The ‘Qijia culture’ is so-called after the Qijiaping site in Gansu Province, China. The culture was distributed around the upper Yellow River region of Gansu (centred in Lanzhou) and eastern Qinghai. The Qijia people lived in terraces along the river, forming large villages, and they buried their dead in pits. The dominant characteristic of the culture appears to have been the comblike designs and amphora-like shapes of its vases. Their most common implements were stone axes and rectangular knives, although small copper ware items were also widely used.
The Qijia culture pottery is rare compared to the other Chinese Neolithic ceramic, and most of its extant artefacts are not very tall.
