Study On Burial Customs Of Waist Pits In Shanxi Area Of The Pre-qin Period

By collecting and classifying the information of ancient tombs in Shanxi area, the article realized the developing and evolving process of the waist pits burial custom in different periods, and preliminarily makes sure that its latest limitation should be after the middle stage of the Warring States period. There are no any new discoveries from the Qin and Han dynasties. And one point should be paid more attention to is that this phenomenon only happens in Shanxi area. In Shandong province which is also located along the Yellow Rive, there were waist pits burial custom in Western Han dynasty.But in general, waist pits burial custom disappeared after Qin dynasty in northern part of China. Compared with the northern part, this phenomenon in the southern part of China along the Yangtze River lasted for a long time, and it was very popular in the Ming dynasty, but it was mainly represented in the southwest part of China, including the Yangtze River three Georges area, Chongqing, Guizhou and Yunnan. This article first focused on the early Qin period, summarizing the main features of waist pits burial custom in different periods, and then discussed the issue of nationalities. In the latter part of it, the author addressed the relevant questions and its surroundings, and proposed his own views about it.This article is divided into six parts:Part One IntroductionA brief introduction on the relevant topics regarding its research history, statusquo, the existing problem, the research meaning and the natural situations in Shanxi area, especially Guanzhong area.Part Two to Part Four The waist pits situations and nationalities from Shang dynasty to the Warring States periodThis article collects the materials of waist pits from different archeological magazines and periodicals, packing up, classifying and summarizing them, and briefed the overall situations in different period, and did some pectination on the birth, development, high peak, and disappearance of waist pits burial custom, also laid a foundation for the coming scholars to research.What's more, this article also borrows the present research results, differentiating and defining the situations of waist pits in that period, so that it can draw some attention from the other scholars. For example,the custom of waist pits in Shanxi area compared with that in Henan area, the nationality feature undoubtedly got affected by the Shang dynasty and those small kingdoms, only some private customs added.The remaining problem is the concrete location of the small kingdoms, and it needs more archeological evidence; the author analyses the situations in the Western Zhou dynasty by chronological order according to the distribution of the tombs.From different points of view, the tombs may belong to Yin nationality or the offspring of Yin people; from relevant analysis, those people should have had some close contact with the Zhou people, pointing out that because of the long-term communication, the some Zhou people began to accept the customs of waist pits;the situations of the Warring States period should be related to the Qin people. But we need to clarify the relationship between the aristocrat class and the common people, which can also reflect the evolving process of the waist pits burial custom. These views and questions have been addressed in the main part of this article.Part Five Exploration regarding the relevant questions of waist pits burial customIn this part, thru the description of waist pits burial custom in different areas and periods, this article summarized the relevant questions of waist pits burial custom in Shanxi area, including: the beginning and ending time of waist pits burial custom, the situations and its distribution, the shape and its evolvement, the usage of waist pits,the evolvement of burying objects, and the changes of people's thoughts.Part Six The relationship between the waist pits burial custom in Shanxi area and that in Gansu, Henan provincesThis part analyses the relationship of waist pits burial custom between Shanxi province and its surrounding provinces.Thru the analysis on materials, this custom should spread along rivers, so this part focused on the comparison between Shanxi province and its neighbor provinces: Gansu and Henan provinces. Thru comparison, it realized how the waist pits burial custom came into being, developed, and disappeared.Part Seven ConclusionThis part made a brief conclusion of this article, and stressed once again the meanings of researching waist pits burial custom.