Research On The Formation Process Of Qingqiu Mound Site In Heze Of Shandong Province

Qingqiu mound site is a typical high-platform site in southwest Shandong.It lasts a long time and includes the cultural relics from multiple periods of Longshan period,Shang,Zhou,Han,and Qing.The found relics provide a lot of information for the reconstruction of the social life of the ancestors of the Qingqiu mound site.Based on the 411 floatation samples collected during the excavation of the Qingqiu mound site in 2018,this article mainly adopts the analysis method of carbonized plant remains,combined with the special relic phenomena appeared in the process of excavation.The formation process of Qingqiu mound site and its relationship with environmental changes are discussed.Furthermore,the analysis of the plant remains of the Qingqiu mound site also gives us a further understanding of the ancestors’ utilization of plant resources and agricultural development during the formation of the site.There are a total of 89180 carbonized plant seeds/fruits by flotation.Among them,weed seeds accounted for nearly 20%,a total of 43 species/genus in 20 families.We select 17 species hygrophilous weeds from 6 families to analyze quantitatively,including Polygonaceae,Cyperaceae and Nymphaeaceae based on their growing environment.The analysis results showed that,compared with the Longshan period,the hydrological conditions of the site in the late Shang period were more suitable for the growth of hygrophilous weeds and tended to be wetter.This conclusion had also been verified in the literature and existing studies.In the hundreds of years after the Longshan period,the Yellow River floods occurred frequently.As a result,the hydrological conditions in the middle and lower reaches had changed to some extent.And it was indeed more humid than the Longshan period.During the late Shang Dynasty,several meters of stratigraphic accumulation occurred in a short time in the site,which might be the real reflection of the ancestors in the site continuously heightening the edge of the mound to protect their home when facing the threat of flooding.With the influences of flood disasters,there would appear a large reduction or even no harvest in agricultural production.So,storing up grains against a lean year had become the only effective way to solve the problem of food supply.Numerous grain pits appeared in the site during the late Shang Dynasty,which were emergency measures taken by the ancestors of the site to deal with the food crisis brought by flood.Quantitative analysis of the plant remains of the Qingqiu mound site also provided the most intuitive information for the utilization of plant resources by the ancestors of the site in various periods.During Longshan period,there existed Five Cereals in Qingqiu site.Among them,the crops were mainly foxtail millet and broomcorn millet,and foxtail millet ranked first among the crop combinations.In the Shang Dynasty,the crop structure remained basically stable,and foxtail millet was still the most important type in the crop combinations.The proportion of rice contracted slightly and the universality of wheat increased.In the Zhou Dynasty,foxtail millet still dominated.With the amount of wheat surpassing broomcorn millet,however,it played an increasingly important role in the crop combinations.Crop structure in the Han Dynasty was still dominated by foxtail millet,.but the relatively undeveloped state of agricultural development shown in the site is not quite consistent with the prosperity of the Han Dynasty agriculture in the literature,which should be related to the sampling background of the site used as tombs at this time.Vertically,although the time span of the Qingqiu mound site was relatively large,the crop structure reflected by plant remains had a strong continuity,and each period is given priority to with dry farming.In addition to visually displaying the crop structure of the site,we also tried to dig for more information about the plant resources in the site.For example,comparing the remains of Qingqiu mound site in Shang Dynasty with those of ShilipuBei site,it was found that these two sites,both of which were "mound attributes" in southwest Shandong,showed consistency in crop structure and grain caves.This might be related to the geographical location of the two in the Yellow River flooding area,which added evidence to the assumption that building grain cellars was the ancestor’s response to the food crisis when faced with the threat of flood disaster.Additionally,the phenomenon of M23 grain burial of Han Dynasty tombs found in the site also provided new clues to the custom of funerary grain of Han tombs in Shandong.