Chapter 16 Section 7 Zhouyuan and Fenghao Ruins

In the archaeological work of the Western Zhou Dynasty, the discoveries and excavations in Zhouyuan and Fenghao, the political centers at that time, were the most important. Zhouyuan is located in the west of the Guanzhong Plain in Shaanxi.It leans against Qishan Mountain in the north, borders Weishui River in the south, starts from Wugong in the east, and reaches Fengxiang and Baoji in the west.It is the place where Gufu Danfu, the ancestor of the Zhou Dynasty, moved from Bin to Qi and settled down. Zhou people came to Zhouyuan and established their capital and state.The capital is named Beijing, and the country is established as Zhou.Therefore, Zhouyuan is the birthplace of Zhou people.In the 12th century BC, the Zhou people destroyed the Shang Dynasty.King Wen and King Wu moved their capitals to Fenghao.It is still an important political center in the Western Zhou Dynasty.By the end of the Western Zhou Dynasty, the Xirong invaded, and it was in ruins.For this reason, Zhouyuan buried a wealth of Western Zhou relics underground.

The Zhouyuan site spans the northern part of Fufeng and Qishan counties, about seven kilometers from east to west and seven kilometers from north to south. In 1976, two large-scale Western Zhou building foundations were excavated in Fengchu Village, Qishan and Zhaochen Village, Fufeng, as well as handicraft workshops such as copper casting, pottery making, and bone making, residential sites, bronze cellars, and tombs.Hundreds of exquisite bronze wares were unearthed.Among them, nearly a hundred pieces are cast with inscriptions.More than 17,000 pieces of oracle bones from the Western Zhou Dynasty were also discovered, of which more than 300 pieces were inscribed with characters.Recently, 12 late Western Zhou tombs and a pit for martyrdom were unearthed in Laobaoxi Village, Huangdui Township. More than 1,100 pieces of various cultural relics including copper, pottery, porcelain, jade, stone, bone, and mussels were unearthed, among which porcelain is the most precious.Only 10 pieces of porcelain were unearthed from Tomb No. 25, including a bowl with a straight mouth and a slanted belly, and beans.It has been identified that these porcelains are fired at a high temperature and have very weak water absorption.The heat of porcelain beans is as high as 1200 ℃, and the water absorption rate is less than 1%.The glaze color is crystal clear, which is unprecedented.

The foundation site of Fengchu Building is a "siheyuan"-style building complex, which is located on a rammed earth platform with a width of 32.5 meters from east to west, a length of 45.2 meters from north to south, and a height of about 1.3 meters.The seat faces south, and the direction is 10°north west.It is composed of screen wall, east-west gate school, middle courtyard, front room, east-west small courtyard, back room and east-west wing rooms.With the doorway, the front hall, and the back room as the central axis, there are eight wing rooms in the east and west, and they are connected by corridors to form a closed courtyard with two entrances, front and rear, and east-west symmetry (Figure 6).

The front hall is the main building of this group of buildings.It is 17.2 meters long from east to west and 6.1 meters wide from north to south.On the foundation of the platform, there are seven rows of column foundations from east to west, with a spacing of about three meters, and four rows of column foundations from north to south, with a spacing of about two meters.It is six rooms wide and three rooms deep.From the front hall through the corridor to the back room.The corridor is in the middle, and there are small courtyards on the east and west sides.There are symmetrical steps leading to the back room on the north side of the courtyard.

There are five back rooms, arranged from east to west, with a width of 23 meters and a depth of 3.1 meters.There are corridors between the back room and the front of the east and west wing rooms.More than 17,000 pieces of oracle bones were found in the cellar in Room 2 of the West Wing.In this group of foundation sites, two drainage pipes were found, one running north-south and made of pottery pipe sockets, and the other running east-west.The walls of the buildings are rammed earth or adobe walls.The walls and the floor of the house are all painted with "sanhe soil" mixed with fine sand, lime and loess.In the accumulation of houses, there are reeds, wheat straw and a small amount of tiles.

The age of the Fengchu foundation site, according to carbon fourteenth, is 1095±90 BC (without tree ring correction), and the unearthed pottery is also said to be the middle and late Western Zhou Dynasty.It is speculated that it was first built before King Wu destroyed Shang, and that it was abandoned in the late Western Zhou Dynasty. The foundation site of Zhaochen Building is not like the "siheyuan" layout of Fengchu Group A.A total of 15 were found.It is speculated that the early foundation site was built in the early years of the Western Zhou Dynasty, and the late foundation site was built in the middle of the Western Zhou Dynasty.

The three bases of F3, F5 and F8 in the late period are relatively large in scale.Among them, F3 is a high platform building with rammed earth foundation, 24 meters long from east to west and 15 meters wide from north to south.There is a recess in the middle of the east and west sides, which is slightly in the shape of "工".On the platform foundation, there are seven rows of column foundations from east to west, the distance between the three rows in the middle is 5.5 meters, and the distance between the two rows on both sides is 3 meters.There are five rooms in the north and south, with a depth of 13.5 meters. The F5 rammed earth platform is 32 meters from east to west, and 7.5 meters from north to south.After restoration, there are eight rooms from east to west, with a total width of 28 meters and a total depth of about nine meters. The F8 platform base is about 22.5 meters long from east to west and 10.4 meters wide from north to south.There are seven rooms in the east and west, with a total width of nearly 21 meters, and three rooms in the north and south, with a total depth of nine meters. There are pebbles and scattered water under the eaves around F5 and F8.According to the column network analysis, the three large buildings F3, F5, and F8 are all "four a roofs".The roof is covered with tiles.In the ruins, many kinds of plate tiles, tube tiles and half tiles were found.The discovery of Zhou tiles brought the history of building tiles in my country back to the Western Zhou Dynasty more than 3,000 years ago.

Among the early foundation sites, F7 and F9 are better preserved. F7, there are four remaining rooms in the north and south, with a width of 8.75 meters, four rooms in the east and west, and a depth of 11.4 meters.A stove pit was found in the second room from south to north, and the stove was one meter long.There is another fire pit under the ground in the third room, which is square and arc-shaped, with a diameter of 70 cm and a depth of one meter. This should be a hearth for heating. F9, it is speculated that there are at least seven rows of plinths from east to west, and the surface width is at least 15 meters.Surrounded by loose water paved with small pebbles.It is also a "four a heavy house style" tile roof building.

From the summer of 1977 to 1979, more than 17,500 pieces of oracle bones were unearthed at the Fengchu Formation A base site and Fufeng Qijia Village.Among them, more than 17,000 oracle bones of the early Zhou Dynasty were unearthed in pit H11 of the Fengchu base site, and 413 pieces of oracle bones of the early Zhou Dynasty were unearthed in pit H31 of the base site.Unearthed in Qijia Village, Fufeng, there is a large tortoise plate with characters and three pieces of ox shoulder blades.A square hole is chiseled for the carapace, and a round hole is chiseled for the bone.There are 293 tablets with the word Bujia.There are nearly 300 oracle bones with characters in total.The total number of words is more than 600.There are more than 360 different words.The number of characters on each piece of oracle bone is 30 characters at most and one character at least.The font is small, the characters are as small as millet grains, and the strokes are like hair, which can only be seen clearly with a five times magnifying glass.It is the earliest miniature sculpture in my country.The content of the oracle bone inscriptions mainly includes divination sacrifices and divination expeditions.Most of them belong to the early Western Zhou Dynasty, and there are also those who arrived as early as King Wen.Some mentioned the names of Shang and Zhou kings such as Chengtang, Taijia, Wenwuding, Wenwudiyi and Zhou Fangbo, as well as the names of Bi Gong and Jizi.Some mentioned the names of countries such as Shu, Chao, Mi, and Chu, as well as place names such as He, Luo, Hao, and Bo.It provides important information for the study of the historical Zhou in the early and middle Western Zhou Dynasty, which belonged to Shang, and its relationship with other countries.

More than 10 bronze wares have been found in the cellar, the most important of which are: Qishan Dongjia Village unearthed in 1975, including Qiu Wei four wares (Ding Er, (left (upper white and lower Si) right Shu) one, Pan Yi) 37 bronze vessels.The production period was from King Mu of Zhou to King Xuan.Among them, 30 pieces have inscriptions, which record important events such as bartering for fields in the middle and late Western Zhou Dynasty, land exchange, change of ownership of forest farms, litigation judgments, rewards and orders. There are 157 characters of inscriptions in "(Ya Zhouguan) [Sheng Sheng] Yi [Yi Yi]".It is the earliest litigation judgment found in my country so far.

In 1976, a bronze ware pit was discovered in Baicun, Fufengzhuang, and 103 bronze ware were unearthed.74 pieces of cast inscriptions.Among them, belonging to the Wei family, there are 55 utensils made by the nobles of the four generations of Zhe, Ping, Qiang, and (疒内兴) [Xing Xing].The most important thing is the history wall plate, with an inscription of 284 characters, which records the main achievements of the seventh Zhou king of Wen, Wu, Cheng, Kang, Zhao, Mu and the reigning emperor (King Gong).And record the history of Shi Qiang's family, and finally praise himself. It should also be mentioned here that there are two Western Zhou bronzes unearthed from other places in Shaanxi that are of particularly high historical value. "Li Gui", unearthed from a cellar in Lintong.There are 32 characters of inscriptions, and at the beginning there are words such as "Wu Zhengshang, only Jiazi Dynasty". Shortly after the destruction of Shang Zhou, it can be called the most important weapon in the Western Zhou Dynasty. "He Zun", unearthed in Jiacun Town, Baoji, was made in the fifth year of Zhou Chengwang (about the 11th century BC), and it is the first bronze ware with a date in the Western Zhou Dynasty.There are 122 characters of inscriptions.It is recorded that King Cheng built Luoyi, "The rest of his house is here in China".The content can be confirmed with "Luo Gao" and "Zhao Gao" in "Shangshu". The name "China" first appeared in the early years of the Western Zhou Dynasty. The ruins of Fenghao, the capital of the Western Zhou Dynasty, are located on the banks of the Fenghe River in Chang'an County, Shaanxi Province.Fengjing is in the west, and Haojing is in the east.The total area is about 13 square kilometers.From the 12th century BC when King Wen of Zhou built Fengyi and King Wu made Haojing, to King Ping of Zhou moved eastward to Luoyi in 770 BC. For 350 years, Fenghao has been the political, economic and cultural center of the Western Zhou Dynasty. Field archaeological work in the Fenghao area began in the 1930s. Since the 1950s, key investigations and excavations have continued.More than 10 large-scale rammed earth foundation sites and several bronze ware cellars were discovered in Hakshinzhuang and Mawang villages in the west of Fengxi.Large-scale building remnants have also been found in Luobei Village and other places in Fengdong, including a large number of remnants of Western Zhou Dynasty.This provides clues that can be placed in hope for the search for the ruins of Fenghao Erjing. Most of the tombs in the Fenghao area were excavated in the Western Zhou Dynasty, and only a thousand tombs were excavated in the Zhangjiapo area in the west of Fengxi.Among them, the cemetery of Uncle Jing’s family excavated in recent years is centered on the tomb of Uncle Jing’s double tomb, the king’s minister of Zhou Dynasty. Typical information on the burial system of high-ranking nobles. There are several tombs with tomb passages in Uncle Jing's cemetery, which are large in scale, with many burial objects (the tomb has been stolen), and there are still some fine works left.It is of great significance for determining the tomb owner and staging.Tomb No. 157, the largest among them, consists of a tomb chamber and south and north tomb passages.The plane is in the shape of "middle", with a total length of 35.4 meters.In the center of the tomb is the coffin chamber, which houses two coffins inside and outside.The outer coffin is painted black, and the inner coffin is painted red.The skeleton of the tomb owner was identified as a male in his 40s.Wheels, carts, shafts, shafts, etc. are placed in the tomb passage.On the east and west sides of Tomb No. 157, there are two Tombs No. 163 and 161 juxtaposed with it. In Tomb No. 161, the skeleton of the tomb owner was identified as a woman in her 40s or 50s.All three tombs were severely looted.Only bronze sacrificial vessels such as Jing Shuzhong remain in tomb No. 163.It is speculated that this group of large tombs should belong to the joint burial cemetery of Uncle Jing and his wife's family.There are also tombs No. 170 and No. 152 where Uncle Jing's bronze wares were unearthed.The specifications of these two tombs are lower than that of tomb No. 157, and both have only one tomb passage. The excavated Jing Shu Fang Yi and Jing Shu Ding respectively, should be the tomb of another second generation of Jing Shu who was later dated. The few bronze wares left in Uncle Jing's cemetery are all rare treasures. "(Dou Xia Yu) [deng4 Deng] Zhong (Zhong) Sacrifice Zun", 38.8 cm high and 41.4 cm long.It is in the shape of a beast, with two horns on its head, two ears, a curved neck, and four hoofed feet.It has two wings, a tiger on its head, a dragon under its jaw, and a curved dragon on its tail.Guyu was a big bird.The periphery of the cover is decorated with double-body dragon patterns, and the whole body is decorated with animal-mask patterns, Kui dragon patterns and thunder patterns.There are six characters in two lines of the same inscription inside the belly and lid of the vessel: "Zhongzhabao〔zheng〕Yi." There are 2 Jingshu bells in existence, one is 37.5 cm high and the other is slightly smaller.On the bell are inscriptions such as "Jing Shucai as Zhen [zhenzhen] Wen Zu Mu Gong's big bell", with a total of seven lines and 39 characters.Jing Shu Fang Yi, about 20 cm high, has a line of inscriptions on the bottom and inside the lid: "Jing Shu is a travel Yi". Among the more than 10 Western Zhou tombs excavated in Fengdong Huayuan Village and Pudu Village, two side-by-side tombs No. 15 and No. 17 excavated in 1981 have a large number of bronze wares and a relatively clear date. A total of pottery.This has provided new and important help for the Fenghao site and the periodization of the Western Zhou culture. A total of 29 bronze ritual vessels were unearthed from the two tombs. From tomb No. 15, there are two Yuan Ding, Fang Ding, Gui, Zun, You and Jue each, and one Zhi, 13 in total. Tomb No. 17 contained two pieces each of a round tripod, a gui, and a jue;Some bronze wares have special shapes. For example, a bronze scorpion unearthed from Tomb No. 17 is covered in the shape of a crouching phoenix bird, which is relatively rare.The bronze wares unearthed from the two tombs, except for a few belonging to the early Western Zhou Dynasty, most belong to the front and rear wares of King Zhao.Some as late as the middle of the Western Zhou Dynasty.The inscriptions on several bronze vessels record that the creators were rewarded by the King of Zhou.There are chariot and horse pits near the two tombs (tomb No. 15 has three carts and eight horses, and Tomb No. 17 has two carts and four horses).It can be seen that the identity of the owner of the tomb is quite high. In 1954, a tomb was excavated in the north of Pudu Village, and a group of bronze vessels were unearthed, many of which were cast with the inscription "Changzhang [fufu] as Zunyi".Among them, the inscription on the copper 盉 records the historical fact that King Mu of Zhou held the Yan ceremony and the shooting ceremony, and the long 甶 participated in the competition and was praised.Remember "Ji Dinghai at the beginning of March, King Mu is in the next 淢 [yu domain] (established in the factory) [li established]...".There are also three Yongzhong bells, which are an earlier group of chime bells known so far. It should also be mentioned here that the "Duoyou Ding" unearthed in Xiaquan Village, Doumen Town, is 51.5 cm high and weighs 37 kg.It was cast in the period of King Xuan of Zhou Dynasty.There are 278 characters of inscriptions cast on the inner wall of the abdomen.It records the historical fact that Duoyou was sent to participate in a defensive war against the army and won a major victory.It is a bronze vessel with the longest inscription unearthed in Shaanxi. The archaeological work in the Fenghao area has achieved many important results, and the location of the Fenghao Erjing can be roughly determined.But where is the Erjing Center?More archaeological discoveries are still awaited in the future.