Beam With Village Ruiguo Cemetery Bronze Cultural Factors And Related Studies

The excavation of Liangdaicun cemetery identifies the location of Rui state between the late Western Zhou and early Spring and Autumn period. A considerable amount of bronzes unearthed from this cemetery provide plentiful materials for studying the cultural elements of bronzes in Rui state. This paper conducts a comprehensive analysis on the cultural elements of bronzes unearthed from Liangdaicun cemetery, then studies some relative problems.The first chapter gives a brief instruction of Liangdaicun cemetery, the present situation about research on the bronzes, the content and method. In the second chapter, we make a typology study on ding, gui, yan, hu to determining the age of those ritual bronzes, then judge the age of tombs.Based on the different cultural elements in the bronzes, the third chapter classifies those bronzes into7groups. After analyzing every group of bronzes, we find that there are cultural elements from traditional Zhou culture, Jin culture, Qin culture and the Northern Bronze culture. And there are some special features in bronzes of Rui state. Through estimating the quantities of every group, we know that the element of traditional Zhou culture takes principal part in bronzes of Rui state, and the element of Jin culture is secondary. At the end of this chapter, we campare the constitute of bronzes in large-sized tombs between Liangdaicun cemetery and cemetery in the Central Plain.The fourth chapter relates the bronzes with history of Rui state. According to the cultural element of the dainty bronzes in tomb M26, Rui Jiang, the occupant of tomb M26, is considered as a woman from Jiangrong tribe in the Northwest. Some bronzes unearthed from Liangdaicun cemetery reflect the relationships between Rui state and Jin, Qin and Guo state, which were written in historical documents.Connecting relative archaeological finds and inscriptions, the early Western Zhou bronzes in tomb M27, which have some regional cultural elements, witness a possibility that the sphere of Rui state in the early Western Zhou was the area around Yujiawan upper reaches of Rui river, in Chongxin County Gansu Province.