CH'I-CHIA CULTURE

Pinyin Qijia, the only Neolithic culture to be uncovered in China that shows North Eurasian influence. Although most archaeologists date the Ch'i-chia in the Late Neolithic Period, it survived into historic times, and remains from as late as the 1st century BC have been found. Evidence of the culture was first unearthed in the small village of Ch'i-chia-p'ing, in the northwestern Chinese province of Kansu, in the early 1920s by the Swedish geologist Johan Gunnar Andersson. In the 1950s more important finds were explored in the nearby villages of Yang-wa-wan and Ts'ui-chia-chuang by the Chinese archaeologists Pei Wen-chung and Hsia Nai. The dominant characteristic of the culture appears to have been comblike designs and amphora-like vases, both of which are alien to China. The Ch'i-chia people lived in large villages in terraces along the Huang Ho (Yellow River) and buried their dead in pits. Their most common implements were axes and rectangular knives.