KAOGU XUEBAO

(Acta Archaeologica Sinica)

No. 2, 2016
 

Contents

Wang Hongliang, 

The Reexamination of the Nature of the Books Jizhu and Jizhu Yan in the Baoshan Chu Bamboo Slips ………………………………………………… (153)

Li Kunsheng and Huang Derong,

On the Bronze Drums of the Heger I Type ……………………………………………………………………………… (173)

Bi Deguang and Wei Jian,

Studies on the Early Khitan Burials ……………………………………………………………………………(207)

Department of Archaeology, Sichuan University et al., 

The Excavation of the Silibao Site of the Neolithic Age in Yunyang County ……………………………………………………………………… (231)

Joint Mudu Ancient City Archaeological Team of Institute of Archaeology, CASS and Suzhou Municipal Institute of Archaeology, 

The Achievements of the Archaeological Work of the Mudu City Site of the Spring-and-Autumn Period in Suzhou City ……………………………………………………………………………… (263)

Abstract

THE REEXAMINATION OF THE NATURE OF THE BOOKS JIZHU AND JIZHU YAN IN THE BAOSHAN CHU BAMBOO SLIPS

by

Wang Hongliang
 

Among the legal or administrative documents in the bamboo slips unearthed from Baoshan Chu Tomb No. 2, there are some ones titled as “Jizhu” and “Jizhu yan”, which are greatly meaningful for the researches on the household and/or population registers of the Chu State in the Warring-States Period. However, there have been controversies and arguments among the scholars on their natures. Actually, to judge the natures of the books titled as “Jizhu (collected register)” and “Jizhu yan (collected register cases)”, first of all their original statuses must be restored. Through the restoration, it can be seen that behind the signatures of the registrars, the characters of “XX (the name of the registrar) na YY (something)” usually appeared. The na (put into) is a verb and its objects are usually the legal documents whose contents included household registers as well as lawsuits, of which the zhong中, dian典and deng等 (zhi志) would have belonged to bushu (account books). Therefore, the concrete contents of the “Jizhu” and “Jizhu yan” are the records of the population register, but they were closely related to the shangji (submitting and auditing of the reports of the revenue, population, natural and social disasters and related issues of an administrative region to the central government) system, because of which they were called as “Jizhu” and “Jizhu yan”. Seen from the titles, the “Jizhu” and “Jizhu yan” are similar to the “bushu” in Zhou Li (the Rites of Zhou) and the “jibu (collected bookkeeping)” of the Han Dynasty, the nature of which is basically a kind of outlining and summarizing statistic documents used for shangji. These estimations on the natures of the “Jizhu” and “Jizhu yan” match that on the status and duties of Shao Tuo, who was the zuoyin (left prime minister) of the Chu State, the important central judicial official and the link between the royal court and the local officials. The local officials submitted the “Jizhu” and “Jizhu yan” to the zuoyin, and the parts related to the king of the Chu State ought to be submitted by the zuoyin to the king. 
 

ON THE BRONZE DRUMS OF THE HEGER I TYPE

by

Li Kunsheng   Huang Derong
 

The bronze drums of the Heger I type are distributed in China and the Southeast Asian countries such as Vietnam, Laos, Indonesia, Thailand, Myanmar, Malaysia, Cambodia, etc. This type of bronze drums is also called Shizhaishan Type in China and Dong-son Types A and B in Vietnam. According to the statistics of this paper, in total 247 bronze drums of Heger I type have been found to date, of which 137 in Vietnam, 73 in China, nine in Laos, nine in Indonesia, eight in Thailand, five in Myanmar, four in Malaysia and two in Cambodia. This paper classifies the bronze drums of Heger I type into three subtypes, the Shizhaishan Subtype of which is again divided into four phases, the Dong-son Subtype into three phases and the Wenshan Subtype, three phases. The terminus a quo of all of the three subtypes of Heger I bronze drums was the late Warring-States Period, and the terminus ad quem would be the early Eastern Han Dynasty, while that of the Dong-son Subtype could be elongated to the mid or the late Eastern Han Dynasty. All of these three subtypes of Heger I bronze drums were derived from the bronze drums of the Wanjiaba Type; the Shizhaishan and Wenshan Subtypes are the direct inheritors of the Wanjiaba Type. A branch of the Shizhaishan Subtype developed into the Lengshuichong Type (China) and the other branch vanished. Dong-son Subtype, which appeared under the influence of the bronze drums of Wanjiaba Type, developed into the Lengshuichong Type (Vietnam). Lead isotope analyses reflected that of the three subtypes of the bronze drums of Heger I type, the materials of the Shizhaishan and Wenshan Subtypes were from China and that of the Dong-son Subtype were from Vietnam. The bronze drums of these three subtypes were all made from local raw materials, but the mutual exchanges were also discovered. 
 

STUDIES ON THE EARLY KHITAN BURIALS

by 

Bi Deguang  Wei Jian
 

Khitan is an important nomadic ethnic group in ancient China; it created splendid ethnic culture and made profound influences to the vast northern China during the medieval period and becomes an important front of the researches on the histories and archaeology of the ancient ethnic groups in northern China since the 1900s. Great achievements have been got on the research field of archaeological culture of the Khitan ethnic group. However, the focus of the researches was on the remains of the archaeological culture of the Khitan ethnic group of the Liao Dynasty but that on the remains including the burials of the Khitan ethnic group before the founding of the Liao Dynasty was relatively weak. To date, the main discoveries of the remains of the archaeological culture of the Khitan ethnic group before the Liao Dynasty are burials and the artifacts unearthed from them. In this paper, the Khitan burials before the founding of the Liao Dynasty are called “the early Khitan burials.” The early Khitan burials are mainly distributed in southeastern Inner Mongolia and western Liaoning, while from the burials of the Tang Dynasty found in Hulun Buir, Inner Mongolia and Daqing, Heilongjiang, the pottery wares with Khitan style were also unearthed. The early Khitan burials included vertical earthen shaft pit tombs, stone cist tombs, brick-chamber tombs, stone-chamber tombs, etc., the burial positions included inhumation and cremation burials and the grave goods were pottery and porcelain wares, iron and bronze wares, stone and bone implements, etc., and the pottery wares were the main category, the decors of which were mainly comb-impressed dots and the main assemblage was jar and pot. This paper made typological analysis to the pottery wares unearthed from these early Khitan burials, based on which these burials are divided into the early and late phases; moreover, this paper summarized the basic cultural characteristics of the burials of each phase and explored the types, origins and developments and evolutions of the early Khitan burials with the references of the records in the relevant historic literature. 
 

THE EXCAVATION OF THE SILIBAO SITE OF THE NEOLITHIC AGE IN YUNYANG COUNTY

Department of Archaeology, Sichuan University

Chongqing Bureau of Cultural Relics

Commission for Preservation of Ancient Monuments, Yunyang County
 

The Silibao Site, the coordinates of which are 30°55'16" N and 108°42'15" E, is located at Qunyi Village on the south bank of the Yangtze River in Shuangjiang Town, Yunyang County, Chongqing Municipality. The remains of the Neolithic Age are found in the Strata 15 through 17, which are the lowest strata of the cultural accumulations of this site. The features are seven ash pits and the artifacts are stone implements and pottery wares. The 82 stone implements are made of pebbles; 57 of them are chipped ones, including axes, hand axes, adzes, adze-shaped implements, hoe-shaped implements, chisel-shaped implements, cutters, scrapers, choppers, awls (drills), awl-shaped implements, points, etc.; 25 of them are polished ones, some of which are partly polished, including axes, adzes, chisels, knives, spearheads, cutters, rings and whetstones, etc. The pottery wares could be classified into the sandy wares and fine pottery wares, and the former take the bulk, the colors of which were brown, grayish-brown, reddish-brown, red, dark gray, blackish-brown, yellowish-brown, etc.; a few of them are yellow on the outer surface and orange on the inner surface, reddish-brown on the outer surface and black or grayish-brown on the inner surface, or black on the outer surface and red on the inner surface, etc. The fine pottery wares are mostly in dark brown, black, gray, reddish-brown and yellowish-brown colors, and some of them are black on the outer surface and red on the inner surface. Some polished black pottery wares are also found. The decors of the pottery wares are mainly stamped patterns, incised patterns, punched patterns, impressed patterns, attached repoussé designs, smeared incised patterns and color-painted designs. The main types of the pottery wares are jars with bending rim, jars with dish-shaped mouth, jars with curved rim, basins with bending rim, bowls with bending belly, bowls with curved belly, pots, vats with thick wall, zun-shaped vessels, tubular cups, cups with curved belly, plates, etc., in total about 120 pieces are unearthed. Along the banks of the Yangtze River in the Three Gorges Reservoir section of Chongqing Municipality, the sites with Neolithic remains showing similar cultural features to that of this site have been found in large number. Moreover, some pottery wares unearthed at this site bear clear elements of Qujialing Culture. The Neolithic remains of this site belong to the late Neolithic Age, the absolute date of which is estimated to be about 5000-4400 BP. 
 

THE ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL WORK OF THE MUDU CITY SITE OF THE SPRING-AND-AUTUMN PERIOD IN SUZHOU CITY

by

Joint Mudu Ancient City Archaeological Team of Institute of Archaeology, CASS and Suzhou Municipal Institute of Archaeology
 

In the years 2011 through 2015, the joint Mudu Ancient City archaeological team conducted a series of archaeological fieldwork to the Mudu Ancient City Site for the solution of the urgent academic problems. At Wufeng Locality, the discoveries of the internal water system of the city and the inner moat constructed the basic planning framework; the more important is the confirmation that the city wall of the Mudu Ancient City at the Wufeng section was directly engaged to the mountain bodies on its both sides and the realization based on which that the walls of the entire city site were only built at the important passages through the mountains and the fortification system was built relying on the mountains surrounding the site. The fieldwork at Hefeng Locality revealed a small-sized city site in a rectangular plan with curved corners, the length of which from north to south was about 500 m and the width from east to west, about 450 m, covering an area of about 22 ha and surrounded by a moat on the outside. The M80, a burial of the early Spring-and-Autumn Period, intruded into the wall of this small city site; referring to the artifacts unearthed in the city wall, the date of the construction of the Hefeng small city was confirmed to be from the late Western Zhou Dynasty to the early Spring-and-Autumn Period. On the Hefeng small city site, some burials from the Eastern Zhou Period to the Western Han Dynasty were recovered, showing that this small city site has been used for a rather long time. Archaeological fieldwork was also conducted in the peripheral areas of the Mudu Ancient City Site; on the bank of Lake Tai to its south, the Qianniansi small city site of the Warring-States Period was found, which held the important passage from the Mudu Ancient City to the Lake Tai. Some burials of the Warring-States Period to the Western Han Dynasty were recovered at Shanshan Locality to the northwest of the Mudu Ancient City Site. The series of archaeological fieldwork enriched the understandings to the Mudu Ancient City Site from multiple aspects and revealed the complicated development and evolution processes of the Mudu Ancient City Site and its nearby areas, and the layout of this city site had the characteristics that densely concentrated small settlements were sparsely scattered in the large area. The archaeological data available to date temporarily implied that the Mudu Ancient City Site was a large-scale city site with the property of a capital city.