/underline]] in particular, silk stuffs (and probably hemp cloth, the material used even today, through religious conservatism, for "orthodox" Chinese mourning garments) were being produced in the Yangtze basin at least as far back as the middle of the 1st millennium before our Era. [[superscript]] (315) [[/superscript]] --------------------- [[superscript]] (315) [[/superscript]] That thread or string of some sort was being regularly spun---not merely twisted by hand---during the prehistoric Chinese "Painted Pottery" period (probably around the latter half of the 3rd millennium B.C.), we were able to show later on, through our discovery on such sites of discoidal earthenware spinning-whorls. These however in them-
