Longshan: walls, pottery and power

During the later third millennium BCE, settlements with rammed-earth walls appeared in several Yellow River regions. Longshan is an archaeological designation for several regions, with differing settlement sizes, objects and relationships between centres and smaller communities. Walls organized domestic, productive and defensive space. Larger centres were surrounded by smaller communities, while cultivation and animal keeping supported concentrated populations. Settlement patterns help researchers examine the scale and changing organization of early political communities.

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Shandong Longshan sites are known for wheel-made black pottery, including exceptionally thin-walled stemmed cups. Their manufacture required control over clay preparation, shaping and firing. Such vessels differed from ordinary cooking pots and often belonged to ceremonial or burial contexts. Stone, bone and textile-related tools document everyday work. Contrasts between objects reveal different uses and values of labour, connecting craft specialization with unequal access to highly finished products.

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Walls, burial differences and evidence of violence indicate both exchange and conflict between communities. Large centres depended on continuing supplies of food and labour, and could grow or decline. Early in the second millennium BCE, some Longshan centres lost their former scale as new urban networks developed in the Central Plain. These changes connect the history of cities with shifting regional power, preceding the centres associated with Erlitou and the Shang period.

References: [1]