| The Huai River played an indispensible role in the formation and development of Chinese ancient civilization, little scholars placed it as important as the Huang River and the Yangtze River. Particularly, the eastern Jiang-huai region, whose environment had changed a lot, had little archaeological work carried out and relevant research. After finding and naming Qingliangang site in this area, the previous Longshan-Yangshao pattern had changed. Prior to 1990, discussions on this culture mainly did not focus on the whole eastern Jiang-huai region from a systematic perspective but several sites around Qingliangang site. At that time, since there were very few sites having systematic excavation work in this region, relevant researches usually altered to sites located beyond eastern Jiang-huai region but seemly having the same cultural characters. For this reason, prehistoric cultures and their cultural sequences here had been figured out for a long time.Afterwards, the excavation work of Jiahu site in upper Huai River offered an opportunity for scholars that what the ancient cultures of this area were like. In order to getting a better understanding of its prehistoric cultures, as well as figuring out its archaeological types, Nanjing Museum has launched a series of archaeological surveys and excavations in eastern Jiang-huai region since 1990. Based on these work, new clues about Qingliangang culture is showed and plenty of new materials are accumulated. Apart from this, the number of total sites here increases according to the third National Archaeological Survey. What's more, the achievements obtained in adjacent Haidai region and Taihu region are also available for us. In addition, from a view of New-archaeology, we realize that the discoveries of ancient social conditions are our research purposes, via the existed archaeological materials. Since 2000, archaeological theories and methods are getting increasingly mature and we can interpret relevant materials through process archaeology, social archaeology, cognition archaeology and settlement archaeology. According to materials mentioned above, I initially analyze its prehistoric sites in detail and establish its cultural sequence and characters in eastern Jiang-huai region, and then discuss its social developments through its economy, settlement and belief.Generally, this dissertation can be divided into eight parts:The first one is the introduction, which shows the reasons to choose this topic and the theories and methodologies I apply. Also, I picture the time and space framework of this thesis in this part.Subsequently, chapter one indicates the environment and geography of eastern Jiang-huai region. Specifically, the contents of this chapter include the landscape and its formation reasons, natural environment and local climate, changings of the coastline, estuary of the Yangtze River, Huai River and western lakes. Eastern Jiang-huai region not only benefits from the special geographical environment to present its own archaeological culture, but also suffers from it to go vanish. What's more, its unique landscape also poses an effect on the routes of cultural communication afterwards.The following one is chapter two which mainly describes the research history of prehistoric archaeology in eastern Jiang-huai region. This includes data of surveys and excavations and other archaeological work in different periods. In terms of the period distinction, this thesis refers the year of 1991 as a watershed. In the earlier period prior to 1991, scholars put emphasis on surveying and telling the characters of cultural remains. In the later period, the research focuses on doing purposed excavations, reviewing previous materials, establishing regional cultural sequence, and interpreting ancient society.Next, chapter three gives us a picture of prehistoric cultures in eastern Jiang-huai region. After dividing all the sites into classic ones and others and making comparisons between those two types, this paper compares the cultures in this region with those around to see the differences. Generally, there are three main cultural stages in eastern Jiang-huai region. The first stage, I think, is Longqiuzhuang Period. In the eastern region, the majority is the local prehistoric cultures while Qingliangang culture, which is located in the northern region, belongs to Haidai cultures. The Taihu cultures also pose a strong impact on this region later. In the second stage, the prehistoric cultures here become one regional part of Taihu region. In the last stage, Haidai region obtains the control of this region.In chapter four, I analyze the prehistoric economy in eastern Jiang-huai region according to economy-related sites. In the Longqiuzhuang Period, the ancient economy mainly depends on local natural resources and environment, which results in the hunting-and-gathering economy taking overwhelming advantage to the domesticating-and-planting economy. After Longqiuzhuang culture, since there are few economy-related sites excavated, we get a limited understanding of its economic conditions.After chapter four, we emphasize on prehistoric settlements in eastern Jiang-huai region. To shed light on this question, we choose to analyze it through distribution of settlements, the living and burying areas of the settlements. In the former factor, we can explore not only the role this region plays in cultural communication, but also the routes of population migration and cultural spread. In the latter factor, we can figure out the regional social structures and developing progress.In the following chapter six, we discuss the prehistoric thoughts and cultures in this region. Specifically, by means of depicted symbols discovered in this region, we try to interpret the local ancient beliefs. Compared with Haidai and Taihu regions, eastern Jiang-huai region do not develop its own leading believing tradition, which, in return, leads to its cultural collapse.The last section of the whole thesis is to summarize the conceptions mentioned above and state the originality and problems in this dissertation.
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