A Preliminary Study On Erliton Culture

Erlitou Culture,as one of the most developed Bronze Cultures,is a main object ofdiscovering the first dynasty in Chinese history-Xia Dynasty and itscultures.Based on the research chiefly about Erlitou Site- the central city ofErlitou Culture,the article demarcates the culture by stage,and discusses all the other remains respectively. In order to figure out the relative years of each remain,I also correspond these demarcating results with the above.On the ground,I probe into the distributions of the remains in each stage carefully,and initially uncover its dynamic distributing course and the trend of expanding.Thus,it basically displays the developing and expanding process of Erlitou Culture from the angle of pottery.The article makes clear that the remains in the first stage of Erlitou Culture distributed mainly in Yi and Luo vally and the west of Henan Province, and it ever tried to expand to the south.Since the second stage of Erlitou Culture,it had been to expand to the south and east on a large scale.Dashigu Wall City of Erlitou Culture was discovered in Zhengzhou of the east.From the west of Henan Province,across.Yellow River to the south of Shanxi' Province,'Erlitou Culture Dongxiafeng Type'formed.In Erlitou Site,No.3 great palace,tombs with bronze jade, white pottery and some other elegant articles and the site once casting bronze of the stage etc.are also discovered. All of the above show that this stage is the flourished period of Erlitou Culture.In the third stage,the expanding trend came with more tremendous force,and mainly concentrated on the areas from Zhengzhou of the east to Kaifeng.The expansion to the north of Henan Province begun at the same time.The expansion to the west had reached at Hua County in Shanxi' Province.Accordingly,we can say,the expansion of Erlitou Culture can reflect in all the four directions:the east,south,west and north.No.l and 2 great palace cites and many tombs of middle rank in this stage were found in Erlitou Site,too.The remarkable change in the expansion of this stage was that the cultural factors of Xiaqiyuan Culture(the earlier Shang Culture)was increasing.This maybe implicatethat the constract of the power in the two cultures would be changed in the following stage .The number of the sites in the fourth stage of Erlitou Culture decreased sharply,except the cites in the areas from Zhengzhou of the east to Kaifeng.Other cites were mostly abandoned,as well as No.l,2and 3 palace sites.At this time,Erlitou Culture displayed a trend of decline and fall.Related to the factors of Xiaqiyuan Culture(the earlier Shang Culture)from the east ,it suggest the historial fact that Shang Dynasty substituded Xia Dynasty.