Page 229 - The Golden Age of Chinese Archaeology: Celebrated Discoveries from the People’s Republic of China

BRONZES FROM Two Western Zhou capitals, Feng and Hao r both founded in the mid-eleventh century BCE,
were located in the western suburbs of Xi'an. Although no enclosure walls have yet been found,
FENG HAO survey and excavations revealed extensive remains of Western Zhou settlement on both sides of
the Feng River, including the foundations of several large buildings that may have been temples
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AND ENVIRONS, or palaces. Since the 19505, the Institute of Archaeology at the Chinese Academy of Social
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Sciences has investigated several cemeteries west of the Feng River associated with aristocratic
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SHAANXI lineages. Although none of these cemeteries has yet been fully excavated (nor has a represen-
tative sampling of tombs of different social groups been conducted), the voluminous data
PROVINCE recovered shed considerable light on the display of status among the elite of the royal capital.
The most important of the cemeteries explored to date is located at Zhangjiapo, Chang'an
(Shaanxi province). It belonged to the Xing Shu (or Jing Shu) lineage, a junior branch of the
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Zhou royal house, and contained the tombs of several successive lineage heads surrounded by
those of their family members. Tomb 157 features two sloping passageways leading into the cen-
tral tomb chamber. Its total length is 35.4 meters, making it the largest known Western Zhou

tomb in the dynasty's Shaanxi core area. The royal Shang tombs at Anyang had four such pas-
sageways, and the tombs of the Zhou kings, though as yet undiscovered, are believed to have
continued this practice; under this system, if indeed it applied to Western Zhou, the two pas-
sageways of Tomb 157 would have been the privilege of persons ranking just below the king.
Interestingly, however, the tombs of other Xing Shu lineage heads at the Zhangjiapo cemetery
(Tombs 152,168, and 170, all later than Tomb 157) each had only one sloping passageway, while
those of lesser-ranking lineage members lacked passageways altogether. Clearly, the ritual rank
held by one lineage head was not automatically inherited by his successors; privileges may
have been tied, at least in part, to individual achievement or genealogical proximity to the
royal line. 5
The Xing Shu tombs contained objects symbolic of their owners' status — associated with
warfare and ancestral sacrifice, the two main pursuits of the Zhou elite. Finds related to warfare
include six disassembled chariots and twenty-six chariot wheels found in the passageway of
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Tomb 157 (fig. i), precious bronze weapons and chariot fittings in the chamber of Tomb 170,
and separate horse pits associated with several of the large tombs. Finds related to ritual in-
clude bronze and lacquer vessels, objects made of jade, glass-frit, and ivory, musical instru-
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ments, and remnants of sumptuous funerary tents deployed in the burial chamber. Such
paraphernalia were intended to enable the deceased members of the lineage to continue their
ancestral sacrifices with the appropriate display of status. Because of looting, no complete
funerary assemblages have been recovered from the Xing Shu cemetery. Bronze vessel assem-
blages from contemporaneous ancestral temples in the Feng Hao area are, however, docu-
mented by hoards of sacrificial vessels, hastily buried when invaders from the northwest forced
the Zhou to abandon their Shaanxi core area in 771 BCE. S

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