NEOLITHIC PERIOD, QIJIA CULTURE, CIRCA 2000 BC

This exceptionally thin blade can be associated with others from the late Neolithic and early Bronze Age Qijia culture of northeast China in what are now Shaanxi and Gansu provinces. Other blades of this type which share the same kind of fine polish and extreme thinness have been recovered from a pit at a Qijia period site in Shenmu, northern Shaanxi province, illustrated by Jenny So in the introductory essay, p. ???, and published in Shenmu Xinhua, Beijing, 2005, pp. 114-15. The blades were arranged in parallel formations and stood on their edges.

A dao of this shape and thinness (2 mm.), but longer (44.6 cm.), in the Winthrop Collection is illustrated by M. Loehr, Ancient Chinese Jades, Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, 1975, p. 162, no. 207.