A Preliminary Study On The Erlitou Culture Three-legged Pan

Erlitou culture is an archaeological culture distributed in the central plains,between the late neolithic age and the shang dynasty.It is the earliest culture to enter the Bronze Age in China and even in east Asia,and is recognized by many scholars as the culture of xia dynasty in the literature.Erlitou culture had extensive exchanges and interactions with surrounding cultures at the early stage of its formation,as a "melting pot" of culture,made important contributions to the formation of Chinese civilization.Although the Erlitou culture has entered the Bronze Age and has the special remains of high-grade buildings,workshops,tombs,bronze ware,jade ware,lacquer ware and white pottery that mark the status of the class,what reflects the features of archaeological culture is still pottery as the daily life tools of ancestors,for example,cooking utensils include tripod,deep belly pot,round belly pot,food utensils include bean,ring foot plate,wine utensils include jue,cover,etc.Three foot plate is an important part of Erlitou culture pottery group,which can be regarded as one of the main symbols of Erlitou culture and an important basis for judging whether a group of cultural relics are Erlitou culture.Three foot plate,also known Tripod dish,waffleplate,Tile shape dish,is characterized in that three waffle shaped feet or tongue shaped feet are attached to the shallow abdomen flat bottom basin(plate).It is found in ash pits,tombs,water wells and cultural layer.The pottery produced together with it mainly includes deep belly pot,round belly pot,steamer,flat bottom basin,bean,etc.According to the foot characteristics of Erlitou culture Three foot plate,it can be divided into two categories:A is tile shaped foot,B is tongue shaped foot,Class A is tile shaped foot,which can be divided into four types according to its mouth characteristics:type A is luxury,type B is open,type C is straight,and type D is convergence.According to the characteristics of the mouth,Class B is divided into two types:type A is luxury and type B is open.According to the characteristics of abdomen,it can be divided into several subtypes,such as oblique straight abdomen,straight abdomen and curved abdomen,and then it can be divided into ??? types according to the changes of the height of abdomen and foot.On this basis,the development of Erlitou culture Three foot plate can be divided into four stages and six stages.In the first stage,the height of the abdomen is generally higher than or approximately the same as the height of the feet.The tile shaped feet are mostly in the form of "C" and the organ type is relatively simple.In the second stage,the foot of Three foot plate began to become higher and the abdomen began to become shallower,the number of the tongue shaped feet is increasing.In the third stage,The abdomen of Three foot plate is shallow,the foot is higher,and the abdomen height is generally lower than the foot height,However,the number of tripods began to decrease,and the type of Three foot plate became more single than that of the second stage;In the fourth stage,Three foot plate is shallow abdomen and high foot,and the Three foot plate gradually declined and died out in this stage.Erlitou culture Three foot plate has the characteristics of wide distribution and balanced distribution in typical sites.However,the Three foot plate is not evenly distributed among different regional types of Erlitou culture,97.85%of the Three foot plates are distributed in Erlitou type,few in niujiaogang type and Yangzhuang type,and no such utensil in Dongxiafeng typeor xiawanggang type.Moreover,niujiaogang type and Yangzhuang type are gradually developed under the influence of Erlitou type.The distribution pattern of Three foot plate is "one source,many streams" among different types of Erlitou culture.In Erlitou type,the distribution of Three foot plate among the sites is also unbalanced.The center of the distribution is located in the iluo plain.The sites such as Erlitou of Yanshi and nanwa of Dengfeng,which are rich in tripod number and artifact type,are located in this area.The source of Erlitou culture Three foot plate is Longshan Culture in Shandong Province.Through the comparison of the Three foot plate in the two cultures in terms of shape,combinationrelationship of pottery and time of popularity,In erlitou culture,The type Ac of Class A,Cof Class A,tongue-like foot style Threefoot plate,and convergent mouth style Threefoot plate all originated from shandong longshan culture.At the same time,the former also absorbed the Three foot plate style of "luxury mouth and Straight abdomen" in Henan Province Longshan culture which influenced by Shandong ProvinceLongshan culture.Erlitou culture's type Ba of Class A and type D of Class A Three foot plate spread to Yueshi culture,Doujitai culture,Dianjiangtai culture and Maqiao culture,The spread direction is mainly to the East and Southeast.According to Erlitou culture's Three foot plate making process,unearthed situation,combinationrelationship of pottery with pottery and combined with the type of utensils,it is speculated that the function of tripod plate is food container.Based on the statistics of the changes in the number of pottery beans,ring footed plates and pottery Gui from the first to the fourth periods of Erlitou culture,combined with the distribution characteristics and cultural replacement factors of the three footed plates,There are two reasons for the decline and disappearance of Erlitou culture's tripod:one is that the utensil is gradually replaced by pottery Gui;the other is that the Shang culture has replaced the Xia culture,and the disappearance of culture has brought about the disappearance of utensils.