The identification of a non-dynastic burial practice involving a Northern tool tradition on China's dynastic frontier

The 1976 excavation of a site in Changping Baifu, Beijing district, unearthed two well-preserved burials with Chinese-style artifacts and burial features associated with the late Shang and early Western Zhou dynasties (c. late 2nd millennium BCE) in the Central Plain. A handful of non-Chinese implements and their placement in both tombs in close proximity with the interred, however, cast doubt on the Chinese excavators' assessment that the site is dynastic Chinese.;Chapter One argues that the Baifu tombs differ in tool tradition and burial custom from those associated with late Shang and early Western Zhou dynasties established in the Central Plain. The types of non-dynastic implements and their consistent placement in the Baifu tombs align the site with other non-dynastic burials in China's northern frontier zone. The data suggests that rituals of an extant burial system were being followed--evidence for the existence of a non-dynastic Northern culture in the late 2nd millennium BCE on China's northern frontier.;Chapter Two establishes a model for the material culture and burial customs of the Shang and Zhou at the core of Chinese dynastic civilization. Chapter Three examines Shang and Zhou burial practices and investigates peripheral tombs of the Shang and Zhou to confirm that the Central Plain model is maintained at Chinese outposts on the frontier. Chapter Four reviews the archeological report from Baifu. I identify differences between the Chinese model and the model presented by the Baifu site, and in Chapter Five survey Northern burials with artifacts of similar type and style for supporting evidence of the Baifu burial practice. Chapter Six determines that Baifu also participated in a regional culture that developed prior to and apart from dynastic civilization.;The data from Baifu and other Northern sites part the curtain on a culturally inter-related group of non-dynastic sites in China's Northern Zone in the late 2nd millennium BCE, centuries before the historic confederation of non-Chinese Northern populations under the Xiongnu in late 3rd century BCE.