Painted Pottery Basin with Geometric Pattern

The rim of this basin is painted with a ripple pattern. On the outer surface there are two registers of triangle patterns which are simplified from a fish design. The fish is a common motif in the earlier Banpo type painted pottery. The well-known basin at the Banpo site at Xi’an features a human face with a fish for the mouth, which may relate to the importance of fish to the Banpo people. Yangshao culture was named after the village of Yangshao, in Mianchi county, Henan province where the first finds of this type were found in 1921. Within Yangshao culture, this basin belongs to the Banpo type.