Exploring Prehistoric Jade: The Ancient Workshops of Ciyakang

via Taiwan News, 11 February 2024: Ciyakang, once overlooked, is revealed as the site of Southeast Asia’s largest jade workshops 2,000 years ago. This historical gem in Hualien County, Taiwan, has drawn archaeologists since the Neolithic period, offering insights into prehistoric craftsmanship and societal complexity. The area’s rich deposits of Taiwanese jade, identified by unique mineral content, have been linked to wide-ranging trade networks, corroborating theories of Austronesian migration and cultural diffusion.

Dating to the Neolithic period, some 2,000–4,000 years ago, these artifacts have long attracted archaeologists. The first to come was the Japanese scholar Tadao Kano (1906–1945), who in 1929 conjectured that Ta­ka­day may have been the site of the largest jade workshops of their era in Southeast Asia.

The site only drew more attention as the field of Taiwanese archaeology developed after World War II. In the 1980s, excavation of the Beinan site in Taitung, the largest prehistoric site discovered in Taiwan, revealed not only large erect stone slabs on the surface but also more than 2,000 stone coffins buried underground, along with over 10,000 jade artifacts.

Archaeologist Liu Yi-chang, a former research fellow at the Institute of History and Philology of Academia Sinica, has pointed out that these jade burial artifacts have now been found at over 100 sites across Taiwan.

Source: Jade the obscure: The prehistoric workshops of Ciyakang | Taiwan News | 2024-02-11 09:00:00