A yellowish-celadon jade cong, Neolithic period | 新石器時代 青玉琮

Susan Chen & Company, Hong Kong, 1993.

奉文堂陳淑貞，香港，1993年

The Liangzhu culture in the Yangtze River Delta, which flourished from the late 4th to the end of the 3rd millennium BC, was one of the most prominent Neolithic Chinese civilisations. Among the large variety of Liangzhu artefacts, cong stand out as iconic of this culture. They were made for the most prestigious ranks in society. They are often decorated with a complex motif featuring a human figure, perhaps a shaman, on top of an animal mask with goggled eyes, as seen on the present example.

This cong is remarkable for the warm translucent celadon stone. See a Liangzhu culture of a pale green jade example with a relatively large perforation similar to the present cong, excavated from Fuquanshan and preserved in the Shanghai Museum, illustrated in Liangzhu wenhua yuqi [Jades from the Liangzhu Culture], Beijing and Hong Kong, 1989, pls 15-16. The Shanghai example is similarly carved with a row of animal masks below a tier of faces, but further flanked by bird motifs. 

Liangzhu cong were imitated or even repurposed in other Neolithic cultures. Two examples, also with relatively large central cavities and made of translucent celadon jade, were unearthed in the Neolithic Shixia Culture site in Haifeng, Guangdong, published in Liangzhu and Ancient China: The 5000 Year Civilization Demonstrated by Jades, Palace Museum, Beijing, 2019, cat. nos 172-173.