BC Thousand Cultural Relics Research Discipline East Tianshan Mountain Archeology

Around1,000B.C. is an important period for the development of the world’s history of civilization. In this period, most regions in Eurasia entered the later Bronze Age and the early Iron Age. The cultures and societies had developed into a certain level in ancient eastern and western farming civilization centers and early communications had begun. Meanwhile, with a sudden climate change in the hinterland of Eurasia, nomads and pastoral economy appeared gradually and had been impacting the regions of agricultural civilization.Under this background, the civilization in Eastern Tianshan Mountain region (consisting of eastern Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, the southern and northern foots of eastern Tianshan mountain chain and the surrounding areas), which sat between the ancient eastern and western civilization center, came into a booming period around1,000B.C. Meanwhile, the regional culture abounding with local characteristics and extensive origins appeared. The regional culture had plentiful connotations, complex structure and was full of changes. However, in China’s archaeological circle, there is a heavy lack of a comprehensive research on cultural characteristic and civilization development in Eastern Tianshan Mountain region around1,000B.C., and there are disputes on many questions and lots of blind areas in research;Considering these questions, this thesis makes a comprehensive research on archaeological cultural remains of the Eastern Tianshan Mountain region in the period around1,000B.C. in all aspects. The research, taking various previous local discoveries as the major targets, is made with the usage of archaeological research methods and the reference of many research results concerned. For the research, the thesis also collects some firsthand documents that include a variety of researches, excavation reports and collections concerned with the local investigations in which the writer himself participated in recent years.The thesis consists of five chapters. The first chapter analyzes the natural environment of the Eastern Tianshan Mountain region and the environment’s influence to the local culture. It introduces a brief history of the local archaeological research and discusses some basic concepts. It also makes a specific definition of the remains there around1,000B.C., discovering from the remains’ characteristics and co-existent relations that in the aforementioned period there were two categories of archaeological cultural remains having connections and differences and can be denominated as "the cultural remains of the first category" and "the cultural remains of the second category".The second chapter, with the analysis of relics from the remains of the two categories and chronological research methods, thinks that the age of the remains of the first category is probably from around13th century B.C. to around2nd century B.C., and the age of the remains of the second category from around3rd century B.C. to after the Christian era, and that the archaeological culture of the second category followed that of the first category. With research methods of archaeological stratigraphy and typology, the thesis also classifies the remains of the first category into3periods and3local types, since the remains last longer and spread more extensively.Based on the second chapter, the third chapter, with analysis methods relating to cultural factors, compares the cultural factors of the two categorical remains in Eastern Tianshan Mountain region with cultural factors in the surrounding areas and even areas farther away. The chapter also discusses the different sources and positions of the cultural factors and thus infers the processes and ways of the two categorical remains’formation. It is considered that the remains of the first category was formed locally from cultural expansion and collision in central and western Eurasian steppe, Gansu and Qinghai from2,000B.C., and absorbed different cultural factors in different periods. The crowds of the second categorical remains came from eastern Eurasian steppe and conquered the regions of the first categorical remains. Thus the remains of the second category are considered to have formed by replacing those of the first category and absorbing partial cultural factors from the remains of the first category and other regions.With the methods of settlement archaeological and environmental archaeology, the fourth chapter, which considers plenty of investigation documents as research targets, analyzes the selection, grades, shapes, connotations, etc of settlements and settlement groups of the two categorical remains and discusses the social organizations and structures of them according to the settlements. It is considered that the society was differentiated to a certain extent in the period of the first categorical remains:the economic ways of life were primarily settled agriculture and animal husbandry in the early stage; pastoral economy was expanding increasingly after the middle stage. In the period of the second categorical remains, the social differentiation was more complicated and the economic way of life had almost been transformed into pastoral economy.Using methods of historical archaeology, the last chapter, after consulting historical documents, textual researches, archaeological discoveries and researches, thinks that the ages and geographical positions of the two categories’cultural remains respectively correspond to those of Yuezhi, Xiongnu and some other nationalities recorded in documents of the Han Dynasty. Besides, the time when the second category’s remains replaced the first category’s remains also coincides with the time when Xiongnu and other nationalities conquered Yuezhi and occupied the latter’s territory. In the end, the thesis makes a conclusion on the position and research significance of the archaeological culture of the eastern Tianshan Mountain Region in the period around1,000B.C.