The Zooarchaeoiogical Studies On The Worship Remains Of Xinyue District In Siqi Site, Houma

“Sacrifice and warship are the country’s two major event.” Sacrificialceremonies play an important role in the political and daily life of the ancients. So far,there are12sacrifice localities in Xintian site, the capital city of Jin state in Houma. Itsquantity and scale is more than any other sites in the same period. The age of eachsacrifice locality lies between600B.C. to380B.C. or later. Siqi site is located on thesouthwest side of the Xintian City, composed of three parts: rammed earth buildings,graveyard and sacrificial remains.There are more than2000sacrificial pits in Siqi sitewhich is the largest sacrificial site in Xintian City. Xinyue District locality is locatedon the northwest of the sacrifice region in Siqi site, was found560sacrifice pits. In thispaper, based on the sacrificial materials and literature recordation, I discussed thelayout of sacrificial pits, the animal sacrificial pits, the artifacts sacrificial pits and theempty pits respectively, to study the methods of using animals and artifacts in ritualactivities, and furthermore, to speculate the sacrificial nature of this locality.The thesis is divided into six parts:Chapter one Introduction part Illustrating the value of the topics. Introduce thegeneral situation of Xinyue District sacrifice locality and describe the researchmethods.Chapter two Describing the whole layout and shape of the sacrificial pits. Fromthe layout we can see, only a few sacrificial pits were intruded each other. The wholesacrificial area should be planned in advance. It is a long-term and continuous sacrificelocality.Chapter three According to the species, age, gender, pathology, the burialmanner and the using way of the animal sacrificial pits, this part discusses the animalsacrificial pits systematically. The kind of sacrifice includes horse, cattle and sheep,mainly on cattle and sheep, and often using the young and male animals. Animal’sburying mode was thrown them into the pits optionally, their direction headed andposture was no fixed. There were two ways of dealing with each kind of animals: sacrifice all the animals and sacrifice part of the animals. In one ritual activity mayonly use one treatment method or two methods at once, may only use one animal oruse more animals of the same or different species. When using two or more animalssimultaneously, there were two possibilities for the burial mode of animals: one isburying all the animals into a same pit, the other is burying them into a group of pitswhich closed to each other and distributed side by side.Chapter four Studying on the artifacts sacrificial pits and the empty pits. First,this part describes the artifacts sacrificial pits and analyses its nature according to theliterature material. Through comparing the use of the animals and artifacts with othersacrifice localities in Houma, the author thinks that the time, location and objects ofsacrificing and people’s status hierarchy, these factors could affect the ways of usingthe animals and artifacts, and the proportion of each way in the ritual activities. Second,it discusses the function and the using way of the empty pits, based on the literaturematerial, archaeological findings and the horizontal distribution of empty pits.Chapter five Based on the sacrificial method and geographic position of XinyueDistrict sacrifice locality, it also compared with other sacrificial site during the sameperiods, this research part thinks that the feature of this lociality was sacrificed the Shegods.Chapter six the conclusion part. It summarizes the conclusions in this articleand points out the unresolved problems.