Cao Dingyun, A New Milestone on the Development of the Oracle Bone Studies -- A Review of Zhongguo Jiaguxue (Chinese Oracle Bones) …………………………(89)

 

 

 

ABSTRACT: In 2009, Shanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology excavated the Qiaojiawan Site which was on the route of the highway from Xinzhou City to Baode County, Shanxi. The excavation recovered 16 cave dwellings of the late Longshan Period, 10 of which were well preserved, all consisting of the square room with curved corners, the narrow and protruding doorway and the hearth in the center of the room generally 10 to 15 sq m in size, and some of them had outdoor activity zones preserved. The floors and walls of these cave dwellings were all coated with lime plaster. The typical artifact unearthed from these cave dwellings is the li-cauldron with double lugs on the sides; through the comparison with the counterparts unearthed from nearby areas, this site is dated as the late phase of Longshan Culture. The excavation of Qiaojiawan Site provided valuable physical materials for the research on the cultural features in the northwestern Shanxi at the end of Neolithic Age.

ABSTRACT: In 2008, the Sichuan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology carried out excavation to the Maiping Site in Hanyuan County. This excavation recovered five house foundations, 13 tombs and 102 ash pits from which more than 200 artifacts, including stone implements, potteries and bronzes have been unearthed. The most important discovery of this excavation is the cemetery from the Neolithic Age to the Bronze Age. Maiping Site is one of the central settlements in the middle reach of Dadu River; it is the first time for the archaeologists to have distinguished four different types of culture remains and more profoundly understood about the periodization and dating of Maiping Site. The excavation provided significant evolutionary material for research on the culture lineage in Dadu River Valley.

ABSTRACT: In 2005, an undisturbed tomb of the Spring-and-Autumn Period (numbered by the excavators as M8832) was excavated in Xigong District, Luoyang City. It is an earthen pit shaft tomb in rectangular plan with the burial furniture of two layers of inner coffins and one outer coffin. The grave goods unearthed from this tomb include bronzes and jades made in exquisite shapes and fine techniques. The bronze assemblage included eight ding-tripods, five of which belonged to a series of lie ding, showing that the tomb occupant was a high-ranked aristocrat as the rules in the Rites of Zhou. The excavation of this tomb provided new materials for the researches on the burial types, funeral customs and grave good assemblages of the Eastern Zhou Period.

ABSTRACT: In 1987, tombs of Lü Da and Lü Ren, who were the father and the son in the Northern Wei Dynasty, were found and excavated on the site of Jili Oil Refinery on the north bank of the Yellow River. They belonged to a family cemetery of the Northern Wei Dynasty rare in Luoyang region. The arrangements of these two tombs matched the burial system of that time; the potteries unearthed from them showed the transitional styles at the time of the transferring of the capital from Datong to Luoyang and formed the grave good assemblages in different styles. The gold finger ring inlayed with sapphire was exquisitely made, and the granulations decorated on it showed strong exotic tastes, so it would be made by the Sogdians from the West Asia; the facial features of the figurines unearthed from the tombs are that of the Western Regions, all of which are the evidences of the cultural communications and commercial trades along the Silk Road and centered by Luoyang.

ABSTRACT: A Paleolithic stone tool is a technical object bearing two interrelated but independent attributes; one is technically predetermined function and mode of functioning, corresponding to blanks production and tools confectioning in chaîne opératoire and the other is actual function and use-pattern, corresponding to tools utilization. Given that much attention was focused on the second issue, the French prehistorians represented by Eric Boëda proposed new techno-functional method to explore the first one. This method focuses on “tools confectioning” of chaîne opératoire. By synthesizing from a whole assemblage the mechanism that resolves the process of tools manufacture and by exploring all technical characters that are integrated into a cutting-edge, techno-functional method enables us to understand technically predetermined function and mode of functioning of tools and to reconstruct the original intention of the stone tool makers. This paper introduced the techno-functional method for the first time to Chinese Paleolithic researchers and applied it to the lithic industry of the Guanyindong Site. It was shown that this method may contribute to revealing the variability of predetermined function and mode of functioning of tools and shed new insights to our comprehension of prehistoric human's technical cognition and of their technical behaviors.

ABSTRACT: The dates and natures of the bronze ritual vessels, musical instruments and weapons unearthed from the mound tomb on Yangfu Hill in Ouhai District, Wenzhou City, Zhejiang are extremely important for the exploration to the interactions and mergence between the cultures and the communications among the ethnic groups in the eastern and western South China. The excavators dated the tomb in the mid Western Zhou Dynasty or later. This paper analyzes the characteristics of the types and decorative patterns of the bronze ding-tripods, gui-tureens, nao-bells and the winged sword with cloud-and-thunder (round and square spiral) patterns one by one; when discussing the large nao-bell as a key artifact, this paper makes comparative analysis and periodization to it and other bronze nao-bells found in other regions within Zhejiang Province. In the conclusion this paper suggests that these bronzes are that of the South China System with strong local features whose dates would be around the transitional period of the Shang and Zhou Dynasties and the terminus ante quem would be the early Western Zhou Dynasty.

ABSTRACTS: Kingfisher-shaped bronze ornament is a kind of small-sized artifact unearthed in the Southwest China, to date 25 pieces of which have been found. Except for very few ones which are not archaeologically discovered, most of them are recovered from burials. According to the styles of the burials and the coexisting artifacts, these kingfisher ornaments mainly belong to the Eastern Han Dynasty with some later ones to the Three-Kingdoms Period. In addition to that of the kingfisher, some ornaments are also made in the shapes of jars, coins, fish and winged humans. By analyzing the connotations of these ornaments, we can confirm that the kingfisher-shaped ornament is a special talisman or symbol showing the desires of good fortune, richness and immortality and so on of the people at that time. The kingfisher-shaped bronze ornament can be used as components of money tree and also can be used independently.