1985 Excavation Report of the Hongshan “Goddess Temple” and Cairn Tomb Group ...

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See "1985 Excavation Report of the Hongshan “Goddess Temple” and Cairn Tomb

Group at Niuheliang in Lianoning" reference, and other materials in the

attached

PDF file, or get at this link:

 

http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/gender2000/Papers/Nelson.pdf

 

below is an excerpt from the attached paper.

 

 

 

Millennium Twain

 

 

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A Chinese Goddess

 

The Hongshan culture in northeast China will be less familiar to this audience,

but

it is a useful example to clear up another frequent misunderstanding about

feminist

archaeology. Feminists do not pounce on every representation of a woman and

pronounce that it is a goddess It should be fully obvious that interpretations

of statues as

representing goddesses can be used in androcentric as well as feminist ways.

The

familiar European example of goddesses is Marija Gimbutas’ work in eastern

Europe, to

which in the Neolithic she applied the term Old Europe. Stereotypes of peaceful

women

are not any more useful than those of warlike men, and they do not shed any

light on

processes of culture change in the past. Furthermore, as numerous historic and

ethnographic accounts show, the presence of goddesses doesn’t directly

interpret into

high status for women. Thus the question of what such a statue does represent

is

important, but it can only be approached with other data from the society in

which it is

embedded.

 

In the case of the Hongshan, it is a late Neolithic culture of considerable

extent,

with villages spread over a region of 40,000 square kilometers (Guo 1995). Near

the

southern edge of the site distribution, two large ceremonial centers have been

discovered and partially excavated. One of these, Dongshanzui, has a series of

low walls and stone-edged platforms arranged on a central axis. Some platforms

are round and some are square, reminiscent of the Chinese idea that earth is

square and heaven is round, and that Earth and Heaven should both be worshipped

at unroofed “altars” (Guo and Zhang 1984).

 

Among the artifacts are small and medium-sized female figures. The small ones

are

nude, and one is more definitely pregnant than any of those from the Upper

Paleolithic in

Europe. The other cradles something broken off in one arm, near her breast.

Although

the evidence is fragmentary, the site could be interpreted on this basis as a

center

emphasizing birth, or affirming life. Some 40 kilometers away is the site of

Niuheliang,

which is mostly a region of large mounded tombs and clusters of tombs – a

ceremonial

site of death. Beautifully worked jades are the only kind of artifacts found in

the burials

themselves, although bottomless painted cylinders form lines around the edges

of the

larger tombs. In the middle of this realm of the dead is an oddly shaped

building, 23

meters long but only 2 meters wide at its narrowest point. Within the building

were

pieces of statues, most spectacularly a woman’s face, made of painted unbaked

clay,

with inlaid green jade eyes (LPARI 1986). The excavators declared this face to

represent

a goddess. The building was immediately dubbed Nushenmiao, or Goddess Temple,

and so the site is referred to informally.

 

The speculation among Chinese archaeologists revolved around how this complex

region could be ruled by women - based on the equation of a goddess (not

proved) in a

(possible) temple with a woman ruler – when other late Neolithic sites were

interpreted as having already switched over to “patriarchy.” Lacking only

evidence for warfare, the

Hongshan culture is clearly as complex as other “Jade Age” sites. The large

area given

over to mounded tombs, a three-tier hierarchy of tombs, the jade in the

burials, and

evidence of long distance trade imply a highly organized society.

 

However, while it is necessary to question the grounds on which this has been

accepted as a female-centered society, there are other reasons for suggesting

that females were honored in the Hongshan culture. The most interesting is in

the iconography of the jades found in tombs, for most of the shapes – clouds,

birds, and pigs, for example, can be related to water, which in later China was

codified as female in the yin/yang system (Nelson 1991). Even dragons were

water creatures, although they later became the emblem of emperors, while

empresses were denoted by the phoenix.

 

The association with later Chinese thought is not any more (or less) of a

stretch than the attribution of the square and round low platforms to deities

of Earth and Sky. Thus a more extended exploration of the ideology of Hongshan

may lead to the same conclusion through a different set of assumptions, and the

two tend to strengthen each other.

 

 

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