Archeologists recently unearthed a dainty necklace at an archeological site dating back 4,000 to 5,000 years in central China's Henan Province.

Unlike today's necklaces of gold or jewelry, or primitive ones of animal teeth, this one was made of white porcelain, said Jin Yindong, director of the cultural heritage bureau in the ancient city of Dengfeng.

The necklace was found among several other white porcelain wares and some implements made of stone and animal bones, at Nanwa archeological site in Junzhao village of Dengfeng, Jin said.

Never before had Chinese archeologists found so many pieces of white porcelain at one site, said Prof. Zhang Guoshuo, an archeologist at Zhengzhou University in the provincial capital. "Probably there used to be a white porcelain workshop here."

The Nanwa archeological site was somewhere from 4,000 to 5,000 years old and belonged to the Yangshao culture that was formed in the Neolithic period and whose relics were first unearthed in Yangshao village of Henan Province in 1921.
 
(Xinhua News Agency November 3, 2005)