The traditions of inverting objects, painting vermilion, and destroying vessels: Beliefs about life and death in prehistoric funerary vessels in China

The prehistoric Chinese burial customs of object inversion, vermilion application, and vessel destruction are reinterpreted as an interconnected ritual complex of “death-making.” Grounded in anthropological theories of death, these practices are identified as active material strategies for performing “rites of separation.” Through a systematic analysis of archaeological data from the pre-Yangshao to Longshan periods, inversion is shown to spatially negate, vermilion to symbolically mark, and destruction to physically terminate objects, collectively enforcing a cosmological boundary between the living and the dead. The dynamic evolution of this complex reveals a profound ideological shift. During the Longshan period, these practices were leveraged for elite power and began to simplify. Their subsequent decline and replacement by specialized funerary objects (mingqi) signal an essential transition in Chinese worldview: from an early focus on “distinguishing between life and death” to a later emphasis on “treating the deceased as if alive.” These burial traditions are thus reframed as a coherent ritual system whose transformation was central to the development of social complexity and the foundational afterlife beliefs of Chinese civilization.