The Archaeological Study Of Han Dynasty Agricultural Cultivating Settlements

Han Dynasty was a great and innovative era that succeeded the glorious tradition of the previous times and initiated a new one.Since then,the basic patterns and features of the ancient Chinese traditional agriculture society during 2000 years had been determined.Using archaeological research methods to reveal the physical form and the content of Han Dynasty’s agricultural cultivating settlements is the basis on which the real features of the agricultural bottom society of Han Dynasty can be investigated comprehensively and objectively.It contributes to reveal the development and evolution history and pattern of the ancient Chinese rural and to understand the development regularity and the reason for change of the ancient agricultural peasant-centered society.This thesis contains six chapters.The first chapter is an introduction that introduces briefly the research background,significance,related concepts,purpose,methods of the subject.It focuses on determining the concept of the research object and what was the agricultural cultivating settlements of Han Dynasty and the original related concepts,agriculture,peasant and compound.The existing archaeological discoveries and research achievements about Han Dynasty’s capital and towns has been much more than those about Han Dynasty’s settlements.In Han Dynasty,the expressions that people of all ranks and classes had their own business and planting corns was called agricultural farming defined exactly what was agriculture and what was a peasant.A Settlement referred to an agricultural cultivating settlement relative to a town.The second chapter teases apart and summarizes systematically the existing discoveries and achievements of the archaeological investigation and excavation of the agricultural cultivating settlements of Han Dynasty.The discoveries are the material foundation of researching the agricultural cultivating settlements at that time.After the investigations all over China,a lot of Han Dynasty’s agricultural cultivating settlement ruins have been found.And the investigations have revealedthe distribution regularity and evolution of the agricultural cultivating settlement ruins,which succeeded the tradition of the settlement distribution and the grades in Pre-Qin Dynasty,in different areas in Han Dynasty.The towns and most settlements in Pre-Qin Dynasty continued to be used and developed in Han Dynasty,when the counties were centers surrounded by a great number of about 10000 ㎡ small settlements.As well,compared with Warring States Period,at that time the kind of settlements were increased much more.It was special that it began to appear that Urban and rural were interconnected and developed differently.Near the central urban suburb appeared some settlements formed naturally or organized for the need of urban residents.The archaeological excavation of the agricultural cultivating settlement sites of Han Dynasty showed different kinds of settlement patterns and features in different areas.Sandaohao site at Liaoyang in Liaoning Province was located near the suburb of Xiangping County of Liaodong which was in the northeast area in Han Dynasty.The habitat usually consisted of a house,a well,a toilet,a corral,a cellar,etc.The general distribution of the habitats,which were towards the same direction and paralleled to the road,was separate and decentralized.Sanyangzhuang site at Neihuang in Henan Province was located by the Yellow River in the middle of the Central Plains in Han Dynasty.It was completely reserved because of the Yellow River flood deposit during Han Dynasty.Generally,in the settlement,the roads were criss-crossing,and the compounds,which were situated in and among the farm field,were opposite the others across the field.The compounds had orderly layout and similar size and faced south and consisted of wells,walls,wing-rooms,main rooms,toilets and ponds or ditches.Mulberry trees,elm trees and other trees were planted beside the west and east sides and behind(north)the compounds.Xiaozhai site at Suiping in Henan Province was located southwest of Wufang County at Runan in Han Dynasty.It is inferred from the distribution of the roads and wells that the streets were lined up and the compounds were probably distributed a bit closely along both sides of the streets.Shaojiagou site at Gaoyou,Yangzhou,Jiangsu Province,which was in the late Eastern Han Dynasty,was located in Jianghuai Plain.The excavated remains included wells,cellars,ash pits,ash ditches and others.It wasspecial that Ofuda wood and God’s messenger’s clay seal were unearthed.The other settlement sites of Han Dynasty or the sites including Han Dynasty’s settlements had also been excavated.The excavation of the above sites have enriched the understanding of the diversity of the agricultural cultivating settlements of Han Dynasty.The third chapter discusses and studies the main components of the agricultural cultivating settlements of Han Dynasty,agricultural fields,compounds,roads and burial areas,and the relations of the components from the settlement pattern archaeological theory perspective and the macroscopic perspective.In Han Dynasty,the cities and the agricultural cultivating settlements,which were interdependent,had become the connection between urban and rural.The pattern and features of the settlement mainly depended on the space relation between the compound and the field.According to the distance to the urban,the settlements were divided roughly into different types,Suburb,Outer Suburb and Reclamation area.The fourth chapter lists,analyzes and studies the components of residential compounds,which were the centers of the agricultural cultivating settlements of Han Dynasty,and has formed the specific understanding of the real state and standard of the production and living of the peasants in the settlements.Based on the comprehensive research on the archaeological discoveries,it has been known that the peasants’ compounds,which had orderly layout,completed function and independent location and were towards the sun,represented a high level of the common layout features.A compound generally consisted of a main room,a wing-room or a kitchen,a gate or a gate room,a well,a toilet and trees around the compound.Some compounds also had buildings for weaving,raising livestock or storing and ponds and ditches.A separate house with the beam frame structure as main load bearing part was built with brick-base and rammed earth or adobe body wall.Some houses were built without beams.Most roofs of the houses were built with tiles.At that time,tile-ends hadn’t been used widely.In the settlement,the most common remains were gutter tiles and semi-cylindrical tiles,and the second most common remains were household pottery and agricultural implements such as iron plowshare,Jue(?,a kind of agricultural implement used for digging soil),Cha(臿,a kind of agricultural implement used for digging soil),hoe,sickle and other relics used for processing food such as stone mill and stone mortar.The fifth chapter analyzes the main influence factors of the initiation and development of the agricultural cultivating settlements of Han Dynasty and studies the causes and historical environment conditions of the agricultural cultivating settlements.The whole layout,features and evolution of the agricultural cultivating settlements of Han Dynasty were formed on the basis of the general stable social environment during more than 400 years of Han Dynasty.The increasingly common use of steel and iron agricultural implements greatly promoted the expansion of farm field area.The agricultural cultivating settlements of Han Dynasty had been differently affected by the great development of water irrigation,policy of attaching importance to agriculture,prefecture and county and township system,land system,population decrease and increase,geographical environment,climate conditions,history of development and national tradition.The sixth chapter is conclusion which summarizes the development regularity and characteristics of the agricultural cultivating settlements of Han Dynasty and the influence on the development process of ancient villages in China and puts forwards ideas about the future archaeological investigation and excavation of the agricultural cultivating settlements of Han Dynasty.With the changes of the social development environment and conditions,the agricultural cultivating settlements in Han Dynasty had generally become more and more common with various patterns and features.