The Research For Scarifice Remains In Xia,Shang And Zhou Dynasties

Sacrifice remain is one of the archaeological heritages,which have been discovered in many places.Xia,Shang and Zhou Dynasties are at a time of the beginning stage of the country,the management mode which depends on blood related is changing into geopolitical control.The ritual is given a richer and deeper connotations than before due to great innovations of social structures,doctrines and systems.Therefore,it's important to research systematically the sacrifice remains during the period.Based on the documents and locations,the sacrifice remains can be divided into five main groups within 13 categories through reviewing of the sacrifice remains in Xia,Shang and Zhou dynasties.Considering the qualitative and quantitative aspects of the background,places,subjects surviving together,layer,structure,shapes,animals and artifacts,and combining the results of animal archaeology,settlement archaeology and environmental science with inscriptions on bones and bronzes,the bamboo slips and documents,it is possible to make a deep research on sacrifice remains.There is no connection and successivity in God sacrifice remains because of the different areas and times.It is found a group of Earth sacrifice from early Shang to late Shang with a distinctive feature of establishing stones as the Earth Gods,meanwhile,it's also found a group of Earth sacrifice of minister in seignior state during Western Zhou Dynasty with the feature of piled up soil as Earth Gods,both remain groups classified based on their scope.Ancestor sacrifice divided into rituals in the temple and rituals on the tomb,cleaning up the structure,locations,ritual pits and sizes of the temples,it is showed that the ritual temples have different classes and cultural features along with ritual pits;ritual tombs can be divided into architecture on the tombs,pits and rituals in the tomb,considering layers and locations of the remains,tomb rituals happened later than the tombs.The sizes of mountain and river rituals are different because of the time and areas,but through the location,it is showed that the mountain rituals and river rituals has distinctive system.Foundation rituals are all around the architectures and before the part of foundation,setting up the doors,pillars and steps,their layers are under the foundation and ground,besides,the directions of ritual body and the architectures are crossed,all the variables about the architectures have no relevance with the existence of the foundation rituals.The number of gate rituals is rare,it can be only found in Huanbei Shang Capital and Daxin village of Yong city,they are buried underneath the ground and directed to the gate,the ritual animals were put in pattern,which is the typical ritual pits.The number of the wall rituals is a small amount,they were randomly buried,so it should be discussed that whether the wall rituals exist.Through distinguishing the cultural features of workshops,the ritual in workshops was the special tradition of Shang Dynasty,the size of the rituals was decided by the size of the workshops.The pact rituals complied with documents in many aspects.Generally speaking,the animals and artifacts in ritual pits and yards are similar with the tread of the period.The reason why there are some special animals in the rituals is the impact of the environment and agriculture.Since Xia Dynasty,the features of sacrifice remains showed distinctive difference of the areas.During Shang Dynasty,the core and control areas of Shang can be observed some kind of grade system.It could be seen that the grades of settlements is positively correlated with the sizes and scope of the sacrifice ritual.In early Western Zhou,there are both Shang and Zhou ritual traditions in the kingdom;in the middle and late Western Zhou,the patterns of the seignior states are the same as Zhou Dynasty.During spring and autumn period and the warring states period,the control of Zhou Dynasty was fading away,the seignior states established their own sacrifice rituals based on those of Zhou Dynasty combined with the special tradition in their own areas,which formed the sub-culture of ritual traditions.It is showed that the grades in ritual remains has strong connection to the supreme authority,the sacrifice rituals were dominated,engaged and operated.The content of the documents and the bamboo slips showed that the control to the rituals was deep down to the ground.From the forms of the ritual,the mutation of the sacrifice remains deepened on the changes of the regime power.In fact,it is illustrated that the traditions and the system of the sacrifice remains has directly relationship with the different group of people.Eventually,the ritual cultures in different areas are terminated by Qin which reforms to improve the sacrifice system and establishes the whole and large national rituals tradition.