gems, jade, China, Chinese jade, nephrite, hetian yu, amphibole jade

In the past few decades a large number of ancient Chinese jade carvings have found their way into public and private collections in Europe and America. To date them without archaeological information usually presented a difficult and debatable situation. It was reasonable for each specialist to judge them by his own experience, but often the results seemed to contradict or disagree with one another. The situation has changed now. Recent excavations of Shang and early Chou sites and burials have brought to light enough stubborn, inflexible bits of data so it may be worthwhile to reassess some of the arguable pieces. The present paper proposes to review and to reinstall in their proper setting a group of twelve standing figurines which have been treated differently by eminent scholars. As these figurines have been dated from prehistoric times through the Shang and Chou dynasties to the Han, given provenances ranging from An-yang to pre-Columbian America, and taken as representations of Palaeolithic shamans, Hsi-wang-mu or mythological dignitaries, it seems advisable for us to go over them carefully. Let me introduce these examples one by one as they have been noted or published.