Fig. 1. Location of sites with faience in China (c. 1500-771 BC): 1. Saensayi; 2. Tianshanbeilu; 3. Ya’er; 4. Shangsunjiazhai; 5. Banzhuwa; 6. Yujiawan; 7. Yuguc Cemetery; 8. Shaolingyuan Cemetery; 9. Zhangjiapo; 10. Pengguo Cemetery; 11. Tianma-qucun; 12. Yangshe; 13. Dahekou; 14. Luoyang Zhongzhoulu; 15. Yingguc Cemetery; 16. Luguo Cemetery; 17. Adunqiaolu Cemetery. Sites where faience has been unearthed in China are shown in Fig. 1. As well-documented materials in the Yellow River basin area (location No. 6-16 in Fig. 1), most early faience objects date from the era of the Western Zhou Dynasty (1046-771 BC). Most of them belonged to the potash-rich type and were probably made locally (Lei and Xia, 2016; Gan, 2016). In contrast, the earliest faience was soda rich. This was unearthed from tomb M113, dating to the early and middle period of Western Zhou Dynasty, in the Marquis Jin Cemetery of Shan’xi Province New excavations at Adunqiaolu in western Xinjiang has provided further information regarding early faience in China and cultural ex- change during the early 2nd millennium BC. Forty-seven faience beads were discovered at the Adunqiaolu site (Cong et al., 2013, 2017; Jia et al., 2017). Unlike most faience findings that were scattered along the upper reaches of the Yellow River in China (Gan, 2016), Aduniqiaolu faience is not only located in the westernmost part of China (far from the Yellow River), but is also the earliest faience that has been found in China so far. In this study, compositional analyses are performed using 4.1. Glazing method Fig. 2. Segmented faience beads from Adunqiaolu site. Table 1 Average compositions for the six faience beads. (Normalized wt%, n = 3; NA = not analysed). 7 “_on~_ “ In the second group, the cross section of samples ADQLO03 and ADQLO005 showed a homogeneous structure with no clear boundaries Fig. 3. BSE images of cross-section of Adunqiaolu samples. Fig. 4. Soda and copper oxide concentration profiles from iteraction layer glass phase (IAL) to the body interparticle glass (BDY). Fig. 5. Scatter plot showing the concentrations of KO and Na2O of European and Adungqiaolu faience (wt%). Fig. 6. Scatter plot showing the concentrations of K2O and Na,0O in the glass phase of Adungiaolu faience (wt%). Well-documented materials being transferred between steppe pas- toralists and urban agriculturalists in Southern-Central Asia, the Indus
