| Chapter 2: | Female Figures in Eurasian Neolithic Iconography |
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Figure 12. Deep bowl with four perforated knobs. China. Neolithic Period, Machang type, late third millennium BCE. Earthenware with stylized hands and arm design in brown pigment. E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation and Edwin F. Jack Fund. 1988.47. Courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
A rock carving depicting female display figures, dating to the early second millennium BCE, is to be found in Cishan, Xinzheng County, Henan Province, China. There are glyphs (that is, proto-writing) next to the figures (see figure 13).
The ritual dance is portrayed in large format in East Central Asia. Petroglyphs incised into a high cliff-face at Kangjiashimenzi, near Qutubi, East Central Asia, dating to ca. 1000 BCE (see figure 14),28 depict dancing female figures in a shape strongly resembling those incised and painted on pots from