BRM1A: 35 Jade Fish
Length 6.9, width 1.8, thickness 0.4 cm
Turquoise jade, partially qined, with cinnabar attached. The fish has an oblique diagonal perforation at the lower lip. This jade fish was excavated on the right side of the chest of the owner of the tomb, and is a work of material construction, and the source of the jade material may be the irregular-shaped edge material left after the main material is removed. The dorsal fin and tail of the fish are designed according to the shape characteristics of the sap material, so they coexist in a straight line. It can be seen from this that the jade fish is a "secondary shaped jade" designed and made from the remaining material. Since the shape is slightly trimmed from the remaining material, it is not deliberately designed and made, so the ornamentation supporting it is slightly rough. Due to the lack of much process trimming, the ornamental lines show obvious traces of pondering. For a discussion of secondary jade, refer to the book's monograph.
"On the Characteristics and Historical Status of the Xishan Castle Site"
Qian Yaopeng, Cultural Relics, No. 7, 1999, pp. 41-45
In this paper, the characteristics of the late Yangshao culture site in Xishan, Zhengzhou, Henan Province, and its role in the origin and early development of Chinatown are discussed. The author first introduced the construction process of the Xishan Castle site: Xishan Castle was roughly circular in plan and had a total length of 265 meters; The construction method is to dig loose soil into raw soil to form a city wall base trough in the part of the proposed city wall, build the city wall on the base groove plane, and then take the soil outside the wall to form a trench, which is used as an auxiliary defense facility of the city wall, and the two together constitute an effective defense system of Xishan Castle. In terms of construction methods, Xishan Castle adopts the block plate construction technique, which is built in sections, blocks, and layers on the trimmed raw soil, and the ramming tools may be a cluster of several sets of wooden sticks. The base of the wall is generally wider, and then gradually adducts as the height increases, forming a step-like structure of one level and one level. The relative date of Xishan City is the late Yangshao culture, the absolute date is between 3300 BC and 2800 BC, it is the earliest version of the rammed earth city site on the mainland.
Xishan Castle is characterized by the simultaneous existence of primitiveness and progress, and it is obviously of the nature of inheritance and development. Its originality mainly includes: First, the planar structure of Xishan City is nearly circular, which is different from the square or rectangular structure commonly found in Longshan culture, and inherits the characteristics of ring trench settlements in the plane structure; Second, although the city wall of Xishan City has a base groove, the depth of the base groove is limited; Third, the construction of Xishan Castle is not only inconsistent in specific construction methods, but also the layout construction technology is relatively primitive; Fourth, the rammed earth built on the inner and outer sides of the city wall and the central part is different, and the thickness of the rammed layer is also inconsistent. At the same time, the large-scale house buildings in the Xishan City site may still be ground-type, unlike the rammed earth high-rise buildings of the Yongsan era. The progressiveness of Xishan Castle is mainly manifested in the construction technology of the city wall: first of all, the application of the version construction technology enhances the defensive function of the city wall; The second is the use of the excavation method, which is a more advanced method of building walls. The discovery of Xishan Castle is of great academic significance. First of all, the discovery of Xishan Castle further confirms that the ancient rammed earth city site of the mainland originated from the ring trench settlement, and there was an evolution process centered on the ring trench to the rammed earth city wall in terms of defense facilities; Secondly, the discovery of Xishancheng shows that in the process of development of rammed city walls, its technical methods exist from ground stacking to digging and troughing to build foundations, from rammed earth piles to rammed earth version buildings; The discovery of Xishancheng again not only confirms that the earliest chinese city may have been found in the middle and late Yangshao culture, but also shows that the city wall architecture of the late Yangshao culture has adopted a variety of methods and technologies such as ramming, plate building and digging and troughing to build foundations; Finally, the discovery of Xishancheng and many factors indicate that the development of rammed earth city sites in the Yellow River Basin, especially technological progress, is obviously different from the Yangtze River Basin, which may be related to the geographical location and special geological characteristics of the Yellow River Basin located in the center of the confluence of the north and south of the mainland. Therefore, the discovery of Xishancheng has important reference value for understanding the status and role of Yangshao culture and the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River in the history of ancient Chinese cultural development.
The source of the text is "Research Outline of the Origin of Chinese Civilization", published by Cultural Relics Publishing House in December 2003
Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Research Center for Ancient Civilizations, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, ed
The pictures and illustrations are from the book "National Jade", edited by the Aurora Civilization Research Center of Peking University, and published in 2010