Painted jar
Majiayao Culture, Machang period (2575 -100 BC approx)
Earthenware

Possibly a funerary urn for storing grain and left in a tomb to accompany the dead in the after-life. Made without a potter’s wheel in coarse clay shaped with wooden paddles and scraping tools. Purple and red colors came from mineral pigments readily found in the local area.

Remarkably fresh and vivid. Could almost have been made yesterday.