Abrasive jade working with tubular drill
Talla del jade con abrasivos y taladro tubular
- Date
- c. 3500 BCE · confidence medium
- Place
- Niuheliang, Jianping, Liaoning, China
- Credited to
- Hongshan culture; later Liangzhu
- Field
- Tools
What it is
Jade, too hard to carve, was worked by sawing and drilling it with quartz sand as an abrasive and bamboo or bone cords or tubes. The Hongshan and Liangzhu cultures thus produced bi discs and cong tubes of remarkable precision.
The use of lathe-like rotary tools at Liangzhu has been proposed, but there is no consensus.
What it led to
- ritual jade objects as symbols of power and rank
- abrasion and drilling techniques passed on to later lapidary work
- craft specialisation in the earliest complex Chinese societies