Volume 18, Issue 1

In 2014 to 2016, Liaoning Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology and Longcheng District Museum of Chaoyang City conducted rescue excavation to the Banlashan (Half Hill) Cemetery. This cemetery was carefully designed and constructed, on the ground of which earthen mounds were built up and the burials and sacrificial facilities were all arranged on these mounds. In the late stage of the use of this cemetery, functional zoning appeared: the burial zone was in the south of the cemetery and the sacrificial zone was in the north. In total, 78 burials, one sacrificial altar, one architectural foundation and 29 sacrificial pits were recovered, from which pottery wares, stone implements and jades were unearthed. The discovery of this cemetery, especially the concentrated discovery of sacrificial remains, gave us a brand-new understanding to the functions and structures of the cairn cemeteries of the Hongshan Culture and provided important evidences for the studies on the ancient funeral customs.

In 2014 through 2016, archaeological surveys and excavations were conducted in the central area of the Shijiahe Site. The walled site at Locus Tanjialing found in the coring tests and excavations was the predecessor of the Shijiahe walled site, and its discovery provides important clues for understanding the formation and development of this latter site. The sacrificial remains at Locus Yinxintai (Seal Terrace) and the pottery workshop at Locus Sanfangwan are important discoveries related to an in-depth understanding on the functional differences across the Shijiahe Site. In addition, the jades unearthed in the excavations are richly diverse and were made with complicated techniques. They represent the highest level of the jade art in prehistoric China and contribute substantially to research on the development of Chinese Civilization.

The Imperial City Terrace (Huangchengtai), a high terrace clad with stone retaining walls on all sides, was the core area of the Shimao Archaic City Site enclosed by the inner city and outer city. In 2016, the gate remains and the upper part of the northern section of the eastern retaining wall, which was the best preserved part of the retaining walls of the Imperial City Terrace, were excavated. The gate remains of the Imperial City Terrace consisted of the square, the outer barbican, the bastions, and the inner barbican. The square was in front of the gate, and the gateway was paved with stone slabs. The entire gate has more complex structure, more magnificent scale and more elaborate construction techniques than that of the eastern gate of the Outer City. This excavation sets a new starting point for the exploration of the large-scale stone city settlement pattern of the Longshan Age.

In 2015 and 2016, the Xinjiang Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology excavated the Jartai Pass (Jirentai Goukou) Site in Nilka County, Ili Prefecture. The excavation recovered 2500sq m in total, finding 20 house foundations and eight early burials as well as over 1000 artifacts including pottery, stone objects, and bronzes. The Jartai Pass Site was assigned to the Andronovo Culture with a date of about 3600 BP. It thus is the largest and earliest settlement site of the Bronze Age in the Ili River valley found to date. At this site, the earliest evidence for coal use in the world was found as well as evidence for bronze smelting and casting industries and iron ingots of an earlier period. This excavation provided important data for establishing the sequence of the prehistoric archaeological cultures in this area.

In 2014, Guangdong Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology and other institutions excavated Locality 1 of the Modaoshan (Whetting Hill) Site in Yunan County, Guangdong. The excavation recovered almost 400 pieces of lithic products mostly made of quartz, sandstone and quartzite, plus a few made of fine sandstone and metasandstone, the categories of which included blanks, cores, flakes, tools, chunks, debris and utilized gravels, containing the entire procedure from blank fetching, stone tool making and refuse abandoning, and the finished tools took small proportion. The date of Locality 1 was the early stage of the Middle Pleistocene, belonging to the Lower Paleolithic Age. The Modaoshan Site is the first open site of the Paleolithic Age scientifically excavated in Guangdong Province and the earliest cultural remains of the early human beings in Guangdong Province confirmed to date.

From March to September 2014, Chongqing Municipal Institute of Cultural Heritage and other institutions excavated the Dashuitian (Big Paddy) Site in Wushan County. The field project revealed 473 features and recovered more than 1800 artifacts made of pottery, stone and jade of the Daxi and Shang-Zhou Cultures. Among these features and artifacts, the flexed burials, anthropomorphic and zoomorphic stone ornaments, and jade artifacts bore unique characteristics of the Daxi Culture. They are valuable information for the understanding of the primitive religion, social organization and ideology of the past.

Fuquanshan Site is a central settlement site of the Liangzhu Culture. The 2010 excavation in the Wujiachang locality of Fuquanshan Site was productive. The relatively small excavation area of 231sqm yielded six burials, 14 ash pits, three ash ditches, and one water well. Four of the burials were dated to the Liangzhu Age. The Liangzhu grave goods assemblage was exceptionally rich. It comprised more than 400 artifacts that included sumptuous objects of jade cong -tubes, jade bi -discs, jade yue -battle axes, ivory scepters, etc. Their presence suggested that M204 and M207 were elite burials. The complete removal of feature M207 from the field allowed meticulous excavation of the burial in the convenience of laboratory environment, as well as the immediate preservation of the uncovered cultural relics. The deposition indicated that Wujiachang was an artificial mound cemetery of the elites of the Liangzhu Culture.

In 2013, the Department of Archaeology, School of History of Wuhan University and the Panlongcheng City Ruins Museum excavated seven burials of the Shang Dynasty at Yangjiawan Locality within the Panlongcheng Site in Wuhan City. All the burials were vertical earthen shaft burials. Some of the burials featured waist pits, human and/or animal sacrifices. The grave goods assemblage included artifacts made of bronze, jade, stone, pottery, gold and turquoise. Some of the unearthed objects were seen for the first time in the archaeology of Panlongcheng. The burials can be roughly dated to the terminal phase of the Panlongcheng Site. The Yangjiawan Locality yielded the densest distribution of burials in the Panlongcheng Site. It was an important cemetery of the early to the mid Shang Dynasty. The cemetery was in close proximity to a previously excavated large-scale architectural foundation of the Shang Dynasty. Together, these findings are important information for the understanding of the layout of the Panlongcheng Site.

In 2006, a burial of the Shang Dynasty (numbered as 2006ATSM89) was found in the Shang Dynasty bone workshop zone on Tiesan Road in the south portion of the Yinxu Site. This burial, which dated to Phase II of the Yinxu Period, was a small, rectangular, vertical shaft pit burial. The grave goods included only one set of a bronze gu -goblet and a jue -cup, but there were numerous jades, ranging from a jade qi -battle ax with a bronze hilt and jade spearheads with bronze sockets – symbols of rather high status – to semi-finished jade products, jade castoffs, and jade-working tools. Based on an inscription in the shape of a jade scepter appearing on the bronze gu -goblet, the occupant of this burial is surmised to have been a petty aristocrat in charge of the production of jades and management of jade workshops. His clan might have been specialized jade workers, and there might be jade workshops of the Yinxu Period near this burial. As the first burial found at the Yinxu Site whose occupant can be tentatively identified as a jade worker, M89 is of great significance to the study of craft production of the Yinxu Period.

The burial M8 excavated at the Zhoujiazhai Cemetery in Suizhou City, Hubei Province in 2014 was a vertical earthen shaft pit burial with one coffin chamber and one coffin. The grave goods unearthed from this burial were mainly lacquered and wooden wares, including flask, eared cup, lian -cosmetic case, figurines, bi -disc, ladder-shaped object, T-shaped object, liubo -game board, bamboo case, etc. The occupant of this burial is estimated to be a lower-ranking official in the reign of Emperor Wu of the Western Han Dynasty. In the bamboo case unearthed from the burial, ink-written “ gaodishu (letter informing the underground)” on wooden tablets are found, and hundreds of bamboo slips with text of“ rishu (almanac) ” were also unearthed, which are significantly meaningful for the studies on the rishu of the Qin and Han Dynasties and the date-selecting system in ancient China.

In 2011, Chongqing Municipal Institute of Cultural Heritage excavated the cliff-side sculptures of the Qianfosi (Thousand-Buddha Temple) in Tongnan County, Chongqing. The excavation uncovered 500sq m in total, from which 43 grottoes and niches, 283 statues and 27 textual inscriptions were recovered. Meanwhile, architectural remains like eaves or porches were also found on the cliffs, the date of which was around the Song to Ming Dynasties. The statues had rich motifs and were carved with exquisite craftsmanship, which provided important materials for the researches on the Buddhist cave temples in the Sichuan and Chongqing areas and the routes of the diffusion of the later Buddhism in the western Chongqing and eastern Sichuan.

The Xiantouling Culture featured sand dune sites and shell midden (kitchen midden) sites. Through an analysis of the faunal and floral remains and tools unearthed from these sites, with the relevant unearthed pottery wares and paleo-environmental research results taken into account, it can be evidenced that the subsistence types of these sites were mainly plant gathering supplemented by fishing and hunting, instead of relying on marine resources. The subsistence type of the sand dune sites was mainly plant gathering and occasionally rice gathering or farming; that of the earlier kitchen madden sites was gathering freshwater shells, and that of the later ones was more relying on marine resources. From the late phase of Xiantouling Culture, the archaeological cultures in the coastal areas of southeastern China began to utilize marine resources in a large scale.

The early Qin Culture refers to the Qin Culture from the Western Zhou Dynasty to the early Spring-and-Autumn Period. Considering its cultural composition, we will realize that it has three main sources, namely the Shang, Zhou, and Western Rong (Western Barbarian) Cultures. The elements derived from the Shang Culture comprised the furniture of waist pits and the custom of dog burial in graves, the use of human sacrifice, the interment of chariots and horses, the Shang-style pottery wares and the tradition of constructing huge-scale mausoleums. These elements reflect that the Qin people initially came from the east and had strong ties with the Shang Dynasty and were deeply influenced by the Shang Culture, and belonged to the Yin people (after the fall of the Shang Dynasty) in the broader sense. The elements absorbed from the Zhou Culture comprised the architectural types of ancestral temples and palaces, the adoption of the ritual vessels, the suspended musical instruments, the Zhou style pottery wares and the writing system. These elements indicate that the Qin people adopted the ritual and musical culture of the Western Zhou Dynasty, which had a great political significance at the early stage of Qin’s history. The factors derived from the cultures of the Western Rong ethnic group or the northern steppes included the flexed burial position, the golden body ornaments and chariots and horses, iron wares, animal motifs on utensils, recesses on the walls of the burial pits and the ditches around the graves, the use of bronze cauldrons and swords (daggers). Such elements reflect that during the development process in the Longyou region, the Qin people absorbed the cultures of the adjacent Western Rong ethnic group, the Eurasian steppes and farther beyond. The first kind of elements continued to predominate the Qin Culture down to the middle Western Zhou, then the second and the third ones arose from the late Western Zhou to the early Spring-and-Autumn Period, and simultaneously, the first were only present in the aristocratic burial activities. Based on the remnants of the Shang Culture, the early Qin Culture came into being by widely absorbing elements of the Zhou and Western Rong Cultures.

The provenance study of the artificial products among the archaeological artifacts is an important content of the archaeological research. The relevant methods applied in the academic field at present all have their effectiveness as well as limitations. Focusing on the practices and experiences in the study on the bronze mirror casting industry in the Linzi City Site of the Qi State in Shandong, this paper puts forward the provenance estimation method based on the styles and distributions of the artificial products, which suggests that different production places (origins) produced different local styles, while the products made in each origin were circulated in the zone with the origin as the center. Therefore, according to the spatial distribution of the artificial products, the location with the most densely distributed products with this style could be inferred as their origin. Then, this paper discussed the identification and summarization of the “origin style”, the observation and analyses of the regional distribution and the estimation and confirmation of the origins, the scope of application of this method and other relevant issues in the application of this provenance estimation method.

In the 5th and 6th centuries, the belief of the descent of Maitreya was very popular in the Jiangnan area, the Longhua Monastery worshipping the statue of Maitreya as Buddha was flourishing, and the Longhuahui (Maitreya’s preach assembly under the dragon-flower tree, aka Sri Lankan ironwood) was also once prospering. The Maitreya figures of the Southern Dynasties in the Jiangnan area are seen in the cliff niches at Baoxiang Monastery in Xinchang County, Zhejiang and the Mount Qixia Grottoes in Nanjing, Jiangsu; in Sichuan area, the Maitreya figures of the Southern Dynasties are seen on the votive stele made by Monk Xuansong in Maoxian County and the Maitreya statue made by Monk Fahai found at Xi’an Road in Chengdu. Fu Dashi (497–569 CE), a devout lay Buddhist native to Dongyang District of the Southern Dynasties, announced himself as the incarnation of Maitreya to attract believers, and invented the zhuanlun jingzang (rotating Buddhist scripture library).

Based on the periodization and zoning of the burials of the Mongol Khanate period and the Yuan Dynasty and referring to the textual materials of the stone tablets and epitaphs and the different funeral customs, this paper classified these burials into the burials of the Mongol people, the burials of the “Mongolized” people, the burials of the “ Semu ren (Miscellaneous aliens)” and that of the Han people, and preliminarily summarized the features of the funeral customs of the tombs of the Mongol people, provided references for identifying the tombs of the Mongol Khanate period and the Yuan Dynasty without inscriptions.

This paper summarizes current zooarchaeological research on the origin of domestic sheep and early sheep exploitation strategies in Xinjiang. The researchers analyze sheep bones excavated from the Shirenzigou ( 石人子沟, lit. Stone Human Statue Gully) Site using zooarchaeological methods, including using pelvises to identify sex, and confirm that the sheep at Shirenzigou were domesticated sheep. Previous discoveries and archaeological research in Xinjiang provide background for the researchers’ arguments that the main ways ancient people exploited domestic sheep during the Bronze Age to early Iron Age included: consuming and producing meat, wool, hide and milk; using sheep in rituals such as funerary practices; and making bone artifacts out of sheep bones.

This paper concerns the development of soldering in early China. Soldering requires the use of an additional heating of metal to join two or more existing metal items together. The paper defines the different soft and hard soldering materials. It also describes the evolution from joining two pieces, an animal head and a vessel with additional pour of bronze as an extension of the casting process. The next step was the use of hard solder, using bronze or copper related materials. There were two ways to join the existing bronze sections: the most common was “tenon soldering”. Less common but equally significant was “injection soldering”. In the late Spring-and-Autumn Period, soft soldering with tin and lead was developed. This step allowed much more extravagant decoration of bronzes, leading to new bronze vessel styles and also to much greater sub-division of labor in the production process.

In 2007, Shanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology conducted excavation to the Dahekou Cemetery of the Western Zhou Dynasty in Yicheng County. In the excavated M1, the wooden parts of the lacquered wares have decayed away and were very difficult to recover and process suitably in the fieldwork condition. Because of this, Conservation and Research Center for Cultural Heritage of the Institute of Archaeology, CASS was invited to conduct laboratory archaeology to these artifacts. By the onsite preservation and reinforcing processing and entire encasing acquisition, these artifacts and their burial context were removed to the laboratory and subject to recovery. The suitable propping materials and reinforcing reagents were selected to comprehensively process and conserve. These methods provided technological standards for the processing and preservation of the lacquered wooden objects unearthed from the semiarid areas; the completion of this project also clarified the characteristics, requirements, patterns and workflow of the laboratory archaeology.