Qijia

Protohistoric culture of northwest China, successor to the Yanshao, and named after the site of Qijiaping in the Tao River valley. Qijia is contemporaneous with the Longshan and early Shang cultures of c 2000 BC. Qijia pottery is sometimes painted and often seems to copy metal vessels. Many simple tools and ornaments of copper have been found at Qijia sites along with some lead and tin bronze. Four radiocarbon dates for the Qijia culture lie in the range c 2250-1900 BC. It was succeeded in the late 2nd or 1st millennium BC by several primitive Chalcolithic cultures.

[Ch’i-chia]. Successor to the Yangshao cultures of Gansu, China, named after the site of Qijiaping in the Tao River valley. Qijia is the Longshan culture of Gansu and is related to Kexingzhuang II in Shaanxi and Hougang II in Henan (see Longshan, sense 3). Qijia pottery is rarely painted and often seems to copy metal vessels. Many simple tools and ornaments of copper have been found at Qijia sites along with some described as lead and tin bronze; copper-arsenic alloys are lacking. Qijia metallurgy has been taken by some scholars as evidence of affiliations with cultures farther west, for example in Turkmenia. Four radiocarbon dates for the Qijia culture lie in the range c2250 to cl 900 bc. A decorated cast bronze mirror from a Qijia site resembles mirrors from Anyang (see Fu Hao) and suggests that Qijia lasted well into the 2nd millennium bc. It was succeeded in the late 2nd or 1st millennium bc by several primitive Chalcolithic cultures including Xindian, named after a Tao River valley site. Xindian pottery is painted with simple geometric, spiral, and scorpion designs and represents the latest and most impoverished survival of the Gansu painted pottery tradition.