Zong Tianyu, Du Borui, Zhang Chengrui, Sun Feng, Huang Zexian, Cheng Ruoxin, Liu Kexin, Shui Tao, Wang Yongan, Li Yue
School of Cultural Heritage, Northwest University, Xi'an 710127, China.
Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing 100101, China.
Animals (Basel). 2023 Dec 6;13(24):3765. doi: 10.3390/ani13243765.
The first millennium BC saw the expansion of the Western Zhou dynasty in its northwestern frontier, alongside the rise and development of the Qin State in the Longshan Mountain region of northern China. Exploring the subsistence practices of these communities is crucial to gaining a better understanding of the social, cultural, and political landscape in this region at the time. While much of the research to date has focused on the Qin people, the subsistence practices of the Zhou people remain poorly understood. In this study, we analyzed animal remains from Yucun, a large settlement site associated with the Zhou people, located to the east of the Longshan Mountain. These animal remains were recovered in the excavation seasons of 2018-2020. Our results show that pigs, dogs, cattle, caprines, and horses, which were the major domestic animals at Yucun, accounted for over 90.8% of the animal remains examined in terms of the number of identified specimens (NISP) and 72.8% in terms of the minimum number of individuals (MNI), with cattle and caprines playing dominant roles. In terms of the taxonomic composition and the mortality profiles of pigs, caprines, and cattle, Yucun shared similarities with Maojiaping and Xishan, two contemporaneous Qin cultural sites located to the west of the Longshan Mountain, and differ from other farming societies in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River valley. Considering the cultural attributes and topographic conditions of these various sites, these findings imply that environmental conditions may have played a more significant role than cultural factors in shaping the animal-related subsistence practices in northern China during the first millennium BC.
公元前第一个千年见证了西周王朝在其西北边境的扩张，以及中国北方龙山地区秦国的兴起与发展。探究这些社群的生存方式对于更好地理解当时该地区的社会、文化和政治格局至关重要。虽然迄今为止的许多研究都集中在秦国人身上，但周人的生存方式仍鲜为人知。在本研究中，我们分析了来自与周人相关的大型聚落遗址——位于龙山以东的峪村的动物遗骸。这些动物遗骸是在2018年至2020年的发掘季中出土的。我们的结果表明，峪村的主要家畜——猪、狗、牛、羊和马，就鉴定标本数量（NISP）而言，占所检查动物遗骸的90.8%以上，就最小个体数（MNI）而言占72.8%，其中牛和羊起主导作用。就猪、羊和牛的分类组成及死亡模式而言，峪村与位于龙山以西的两个同期秦文化遗址——毛家坪和西山相似，与黄河流域中下游的其他农耕社会不同。考虑到这些不同遗址的文化属性和地形条件，这些发现意味着，在塑造公元前第一个千年中国北方与动物相关的生存方式方面，环境条件可能比文化因素发挥了更重要的作用。
