战国陶文研究综述

Research on pottery characters can be traced back to the Qing Dynasty. However, with the continuous increase of other unearthed materials, scholars have always paid less attention to pottery writing than other ancient writing materials. In fact, compared with bronze, silk, seals, etc., pottery is an artifact that people of almost all classes need to use. It is also the most common utensil, and the writing on such artifacts is the reflection of social reality and the daily life of the people in the pre-Qin period. Its quantity should also be the largest among the unearthed materials. Such a large amount of material contains the same value as other materials. In other words, pottery characters have important values including which is useful for studying the shape and evolution of ancient Chinese characters, the use of characters, political systems, official systems, geographic evolution, historical facts, surname status, ideology and culture, and so on. It can be seen that pottery character or writing of the Warring States period can be regarded as a whole category for special research.