A Study On Animal Style Of Xinjiang During The Shang And Chou Dynasties

This thesis is a research on the Animal Style of Xinjiang during the Late Bronze and Early IronAges. By collecting the materials comprehensively and systematically, the author wants to knowwhen and where the Animal Style came to born and how they were developed.This paper is composed of three parts.Chapter One, as well as the preface, the author would like to define the term Animal Style, andgive a brief introduction of the research history concerning the animal style of Xinjiang.Chapter Two, the author wants to discuss the timeframe and origin of the Animal Style foundwithin Xinjiang. In order to achieve that, a whole Xinjiang is divided into five subregions on thebasis of the distribution of those animal style objects,namely the Hami District,the Central TienshanMountains District,the Ili District,the Altay District,and the last the Tarim Basin District.And thenthe author discusses the animal style of each part one by one,for the purpose of getting theinformation about what time the object belongs to and the origin of it’s style as well.After that,aconclude will be reached referring to the features of the animal style of each district.Chapter Three, a bird’s-eye view is needed to see the features of animal style within Xinjiangas a whole by joining the former five subregions as one again. It is realized that the animal style ofXinjiang is mainly influenced by some neighbors, namely the Pazyryk, Tuva, Saka, while the formerplays a more active part in invading Xinjiang, the sign of its influence even could be found in theZhagunluke burial grounds, which very far from Altay and Tuva region.But when the nomadic tribesfrom the east enter into Xinjiang, the animal style is gradually share a mostly the same look.Second,the author claims the development process of animal style in Xinjiang by means oflongitudinal studies,the course of which could be distributed into three stages,and has differentcultural outlook each one meanwhile.The first one is the initial stage,approximately at13-7BCE,mostly are woodware,and influenced by Altay-Sayan cultures;the second one is a rapid development period,aged between a.7-5BCE,the animal style objects grow not only in species butalso in style,and goldware appears in high-class graves for the first time;the third stage is no doubt aflourishing period,at the time of5-3BCE,when the elements of Saka Culture, Pazyryk Culture andalso nomadic culture of northern china are all gathered together in the Central Tienshan MountainsDistrict,the spices of animal style objects increasing continually,but the westward of the Hsiung-numakes the animal style starts to assemble each other’s.Finally,the postscript part, after a brief examination of the role of animal style token in theformation of culture and personal identities,and diffrent choices by diffrent living style peoples,it canbe seen as follows:firstly, the animal style objects of Xinjiang mostly come from high-classgraves;secondly,during the2ndmillennium BCE and the middle of1stmillennium,the EurasianSteppe went through a transformation of economic patterns from stockbreeding to nomadic,but thespeed and appearances between two sides of Tienshan Mountains are significantly different,theNorthern Xinjiang has a higher mobility of people compared with Southern Xinjiang,where peoplehave their clearly boundary,and a perfect location contributes to objects with various culturebackgrounds unearthed in graves of Tarim Basin. Actually, animal style is a by-product of nomadicand pastoral life style, revealing the habitat and aesthetic sentiments of the peoples, and some of themeven represent their social status and faith.The nomad peoples of the ancient time eager to achieve amysterious power by some kind of animal style or to show their expectations.