The Research Of The Animal Remains Of Xicha Site In Neimenggu

Xicha site lies on the agriculture and herding interleave district of the Yellow River Basin, which is in the medium south of Inner Monggolia. Its deposition of layers is thick, and cultural content is complicated. The layers belong to Shang-Zhou period,"Xicha Culture"is named after the name of the village where the site was found, which filled up the blank of the archeological culture of Shang-Zhou in this region.19717 bones and teeth were unearthed in this site, and most of them belong to Shang-Zhou Period. The author made the conclusions on the basis of the identification and statistical analysis of the animal remains.1.Many features such as houses, ash pits, tombs, wall of stones, and kiln were found in this site. Some antlers naturally fell off, but others cut by human in autumn and winter. It is expected that, Xicha site was used for long time as a larger settlement.2.Species are abundant. Some are domesticated animals such as Sus domestica, Bos taurus, Ovis, Capra, Equus, Canis familiaris, others are wildlife such as Cervus elaphus, Cervus Nippon, Capreolus, Vulpes, Lepus, Ursus, Moschus, Meles meles, Hydropotes inermis, Castoridae, Cricetulus, Myospalax, Pnasianus colchicus, Silurus asotus and Eulamelli branchia. It is expected that there was a thick forest-stepper zone connecting bush, larger river or lake around, and the environment was very suitable for human being.3.There are a great deal of farming tools and a few fish-hunting tools made of animal bones in the site, so it is speculated that agriculture was the one of the major means of subsistence, compared with hunting & fishing economy and the structure of diet was variety and reasonable.4.Based on the animal bones and the human bones with vermilion from the site, a viewpoint can be defined that ancient people in the site was affected by Shang Culture directly and indirectly. The custom of sacrifice was current, especially with prisoners of war and slaves.