Chapter 7 Section 6 Huge City

Cities are one of the important symbols of entering the civilized era and an important content of ancient Chinese bronze culture.Cities appeared in China as early as the Xia Dynasty or even earlier.In the Shang Dynasty, due to the widespread use of bronze tools, civil engineering has developed greatly, and the scale of the city has been expanded and further developed.The city ruins of the Shang Dynasty, especially the capital city ruins, have been discovered in the archaeological work since 1949. In 1983, the ruins of Xibo (bobo), the capital of Shang Tang, were discovered in the west of Yanshi County, Henan (Figure 11).The city site is adjacent to the Luohe River in the south, and the plane is slightly rectangular, with a maximum length of 1,710 meters from north to south and a maximum width of 1,240 meters from east to west, with a total area of ​​about 1.9 million square meters.The city wall is made of rammed earth, 17-19 meters thick and 1-2 meters high.One north gate, two west gates and two east gates have been discovered. The East Second Gate was excavated in 1984. The doorway is 19.4 meters long and 2.4-3 meters wide.A drainage ditch built with stones and wooden cover boards was found 0.4 meters below the doorway; it leads westward to Miyagi, with a total length of more than 800 meters.Several arterial roads criss-crossing were found in the city.Three small square towns were found in the south of the city.The No. 2 small city in the middle, probably Miyagi, is slightly square in plan, and each side is about 200 meters long.The rammed earth wall is about two meters thick, and there is a gate in the south.There are a number of closed buildings in the small town.Taking Building No. 4 located in the east-central part of Miyagi as an example, it is about 51 meters long from east to west and about 32 meters wide from north to south.The north is the main hall, facing south, built on a rectangular rammed earth platform, 36.5 meters long from east to west, 11.8 meters wide from north to south, and has four steps in the south.Its east, west and south sides are surrounded by corridors and verandahs, with a courtyard in the middle.To the east of the central part of the southern corridor is the gate, with a width of 2.1-2.4 meters.There is also a side door about one meter wide in the north of the west corridor.Unearthed in the city are bronze Zun, Zun, Ge, knife and jade, as well as a large number of pottery Zun, Zun and Dakou.In addition, in Erlitou, about 6 kilometers southwest of Shixianggou, the ruins of ancestral temple palaces and relatively large noble tombs in the early Shang Dynasty were discovered.

In 1955, in Zhengzhou, Henan Province, the ruins of the capital of Zhongding, king of the Shang Dynasty in the middle of the Shang Dynasty, were discovered.The plane is slightly rectangular, the perimeter of the city wall is 6960 meters, and the area is 3 million square meters.The city wall is made of rammed earth. The widest part of the wall base is 32 meters, and the highest part on the ground is 5 meters.A total of 11 gaps were found on the four sides of the city walls, some of which may be the city gates.The north-central and northeastern part of the city is the palace area. More than 20 rammed earth foundation sites have been found, the largest of which is more than 2,000 square meters, and there are still pillar holes and pillar foundation stones on it.In recent years, the rammed earth walls of Miyagi, underground water supply pipes, wells and reservoirs have been discovered.Outside the city, many remains of handicraft workshops for casting copper, pottery, and bone tools, as well as cemeteries and cellars were found.For example, the bronze-casting site unearthed outside Nanguan covers an area of ​​1,050 square meters, and unearthed fragments of copper-melting crucibles and more than 1,000 pottery models, among which 钁 and arrowhead models are the most, indicating that bronze production tools were produced in large quantities at that time. of. In 1974, two bronze Dafang Ding and a bronze Li were unearthed in Zhangzhai South Street, Duling, west of the city. The largest bronze Fang Ding was one meter high and weighed 86.4 kilograms.In recent years, about 700-1200 meters outside the southern section of the south city wall and west city wall of Zhengzhou Shangcheng, another rammed earth city wall has been discovered, which may be the remains of the outer city.In the southwest of Xiaoshuangqiao Village, Shifo Township, 20 kilometers northwest of Zhengzhou Shangcheng, rammed earth building foundations, sacrificial pits, and Haogou were found, and bronze building components, stone chimes, stone kui, stone ancestors, pottery jars, and original porcelain statues were unearthed. , and found Zhushu characters on the surface of the pottery cylinder, which may be the remains of the Shang King's sacrificial building.In addition, city sites from the mid-Shang Dynasty were also found in Panlong City in Huangpi, Hubei and Yuanqu Ancient City in Shanxi, including rammed earth city walls, palace building foundations, and tombs, as well as bronze ritual vessels and weapons.

According to the literature records, the Shang Dynasty did not move the capital in 273 years since King Pan Geng moved the capital to Yin (now Anyang, Henan) until the end of the Shang Dynasty.Archaeologists have carried out large-scale archaeological surveys and excavations in Anyang since 1928, and confirmed that the area of ​​30 square kilometers centered on Xiaotun Village in the northwest of Anyang today is where the Yin Ruins are located (Figure 12).Dozens of grouped ancestral temple and palace building sites, handicraft workshop areas, tombs of Shang kings, and cemeteries of ordinary nobles and commoners have been discovered here.The foundation of the Zongmiao Palace is located in the northeast of Xiaotun Village, surrounded by the Huan River in the east and north, and guarded by a 1,750-meter-long Dahaogou in the west and south.These building foundations can be divided into groups A, B and C from north to south, and group B may be the ancestral temple buildings.They are all built on rammed earth foundations, with rectangular, nearly square and concave shapes in plane, and are of huge scale.For example, the No. 8 base site of Group B is about 85 meters long from north to south and 14.5 meters wide from east to west.In addition, some burial pits were found on and around the foundation site where people were murdered in ceremonies such as laying the foundation, laying the foundation, and installing the gate.For example, in the front (south) of the No. 7 foundation site in Group B, rows of burial pits were found where people were murdered or chariots and horses were buried during sacrificial ceremonies after the ancestral temple was completed.Among them, hundreds of people were sacrificed, fully reflecting the brutality and cruelty of slavery.What is more noteworthy is that not only a huge stone pillar foundation was found on the foundation site of the Zongmiao Palace, but also a copper body [ZHI quality] was found on the stone pillar foundation.For example, at the foundation site of Group A No. 11, the copper body of 11 eaves columns was found. They are oblate, about 15 cm in diameter, and about 3 cm thick.The copper body has the function of moisture insulation, which is beneficial to protect the wooden column.The use of copper bodies also reflects the development of the bronze smelting and casting industry at that time.

In stark contrast to the ancestral temple palace of King Shang, most of the houses inhabited by civilians and slaves found in Dasikong Village, Gaolouzhuang, Huayuanzhuang, Sipanmo and other places around the palace and ancestral temple area are mostly simple and half-built houses. Cave houses.That is, first dig a circular or square pit under the ground, generally with an area of ​​about 10 square meters.Just use the wall of the pit as the wall, and there may be steps around it to go up and down.There is a stove pit in the room, and the roof is made of thatch.Narrow and damp, just room for shelter.In addition, the remains of workshops for smelting copper, making pottery and making bone tools at that time were found in Beidi Nursery in the south of the Yinxu site and Beixinzhuang in the west.