A Harpoon, a Jade Animal and a Pair of Stirrups

An antler harpoon from Xiaogushan offers a small, exact way into a very long history. The account of Liaoning Provincial Museum’s Ancient Liaoning exhibition describes cutting, shaping and scraping antler to produce a pointed fishing implement with barbs. The material was selected and worked; the finished object did not emerge simply by breaking off a useful-looking piece.

The barbs turn a pointed tool into a device intended to hold as well as pierce. Reading the form in that practical way brings skill into a display of prehistory. Nearby in the exhibition’s published account, worked jet objects from Xinle introduce another choice of material, one valued for a polished dark surface. Their forms can be described more securely than all their original uses.

The Ancient Liaoning exhibition opened in 2017 with loans from numerous institutions, bringing objects from different collections into one account of the region’s past.

The museum’s Hongshan jade pig-dragon has a thick, curling body that almost closes into a ring. Its head retains distinct ears and facial markings; a drilled opening provides evidence of suspension. The carving asks for attention to both its animal-like profile and the work needed to turn stone into a compact, continuous form.

Hongshan names a Neolithic archaeological culture of northeastern China, rather than a dynasty ruled by a known line of kings. The precise meaning of these carved animals remains a subject of interpretation. Carving, drilling and polishing remain visible even where the original symbolism is uncertain.

A September 2026 museum report identifies this example as a Liaoning Provincial Museum holding collected in Jianping, western Liaoning. Its collection history connects the carving to that locality; comparable Hongshan objects from other sites have their own archaeological records.

Gilt bronze-clad, wooden-core stirrups from Feng Sufu’s tomb in Beipiao, western Liaoning, appeared in the museum’s 2025 exhibition on cultural exchange. Their construction makes an instructive contrast with the jade: a composite object combines materials rather than asking one substance to do everything. Wood forms a core, while metal encloses it. A pair also directs attention to the rider’s body, supported on both sides of a horse.

The same exhibition used a Ming-period Nine Frontiers map screen alongside a modern interactive reconstruction of a horse market. The Ming dynasty preceded the Qing, and its northern frontier required both military organization and exchange. A map organizes that world from above; a market reconstruction attempts to make its activity legible at human scale.

The historical screen surveys the frontier from above, while the modern interactive scene recreates bargaining at a horse market. Together they connect official geography with the exchanges of horses, cloth and grain that linked communities across the Ming frontier.