Abstract

 

This report is on archaeological materials and a large number of excavated cultural relics from two destroyed noble’ s tombs in the Spring and Autumn Period of Zhongli State in the construction site of Dadongguan and Bianzhuang in Fengyang County; what is more, twenty-eight rescued tombs of Bianzhuang graveyard in different periods and part of collected burial accessories from Dadongguan and Bianzhuang were take in, too.

In the winter of 1991, a large number of bronze wares were found on the digging site of Dadongguan in Fengyang County, but looted and hidden by workers, then part of them were captured back. Archaeologists investigated in site which was only 0.5 km far from the ancient capital of Zhongli State, and then they considered that this is not a cache but a noble’ s tomb of Zhongli State primarily.

A tomb was found stolen in Zhejiang Glass Plants in Bianzhuang of Fengyang County, May 2007. There were a large number of bronze ware unearthed and policemen of Fengyang County captured back all the stolen objects. Anhui Institute of Archaeology and Heritage Management of Fengyang County then conducted a rescue excavation on this tomb and made significant gains.

M1 of Dadongguan was completely destroyed by road repairing, so the structure of the tomb is not clear.

M1 of Bianzhuang was a round earthen shaft tomb. There were only 30cm to 40cm thick tomb walls left when clearing up. The bottom of the tomb is 8 meters in diameter, 4.5 meters deep from the ground. There was a 3cm thick layer of white mud on the wall. The tomb owner was placed in the center of the bottom, ten human sacrifices were placed north, and food funerary objects were placed south.

There were many exquisite burial accessories unearthed from M1 of Dadongguan and M1 of Bianzhuang. There were fifteen bronze Bianzhong unearthed from M1 of Dadongguan, including seven Bozhong and eight Niuzhong. There were fourteen bronze Bianzhong unearthed from M1 of Bianzhuang, including five Bozhong and nine Niuzhong. These two kinds of Bianzhong are arranged in the order of size according to the musical scale. They are all in an elliptic cylindrical shape, decorated with dragon and hydra design and alternate with the background pattern and the main pattern concave and convex respectively. Bozhong is bigger than Niuzhong; the former one is with a hollowed-out flat knob, and the latter one with a bridge-shaped knob. There was a lot of other bronze ware from these two tombs: Ding, Yan, Dui, Dou, beast-foot-shaped plates, He, Fu, Lei, shovels, Chewei, Maxian, axes, dagger-axes, Ge, spears, swords, arrowheads, bells, as well as potteries like Ge, Dou, jars and a kind of instrument-chime stones. In M1 of Bianzhuang, there are inscriptions found on the front part and both sides of five Bozhong; there are sixty-four words inscriptions on the inner and outer sides of each Bozhong, the most important inscription is “Sun Tong Li Gong Bo Zhi Ji Zi Kang” 【the third son of Sunzhongli (Sunbo) was named Kang】, indicating that the owner of this tomb was a noble of Zhongli State.

The discovery on the noble’ s tomb of Zhongli State in the Spring and Autumn Period at Dadongguan of Fengyang County was the one on the real material about Zhongli State for the first time. This kind of round tomb is unique in shape, which has never been found and recorded in field archaeology of China, providing important new information for studies on the funeral customs. The composition and shapes of unearthed bronze wares from the two tombs are with typical characteristics of the times, offering evidence for chronicle on bronze ware in the Spring and Autumn Period. The shape and the structure as well as the large number of burial accessories of these two tombs of Zhongli State are with strong geographical and cultural characteristics of the Huai River Basin, providing important new information for studies on the history of Zhongli State and on the culture of Yi nationality in Huaihe River Basin.