Research On Several Issues In The Capital Of The Western Zhou Dynasty

We must understand the meaning of the capital and city in that times,before the research on capital and city in Western Zhou Dynasty.In a narrow sense cities are refers to the residential area,in a broad sense cities involves in the residential area and its surrounding farmland,pasture,or forest farm.In the era of the Western Zhou dynasty,Du(?)is a broad concept,it has different meanning on different levels.At the national level,the city that have the ancestral temple of the royal of Zhou can be called Du(?),which include the political power center of the western zhou dynasty and other cities.The warring states that come from the royal family can also have ancestral temple of the king,these cities can also be called Du(?).In vassal states level,the fiefdoms of Qing and Dafu can be called Du(?).In general,Du(?)is a blurry concept.We need to use other indicators to seperate the power centure from the cities that have ancestral temples.From Western Zhou Dynatisty's mandate of heaven,the the king's power come from the Heaven,but not every king can get the power from heaven,the heaven gives the power to king wen an king wu.The latter king just inherited the mandate of the king wen and the king wu.In this way,the ancestral themple has becomes the source of the power.Official appointments are different from the general reward,it is a kind of state act,it is a symbol of state's authority rather than the authority of the individual of the king.So the official appointment's location can be seen as a state's power center.So statistics the frequency of official appointment is a good indictor to determine what kind of cities can be called Du.Wuyi(??)is a kind of cities that appear frequently in bronze inscriptions.We can according to the fact that the political status of the officer in Wuyi(??)are generally high,and the offical of royal severant Zouma(??)is setted up in Wuyi(??).We can get the conclusion that Wuyi are the five political power centure in Wentern Zhou Dynasty.In traditional literature recorded that the Western Zhou Dynasty had capitals such as Zhou(?),Feng(?),Hao(?),Zheng(?),Bi(?).But there is no offical appointment happened in Bi(?),it seems no the capital in Western Zhou Dynasty.According to archaeological excavation the place of residence and the cemetery have been separated in Western Zhou Dynasty.But the residential area and the tomb area is mixed in Zhouyuan.And there are residential sites near the bronze warehouses in Zhouyuan.This shows that the original site of Zhouyuan is not a single town,its internal family of various families.According to the naming habits in Western Zhou Dynasty this living units can be called as yi(?).According to archaeological excavations and the record of bronze inscriptions,we can find out this kind of yi(?)and the corroding fief out of the capital.Aoocrding the research,we can conclude that there are many families live in capital and they have fief out of capital.In the late of Western Zhou Dynasty,the royal family master a little number of land,the economic strength of royal family has greatly reduced,and the arer of the capital such as Zhou Yuan and Feng Hao did not reduce,the reason lies in this.In addition,the author read the information about the eastern part of the Western Zhou Dynasty directly ruled area,I found a phenomenon,that is,the eastern princes have the yi which is for the Eastern princes to see the emperor prepared.It seems that the situation in the western part of directly ruled area can be pushed to the whole country,that is,Western Zhou dynasty through the western capital of the capital and the eastern part of the Western Zhou will be all the fiefs together constitute a national system of the city.