Burial Customs Of Chinese Northern Bronze Culture In Inner Mongolia District During Eastern Zhou

The research on sacrificed animals in burials of Inner Mongolia Region during the Eastern Zhou Period had been taken lightly in the past, due to the lack of awareness on archaeozoology. Archaeologists would spend most of their time collecting data regarding to burial goods and body orientations, but did not keep detail record about the condition and species of the sacrificed animals found in the graves. This essay will focus on these sacrificed animals, and instead of using traditional typology, this research collected all data available at the time and using statistical analysis trying to understand more about the culture and social structure of people lived here during Eastern Zhou.This paper established the following points: one, separating the assemblage of sheep skull and pig skull. These two assemblages represented two different types of economic strategies. Because both of them appeared in the west part of researched area, which implied that even within a same culture background, there were different"economic strategies"existed in the same time. Secondly, Overruled the traditional idea of the standard animal assemblage in Northern Cultural Belt usually contain horse skulls, cattle skulls, and sheep skulls. From the collected data, horse skulls are surprisingly low in numbers. And they usually appear either in very few quantities, or very large amount. This implied that among all other animal species found, horses had a different status in the ideology of the time. Thirdly, unlike the burials found in Central Plain region, animal buried here only had skulls and sometimes hoofs or other un-edible parts found. Considering the principle of"serving dead as if they were alive" in the mind of ancient Chinese, whole animal sacrificed might served as property in the afterlife. However, the Inner Mongolia burials during Eastern Zhou had more Shamanism influences in them. The amount of animals used in the burial might suggested a"potlatch"style funeral, for the purpose to show the family's social status.This essay will discuss the subsistence strategy chosen by ancient groups who lived in Inner Mongolia through the statistical analysis of burial customs during Eastern Zhou. The studies on"Northern Chinese Culture Belt"had shown that the burial customs in this belt are similar, and yet different. Through analysis of the assemblage of sacrificed animals found in the burial, the data shows that Inner Mongolia can be divided into East and West region, and each reflects a different phase in the transition from horticulture into nomad economy. Human will shift from one subsistence strategy to another according environment adaptation. Studies of ancient environment had shown that Inner Mongolia had gone through rapid environmental changes since Holocene, and groups lived here had shifting back and forth between different types of subsistence strategies. Eastern Zhou was the time when the environmental changes became less rapid, and the transform of subsistence strategy unified. The sacrificed animal in the burials implied the different phases of this transition.Archaeological excavation is always going on, therefore this essay has not yet include all the latest data. And also it did not using the statistical method to come up with brand new grouping, but referring to the one grouped by using typology. However, this also had allow the traditional method to be re-examined under different kind of method. As the result, although this essay did not come up with any shocking new discovery, it still bright in new light and different angles to consider the transition of different types of economic strategies.