Huan Limin, Brosseder Ursula
Department Prehistory, LEIZA (Leibniz-Zentrum Für Archäologie), Mainz, Germany.
Asian Archaeol. 2024;8(2):229-249. doi: 10.1007/s41826-024-00098-4. Epub 2024 Dec 9.
The Yuhuangmiao culture emerged around the 7th to the 4th centuries BCE in northeastern China near Beijing. The burial ritual with stone layers, numerous animal deposits, and the material culture indicate a strong steppe connection. It is often used to support the narratives in the Chinese historical texts that people living in the area had a distinctive lifestyle from those in the southern, agricultural-based communities and that the two groups often had a hostile relationship. Based on the cemetery of Yuhuangmiao, we focus in our case study on the socio-cultural dynamics over time in communities of a small region between the steppes and the Chinese Central Plains and in confrontation with very different neighbors to the south and the northwest. We use a seriation and correspondence-based approach to propose a new chronology for three sites. The duration of the sites is divided into three phases, with a total span of around 200 years between 600 and 400 BCE. Our results show that the changes in the burial ritual and material culture reflect a community's internal development and external communication with other regions. Based on our chronology, the elite members of the Yuhuangmiao community used objects with steppe designs and horses to express their identities and social power. This practice was most prominent in the first phase and waned over time. We suggest reconsidering previous interpretations of these practices as a decline of the Yuhuangmiao people and view it instead as an expression of intra-community changes, possibly as an indicator of a successful integration of a community with foreign immigrants in an area located between two very different systems: of the steppes and the Central Plains.
The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s41826-024-00098-4.
玉皇庙文化大约在公元前7世纪至4世纪出现在中国东北部靠近北京的地区。带有石层的墓葬仪式、大量动物陪葬品以及物质文化表明其与草原有着紧密联系。它常被用来支持中国历史文献中的叙述，即生活在该地区的人们有着与南方以农业为基础的社区截然不同的生活方式，且这两个群体之间常常存在敌对关系。基于玉皇庙墓地，我们在案例研究中关注的是草原与中国中原之间一个小区域内社区随时间变化的社会文化动态，以及与南方和西北方截然不同的邻居之间的对抗。我们采用基于排序和对应分析的方法为三个遗址提出了一个新的年代序列。这些遗址的存续期分为三个阶段，公元前600年至400年之间总跨度约为200年。我们的研究结果表明，墓葬仪式和物质文化的变化反映了一个社区的内部发展以及与其他地区的外部交流。根据我们的年代序列，玉皇庙社区的精英成员使用带有草原风格图案的物品和马匹来彰显他们的身份和社会权力。这种做法在第一阶段最为突出，且随着时间的推移逐渐减弱。我们建议重新审视之前将这些做法解读为玉皇庙人群衰落的观点，而应将其视为社区内部变化的一种体现，这可能是一个社区在位于草原和中原这两个截然不同的系统之间的区域成功融入外来移民的一个指标。
在线版本包含可在10.1007/s41826 - 024 - 00098 - 4获取的补充材料。
