Research On Animal Remains Unearthed From The Hengshui Graveyard Of Western Zhou Dynasty At Jiang County In Shanxi Province

The Hengshui Graveyard,located in Hengbei Village,Hengshui Town,Jiang County,Yuncheng City,Shanxi Province,is a community graveyard of the Peng Kingdom in the Western Zhou Dynasty.It continued to be used from the early Western Zhou Dynasty until the early Spring and Autumn Periods.Although not recorded in historical documents,the geographical location and the excavated relics indicate that the power of the Peng Kingdom in Southern Shanxi during the Western Zhou period cannot be underestimated.Since the excavation in 2004,researchers have conducted many full and detailed studies of the Hengshui Graveyard from several aspects.These studies deal with issues such as political pattern,demographic composition,social stratification,handicraft development,and natural resource utilization of the Western Zhou Dynasty in southern Shanxi.The research materials of this paper are the animal remains excavated from the Hengshui Graveyard.In the study,the animal remains excavated from the graveyard were first analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively,with sex-age identification,and paleopathological analysis.After that,the animal bones in the graveyard were classified into two categories: the sacrificial animals and the burial animals,which were then studied in different categories.The sacrificial animals excavated in the graveyard were mainly pigs and sheep and were often excavated in containers.These animals had a certain tendency to be selected,as reflected in their preference for young,avoidance of the head and hooves,emphasis on bones over meat,and a certain degree of preference for the left side.The burial animals excavated in the graveyard were mainly dogs,which were mainly excavated in two locations,the waist pit and the second layer platform.These dogs were mostly concentrated in the young-adult stage,with more females than males and an unbalanced sex ratio.In addition,pathological manifestations of arthritis were found in nearly half of the dogs at the tarsal calf joint.A comprehensive analysis of the burial data and documentation suggests that the joint lesions in the hind legs of these dogs may be related to the behavior of driving domestic dogs for hunting during the Shang and Zhou periods.Finally,the paper provides an in-depth discussion of animal sacrifice behavior,livestock breeding,and the structure of the production industry in the Hengshui graveyard.It is also argued that from the early to the early years of the Western Zhou Dynasty in the Peng Kingdom,there seems to have been no clear and strict regulations on the use of animal sacrifice as in the literature,but there was a clear hierarchical division within the whole social class.This social stratification is also reflected in the structure of the diet.A comparison of the animal remains excavated from the food vessels in the tombs of various classes reveals that the meat resources available to the high-ranking nobles were much higher than those available to the common nobles and commoners.Moreover,the main mode of production in this country at that time was still cultivated agriculture.Animal husbandry would have been limited to the noble class,and the source of meat for the lower classes was probably limited to wild fish or birds.This paper presents a systematic study of the animal remains excavated from the Hengshui Graveyard,providing a zooarchaeological perspective for the basic study of the graveyard.It also provides research evidence to clarify the social differentiation,animal resource utilization,livelihood pattern,and diet structure of the population in the Western Zhou period in southern Shanxi.