A Study On Settlements And The Relevant Issus In Three Gorges Region From Han And Six-Dynasties

The research of settlement is an important perspective of restoring and understanding Human living condition.Dure to the shortage of literature about the Three Gorges area in Han Dynasity and Six Dynasties, archaeologists used to pay less attention on this area, have a weak knowledge of human survival mode and state, and the exploring in the changes is not thorough. During the last twenty years, many archaeological data of the Three Gorges area have been published, it provided materials and opportunities for us to rethink this issue. This article is a new research result about the settlement and other related issues of the Three Gorges area in Han Dynasty and the Six Dynasties, and we combine the archaeological data with the historical documents.Constructing the spatio-temporal framework of the settlement material is the premise of settlement research. In the appendix of this article, we largely do a systematic and comprehensive staging research on more than seven hundred sites in the Three Gorges area which been reported before. And initially establish the spatio-temporal framework and basic look of the archaeological culture in this period of time. The result of the analysis is that the remains of Han Dynasty and the Six Dynasties in this area have been divided into ten stages and three periods, representing Western Han Dynasty, Eastern Han Dynasty and the Six Dynasties. Each of the three periods has a cultural identity with distinctive features. And the refining of the ten stages gives a primary outline of the details and process.The second chapter does a research on the characteristics and alteration of the settlement in these three periods. The research methodology is starting with the case materials of the typical settlement, analysising and recovering the composition and basic characteristics of the case, then classifying and summaring the features of various types of the settlements, finally observing the spatial distribution, relationships and changes of them. The results indicate that Prefecture, County and Village are the three basic settlement types. They are significantly different in the constitution, distribution, and scale of the basic facilities. The most conspicuous difference is the difference in the number of city, Prefecture often have two cities, one big one small, county has a single city, while the majority of the village without city. We find that the mountain area where the barbarian lived in Han Dynasty and the Six Dynasties, also built city locally, and many villages were originally arranged in the high mountain basin or plain which looked like a city. This awareness has corrected the views of some scholars. The prefecture often hold the high ground that is strategically located and difficult of access. While counties represented by朐忍城built the important construction like yamen in the central of the riverside tableland, rather than the plateau near the mountain, what rather special is that they didn't choose the confluence of the Peng River and the Yangtze River. The cemeteries were arrange outside the city or beside the village.Dure to the particularity of the geological, hydrological and human environments, the centre of the settlements are often moving. As the prefecture, it showed the migration of the prefecture government, such as Badong prefecture, Yidu prefecture. The noteworthy evidence is that the remains of different periods in each sites generally lack of successional congeries, and the fracture of age is widespread. In some large tombs of the village, people from the Six Dynasties were often buried into the tomb of the Eastern Han Dynasty, the successional of the age is also poor. Poor state of preservation caused by adverse geological conditions, is not sufficient to explain the formation of this situation, there should be human reasons behind it.See from the spatial distribution of the settlement, near the city there are many home sites and tombs, forming lots of population inhabitant regions. However, it doesn't hinder the formation of inhabitant regions, in the non-governmental place where the land and resources are in good condition. From Western Han Dynasty, Eastern Han Dynasty to the Six Dynasties, the settlement in Wuling Town, Wanzhou, was very intensive, while in some canyon area had few inhabitant or only very small scattered villages.After the analysis and examination of cities, houses, kilns, hui keng, tombs and their spatial and regional distributions, we find that there is a great change in these three settlements during the three periods. With regard to these elements, the tombs varied greatly from the Western Han Dynasty to the Six Dynasties, that is, from earthen-pit tombs and rock-pit tombs to brick-chambered tombs, stone-chambered tombs and cliff tombs. And this new situation brings a change in settlement distribution and handicraft production, as well as the cities, the number of ferries and garrisons are on a rise in the Six Dynasties. This change could be explained by a politico-military background, which is filled with antagonism between regimes. We also notice that in the Six Dynasties especially the Northern and Southern Dynasty, the increase of the county system did not bring about the increase in the number of settlements. In daily life, the wide use of the porcelain is the important change between the Six Dynasties and Han Dynasty, which shows a more far-reaching economic and cultural influence in the Three Gorges area during the Six Dynasty compared with the upper, middle and lower reaches of Changjiang River in Western Han and Eastern Han Dynasties. Among these changes, the most obvious one is the variation of the number of settlements, which is greatly increased in the Eastern Han Dynasty compared with the Western Han Dynasty. However, the number is swiftly dropped in the Six Dynasties. This change is paralleled with the change of the number of population in The Three Gorges area.How to understand the characteristics and changes of the settlements in the Three Gorges area in Han Dynasty and the Six Dynasties? In the third chapter we explore within our capacities from population changes and the developments of economy categories. In our opinions, changes in the population is the main reason of the changes in settlement, the developments of economy is the internal dynamic, political, military and ethnic factors geeatly affect the extent and degree of the changes. This article also use a large amount of pages doing research on the traffic inside and outside the Three Gorges area, we think that the characteristics and changes of the traffic pattern is a reflection of the developments and changes in the settlements, also a reflection of economic and cultural exchanges. The new archaeological discoveries in the There Gorges area have played an important role.