Visit the site of the Western Zhou City of Zhouyuan

Research topic: Archaeology of the Site of the Western Zhou City of the ZhouYuan Ruins

Investigator: Zhou Yuan Archaeological Team

On the fifth day of the first lunar month, the reporter walked into the archaeological site of the Zhouyuan site where the snow had not yet melted. Here, the Zhouyuan archaeological team, composed of the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the Shaanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology, and the School of Archaeology and Literature of Peking University, has been looking for the site of the Western Zhou City and the large buildings of the Pre-Zhou Period in Zhouyuan. In recent years, through a variety of means of exploration, the archaeological team finally confirmed the site of the Western Zhou City at the end of 2021, and excavated a city gate, a large rammed earth building in the pre-Zhou and Warring States periods.

The large rammed earth buildings of the pre-Zhou Dynasty provided information for the search for the ruling center of the zhou dynasty from the ancient gonggong father to the Wen dynasty before the Shang Dynasty. The newly discovered city wall laid a good foundation for the next step of in-depth exploration of the layout of the city, and also provided a reference background for clarifying the settlement structure, related heritage properties, settlement and social change process of the Zhouyuan site, and provided a rare example for the establishment of three generations of capitals. With the continuous deepening of archaeological research, the excavated cultural relics and the remains discovered one by one have made the academic community seem to have obtained the "key" to decode the Western Zhou culture.

1. New clues lead to conjectures about large and small city sites

At the junction of Qishan and Fufeng counties in the western part of Guanzhong, there is a deep ravine on the alluvial fan at the southern foot of Qishan Mountain, and there is a Zhouyuan Museum in each village on both sides of the deep ditch, namely the Zhouyuan Museum in Baoji City and the Zhouyuan Museum in Qishan County. Liu Wanjun, director of the Cultural Relics Management Institute of the Zhouyuan Museum in Baoji City, stood in front of the ravine, pointed to a large wheat field in front of him, and told reporters that according to the clues of the newly discovered city wall, it was speculated that there were two large and small city sites in the Zhouyuan ruins.

Wangjiazui No. 1 building base site Picture from the Zhouyuan Archaeological Team

Although through the unremitting efforts of several generations of archaeologists, some clues to rammed earth walls have been found, but it is not yet possible to confirm that they are part of the city walls. Song Jiangning, an associate researcher at the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that before this work, the existence of a rammed earth wall had been confirmed, and the idea of two city sites had been proposed.

In 2021, The leader of the Zhouyuan archaeological team and vice president of the Shaanxi Provincial Archaeological Research Institute, Zhong Jianrong, introduced that the site of the small city is located in the northwest of the site, about 1480 meters from east to west, about 1065 meters from north to south, and the overall rectangle is regular, with an area of about 1.75 million square meters. Archaeologists judged that the city wall was built from the time of the Shang Zhou to the early Western Zhou Dynasty by opening 4 trenches and shoveling 5 ridges. After the discovery of the small town, in view of the large number of remains of the Zhouyuan ruins distributed in the east of the small city, archaeologists began to consider whether there was a big city in the east and southeast of the small city. Based on the clues that some of the rammed land points were distributed in a linear manner, archaeologists investigated and found the location of the city wall in the late Western Zhou Dynasty, and then confirmed the existence of the city site in the late Western Zhou Dynasty through drilling and excavations and three cross-sections.

If the city wall of the late Western Zhou Dynasty were restored to a large city, it would be about 2700 meters from east to west, about 1800 meters from north to south, and a total area of about 5.2 million square meters. Its regular shape, which basically includes the core part of the Zhouyuan site, will be the largest Western Zhou city site seen so far. Except for the southwest city wall, which was destroyed by soil extraction, most of the other parts have intermittent rammed earth foundation troughs. A section of the base groove of the east wall was fully revealed, and the doorway was discovered, and the north and south walls had thin walls built separately. The doorway was covered with collapsed red-burned earth, possibly on fire, and fragments of the abdomen of bronze artifacts from the late Western Zhou Dynasty were unearthed on the ground. On the north side of the gate, there is a gate embedded in the city wall, and the side of the city is connected to a curved ruler-shaped rammed earth platform, which limits the turn to the south after entering the city, similar to the urn castle structure. The southeast corner of the city wall site pressed down on the ash pit of the late Western Zhou Dynasty, and the pottery bristles of the late Western Zhou Dynasty were excavated from the rammed earth. Archaeologists synthesized various types of information and deduced that the outer city was built in the late Western Zhou Dynasty.

2. Outline the urban layout structure

ZhouYuan used to be considered "the religious center of the Zhou people" and "the settlement of the nobility". The city site discovered this time is the largest city site in the Western Zhou Dynasty, with a square shape and obvious planning, which is enough to change the previous understanding of "scattered settlements". Since the Warring States period, Zhou Yuan has not been clearly positioned in the traditional western Zhou historical narrative. However, archaeological remains and excavations of Western Zhou Jinwen reflect that Zhou Yuan was the most important capital city of Western Zhou, and some scholars even proposed that Zhou Yuan was the "Zong Zhou" in the written material. New archaeological discoveries support this understanding and may change the traditional perception of two millennia and advance research in related fields.

The discovery of the city site provides a reference background for the previously known ruins, and takes an important step towards clarifying the urban layout structure. The Zhaochen building complex is close to the eastern wall of the outer city, it will not be a royal palace building, it may be a functional building of the city; the bone-making, jade and copper casting workshops from Yuntang to qijia are located near the eastern wall of the small city, far from the city center; the Fengchian building complex is located in the middle of the northern part of the small city, the direction is exactly the same as the city site, combined with the large area of rammed earth that exists around, the northern part of the small city should be the palace area. The vast majority of the bronze cellars of the nobles at all levels were found outside the small city, implying that in the late Western Zhou Dynasty, the small city was equivalent to the royal city, and the east and south of the small city were Guo Cheng.

3. Fill in the gaps in high-grade buildings

"Previous work has shown that the Zhouyuan site was the largest settlement in the Shang period in the central and western Parts of The Guan; bronze tombs have been excavated many times in the area of Wangjiazui and Shuang'an, but scientific excavation materials that can solve the nature of the settlement are very scarce. In order to explore the center of the pre-Zhou dynasty, the Zhouyuan archaeological team conducted drilling in the Wangjiazui area and found a hard soil with many impurities. After test excavation, it was thought that it might be rammed earth, and finally one large building was found in the Pre-Zhou Period and the late Warring States Period. Cao Dazhi, the leader of the Zhouyuan Archaeological Team in 2020 and an associate professor at the School of Archaeology and Archaeology of Peking University, said that the Wangjiazui No. 1 building is the first large-scale building of the pre-Zhou period with a clear archaeological discovery date, and its scale and complexity are unexpected. At present, the southern half has been revealed, which is composed of the main hall, the east and west wing rooms, the courtyard, and the outbuildings. Judging from the superimposed breaking relationship, the upper limit of the building age is the late Jingdang-type Shang culture, and the lower limit is no later than the late pre-Zhou culture. The discovery of large-scale rammed earth buildings in the pre-Zhou period filled the gap of the previous Zhouyuan site without high-grade buildings in the pre-Zhou period, and was the key material for determining the nature of the pre-Zhou settlement at the Zhouyuan site.

The architecture reflects the economic and cultural development of a country and a nation, as well as its historical characteristics and cultural traditions. Drilling found that there was also a large area of rammed earth in the Wangjiazui area, which provided evidence for confirming the location of the center of the pre-Zhou state and laid the foundation for in-depth study of the formation of the pre-Zhou state. The Wangjiazui ruins area is facing ditches on three sides, low and near water, and 600 meters northeast of the site of the Western Zhou City with high-pitched and open terrain. From the natural terrain to the planned square city, it reflects the establishment process of the Zhou Dynasty.

Wangjiazui No. 2 has a special architectural form, possibly a large official granary in the late Warring States period. At that time, the official warehouse was set up above the county level. The "Mei Ting" pottery text has been excavated many times around Wangjiazui, and this time archaeologists in the Liujia Cemetery have also excavated two cases of "Meiyang" pottery. The work of the past two years shows that the remains of the Warring States from Wangjiazui to Liujiazui are quite rich. In the past, It was believed that Meiyang County was in the area of Famen Town, and the new discovery provided a basis for confirming the location of Meiyang County. "Hanshu Geographical Chronicle": "Meiyang, Yugong Qishan in the northwest." Zhongshui Township, king of Zhou. There is Gaoquan Palace, And Empress Qin Xuan is also from there. "Building No. 2 is not only a rare example of a grass-roots official warehouse in the Warring States, which enriches the connotation of the Zhouyuan site, but also conforms to the documentary records and enhances the confidence of archaeologists in identifying the nature of the site."

(Photo and text from: China Social Science Network)