Argon Isotopic Dating of Neolithic Jade Artifacts and Raw Materials from Eastern China and Its Implications

Abstract

The or i gin of Chi nese cul ture dur ing the Neo lithic age has long been a fo cus of ac a demic de bate. The con tro versy is cen tered on whether the or i gins of Neo lithic cul ture in China were sin gu lar or more di verse. Con se quently, un der stand ing the spa tial dis tri bu tion of ar chae o log i cal jade ar ti facts in the con text of the sources of raw jade has been one of the most rea son able means to in fer the routes of cul tural mi gra tion and trade ac tiv i ties dur ing the Neo lithic pe riod. It was widely ad vo cated that HeTian Jade from XinJiang was the sole source of jade for all of Neo lithic China. How ever, the dis cov ery of jade mines at MeiLing (JiangSu Prov ince) in 1989 raises the ques tion as to whether raw jade could have come from an al ter nate source other than XinJiang dur ing this pe riod. Us ing 40 Ar/ 39 Ar la ser dat ing tech nique, this study at tempts to cor re late the for ma tion ages of ex ca vated jade ar ti facts at LingJiaTan (AnHui Prov ince) to the nearby MeiLing jade mines and far away HeTian jade mines, in the hope of trac ing the pos si ble cul ture in ter ac tions and trad ing ac tiv i ties among these ar eas. The re sults show that the for ma tion ages of LingJiaTan jade ar ti facts are around 120 Ma, about the same age as jade from the nearby MeiLing jade mines. In ad di tion, both jades are tremolite with sim i lar chem i cal com po si tions and min eral char ac ter is tics. There fore, the ma te rial source of jade ar ti facts ex ca vated at LingJiaTan ar che o log i cal site most likely orig i nated from these nearby MeiLing jade mines. By con trast, there is a big dif fer ence in the for ma tion ages be tween Meiling jade ar ti facts and raw HeTian Jade (277.3 Ma). Based on these re sults, we con clude that in the Neo lithic age, peo ple liv ing in LingJiaTan (AnHui Province) probably had interactions with people around MeiLing (JiangSu Province), but not with peoples of XinJiang Province.