The Making of Fired Clay Bricks in C hina Some 5000 Years Ago

Fired bricks are a hard and durable masonry material that has played a major role in the emergence of early human urban civilization. In C hina, fired clay bricks have been widely used as a building and flooring material since the Q in D ynasty (476−206 bc ), although a few lines of evidence show that fired clay bricks might have been invented as early as 5500 years ago in eastern central C hina. However, these burnt clumps of clay appear not to be bricks in the strict sense, and our knowledge about the origin of fired clay bricks in C hina still remains fragmentary. Archaeological excavations at a M iddle N eolithic cultural site in northwestern C hina reveal that the making of fired clay bricks began some 5000 years ago. Our findings also open a window into the process of prehistoric brickmaking in East Asia.