Zhou Tombs at Yujiawan Village, Chongxin County

Compiled By
Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology of Gansu Province

Abstract:
 Yujiawan 于家湾 Zhou Cemetery, a province – protected historic heritage settled on a secondary terrace nearly Rui 汭 River, is located at Yujiawan Village about 3.5 kilometers to the northeast of Chongxin 崇信 County seat, Gansu Province. In the years 1982, 1984 and 1986, Gansu Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology conducted three seasons of archaeological drilling probes and excavations to this cemetery, which uncovered 138 tombs and three horse pits of Pre – Zhou Period and the Western Zhou Dynasty.
 All of the excavated tombs are rectangular pit shaft in north – south orientation (the lengths in north – south direction are larger than the widths in east – west direction). Based on the tilting degrees of the pit walls, these tombs could be grouped into three types: straight shaft tombs, outward sloping walled tombs (the sizes at the tops are larger than that at the bottoms) and inward sloping walled tombs (the sizes at the bottoms are larger than that at the top). All of the tomb occupants were heading north whose orientations are between 8° – 305° degrees.
 By sizes of the pits, these tombs could be grouped into large – sized tombs (3.5 – 4.18 meters in length and 2.2 – 2.95 meters in width), medium – sized tombs (2.2 – 3.5 meter in length and 1.2 – 2.2 meters in width) and small – sized tombs (1.65 – 2.2 meters in length and 0.7 – 1.2 meters in width). As our analyses, the occupants of large – sized tombs would be high – ranked officials such as “Grand Master” or elites such as local or fief chiefs. The statuses of the occupants of the medium – sized tombs were more complicated than the other two; some of them were lower – ranked nobles, or rich common civilians, military officers and warriors. The small – sized tombs were those of poor people or warriors.
 Most tombs had secondary – tiers dug out of the wall or tamped around the coffin; some tombs had niches in the northern wall and few tombs had waist pit on the bottom under the waist of the occupant.
 Most of the tombs had wooden burial furniture, most of which were lacquered. Generally, the large – sized tombs all had wooden burial chambers and coffins, each of which had only one in one tomb; most of the medium – sized tombs had coffins, some of them even had wooden burial chambers; no small – sized tombs had burial chambers but only coffins or even no coffins in which the occupants were buried directly on the tomb bottoms.
 Because most of the tombs had been looted before our excavation, the skeletons were disturbed; from the few intact tombs we observed that the dead were in extended supine burial. Cinnabars were scattered all over the dead bodies, usually on the skull and torso, therefore large areas of cinnabar traces could be found on the tomb bottoms. This situation was discovered in all three sized tombs but the large – and medium – sized took much larger proportion; it would have been a burial custom at that time.
 Among the excavated 138 tombs and six horse pits, 111 tombs and one horse pit yielded in total 3770 pieces of burial articles. They could be classified into pottery, bronze, jade, stone, bone, ivory, horn, agate, turquoise, glass (beads), clam, cowry, lacquer and textile. The bronzes, such as Ding – tripod and Gui – dagger axe with shaft socket, and the lacquer ware, such as tray with sun, moon and cloud designs and geometric patterns, are rare and valuable relics of the Pre – Zhou Period and Western Zhou Dynasty. What noticeable is the forging technique reflected by the bronze basins found in Yujiawan Zhou Cemetery. Eight tombs yielded forged bronze basins, totally more than a dozen. The bodies of these bronze basins are as thin as about only 0.51 to 1.65 millimeters; the metallographic and element analyses showed that all of these bronze basins were made by heating and hammering, which revealed the fact that as early as in the early period of the Western Zhou Dynasty, the forging technique has been used to make bronze vessels. Therefore, we can consider the bronze basins unearthed from Yujiawan Zhou Cemetery as the earliest bronze vessels made by forging technique in China.
 Being referred to the comparative studies of the unearthed artifacts and the stratigraphic relationships of the tombs, the tombs of Yujiawan Zhou Cemetery could be dated into three phases, which roughly matched the later period of the Shang Dynasty to the middle period of the Western Zhou Dynasty.
 The excavation to the Yujiawan Zhou Cemetery is so far the largest excavation for Shang – Zhou Archaeology in Gansu Province, the data obtained through which are important materials for the researches on the Shang – Zhou Archaeology and the bronze cultures in the northwestern China. The historic literature showed that the upper reaches of Jing 泾 River was the cradle of Pre – Zhou Culture; the excavation to the Yujiawan Zhou Cemetery, which was located in the upper reaches of Jing River, unquestionably provided archaeological evidence for these historic records. We believe that the further archaeological investigations and excavations aiming at exploring Pre – Zhou Culture in this region will get more achievements.