New Stone Age kiln groups found in Guangdong Province
( 2003-11-12 16:26) (China.org.cn)
A group of kilns dating from
the New Stone Age, the largest find of its kind in China so far, have been
unearthed in a hillside orchard of Hutoupu of Mianyuan Village, Guangtai Town,
Puning City of Guangdong Province. After being buried for about 4,000 years, the
discovery of the kilns has enabled archeologists to determine for the first time
how people of the Chaoshan area were able to carry out specialized pottery
production in remote antiquity.
 The discovery was actually made early this year, but details
of the site were released as part of a group of important new archeological
discoveries announced at the Fifth Chao Studies International Seminar held in
Jieyang, Guangdong Province, on November 10.
Reporters from the Information Times visited the ancient relics together with
famous domestic and foreign experts participating in the seminar.
The hillside where the group of kilns is located is very quiet with a
murmuring stream flowing gently in front, and dominated by the lush green trees
in the orchard. The first discovery of the Hutoupu relics dates back to the
1980s, and Wu Xuebin, deputy director of the Bureau of Culture of Puning City
who made the initial finds, gave a vivid account of the process.
"It was in 1982, when China conducted a nationwide cultural relics survey.
One day I was introducing the provenance of a kind of stamped pottery to some
visitors when someone said: 'It's nothing rare. There are a lot of objects like
that in our village.'" The man whose remarks shocked everybody was from the
working committee of the Puning area. In October that year an archaeological
team was sent to the Hutoupu relics site for excavation and found the kilns
site.
Qiu Licheng, director of the Cultural Relics and Archaeology Research
Institute of Guangdong Province, said that the discovery of the Hutoupu site has
created two wonders: the largest group of kilns of New Stone Age discovered in
China so far and the earliest kiln site discovered in Guangdong Province. The
site covers nearly 10,000 square meters and dates back to about 4,000 years.
 The unearthed cultural relics include pottery jars and
household wares and stone axes. There are at least eight different patterns on
the pottery, including round and vein shapes. Li Boqian, director from the
Zhendan Ancient Civilization Research Center of the Peking University in charge
of the research topic of pre-Qin Dynasty (770-221 BC) and Han Dynasty (206
BC-220 AD) of Jieyang (Rongjiang) said that, the area covering Guangdong
Province and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region used to be listed as a barbarous
and remote area.
The archaeological finds show the area has a long history and creates a need
to reassess the historical view.
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