| The graveyard of the Guo State is located on a mesa at Shangcunling of Sanmenxia, a city in the west of Henan province. This mesa is long and narrow from east to west and higher north than south. When it undergone two large-scale digs in the 1950s and 1990s, more than 33000 pieces (sets) of precious cultural relics were excavated. Especially, over 5900 pieces (sets) of jade and other precious stone articles with overall variety, fine jade quality, exquisite manufacture as well as great cultural and artistic value were able to reflect jades characteristic in the late Western Zhou to the early Spring and Autumn period. At present, because the tombs of the emperors of the Zhou dynasty have not been discovered, these two well-preserved monarchs of the Guo State tombs that have plenty of funerary objects seemed to be more importance. For example, grave of Guoji' s (the M2001) is one of the two monarch's tombs which had been dug up. When been buned, the host of tomb had five groups of different head ornaments, the neck decorations,and seven Huang jade pendants.There were also some jades under his waist and feet, even among his eight toes. Earliest jade handle sword inlaid with turquoise and iron-copper dagger-axe inlaid with turquoise are all first been unearthed in China.The jade articles unearthed from the graveyard of the Guo State provided rare and complete standard set of artifacts for studying the histories of two Zhou period, culture and development of jade (stone), etc. This paper attempt to make a comprehensive and systematic textual research to these jades from the angle of geological, archaeological, bibliographical study so as to make a contribution to the study of the histories and significance of the Chinese ancient jade science and technology and culture.The Paper is mainly divided into six parts. The first part summarize things of the Guo State including brief account of the graveyard , its histoncal position and dominion. Besides, I make an inquiry into to feud and changs of the Guo State. The Guo State in sanmenxia city was moved to this place from the western Guo State in the late Western Zhou about the Emperor Zhou Xuan period. Most kings and nobles of the Guo State were high officials of Zhou dynasty. They helped the king of the Zhou dynasty to go on punitive expeditions, make strategic on the rising, developing and declining of Zhou dynasty. Thus, they have a illustrious position in Zhou royal court. Above all these depict the importance significance of the discovery of the Guo State tombs.The second part give a brief account to the jade (stone) articles excavated from the graveyard of the Guo State, which make us understand them clearly. According to the numbers and quality of jade articles, etc. buried within, the tombs of the Guo State can be divided into six grades, which reflect the social estate system of that time evidently. I propose some ways and thinkings about studying the Chinese ancient jades. I think that we should combine understanding of the ancients to jade and stone, definition and classification with development of the modem people studying ancient jades. Based on these ways and thinkings, I make a preliminary identification and research into jade quality. These jade varieties of the Guo State tombs are classified into nephrite including white jade, grey jade, jasper and green jade, etc., stone like jade cotaining serpentine jade, agate,turquoise, rock crystal, etc. , transition jade such as root and skin of grey jade. I tentatively probe into the origin of these jade to think that it is possible that most of jades unearthed from the Guo State tombs is from the nephrite of Xinjiang' s kunlun (Hetian).The third part on the basis of archaeology use gemology and typology, uniting jade system in the Western Zhou dynasty to study classification and usage of these jade articles with mutual corroboration. At first, I propose a classified principle and way about jade articles. Then, according to their unearthed place, these jade articles are classified into r...
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