A buried past: five thousand years of (pre) history on the **g-Wei floodplain

Wa, Ye; Hein, Anke

doi:10.1007/s41826-020-00036-0

A buried past: five thousand years of (pre) history on the **g-Wei floodplain

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Published: 17 September 2020

Volume 4, pages 1–15, (2020)
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A buried past: five thousand years of (pre) history on the **g-Wei floodplain

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Abstract

The **g-Wei Floodplain, located in Shaanxi, China, has been home to various groups of people over the last 5000 years. Drawing together evidence from archaeology, paleobotany, geomorphology, climate sciences, and history, this paper provides a longue durée study of the local (pre)history of human occupation in this area with a special focus on human adaptation strategies and environmental history. In particular, the study summarizes and evaluates archaeological and geomorphological field research conducted over the last ten years and connects it with often overlooked local historical accounts and recent climate research in the Wei River Valley and observations on recent economic developments and their impact on both the environment and the people living in it. In spite of a rather long hiatus in occupation from the second century BCE to the twelfth century CE, the evidence shows that there are close similarities in human-environment relations and even continuities into the modern period. Though being a highly localized study, this paper can serve as an example for how such longue durée studies may be conducted in other regions, and it provides some suggestions for future field and laboratory research.

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1 Introduction

This paper addresses the environmental history and human adaptation strategies of a local community in Shaanxi 陕西, China, over the past 5000 years. This small-scale, nuanced study is meant to shed some light on the relationship between humans and their environment in this location but also provide an example for longue durée studies in other locations and some suggestions for future field and laboratory research.

This paper focuses in particular on the **g 泾 Wei 渭 floodplain around the archaeological site of Yangguanzhai 杨官寨 (YGZ), a large mid- to late Yangshao 仰韶 period (3500–3000 cal. BCE) village located in the central Wei River Valley on the first terrace of the **g River. The **g is the largest tributary of the Wei River and flows in from the north. More than ten years of fieldwork have revealed hundreds of features covering an area close to one square kilometer (Fig. 1). Located near one of China’s largest and most active river systems, the site was greatly affected by its immediate environment. Over the last ten years, about 20,000 square meters of excavation area have been exposed at YGZ, allowing some insights into the site structure, its history, and relationship with other Yangshao sites in the Wei River Valley (Shaanxi 2009; Shaanxi sheng 2009; Shaanxi sheng and Baishui xian 2018) (Fig. 3).

2.1 Neolithic cemetery

The Neolithic cemetery contained only single burials. Tomb sizes varied little, the graves usually being just large enough to hold the body. Based on the preliminary archaeological report of the cemetery published so far, only 3% of the excavated tombs (11 out of 343) contained ceramic vessels, usually only one or two ceramic vessels each, including cups, jars, or basins (Shaanxi sheng 2018a). Only one tomb held an amphora, laid next to the body. A few tomb occupants had personal ornaments such as bone hairpins, beads, bracelet, or pendants. If differences in tomb size and tomb furnishing are an indicator of social hierarchy, then the YGZ cemetery suggests a society established on egalitarian principles with no differentiation by age, sex, or social status, at least in death.

2.2 Settlement layout

In size, the area within the ditch at YGZ is about twenty times larger than any of the earlier Neolithic sites in the Wei River Valley, such as Banpo (Zhongguo Full size image

As mentioned above, hui keng 灰坑, literally “ash pits,” generally interpreted as garbage dumps, account for over 80% of the features excavated at YGZ and other places in the Wei River Valley such as Quanhucun mentioned above. These pits have generally attracted little interest as objects of research; however, their history can be complex as they may have gone through several incarnations of usage such as dwellings or storage pits before having served as dumps and then closed after having been filled with trash. So far, only one such pit, H85, has been excavated and researched in great detail, and we will discuss it further below due to its complex history (Shaanxi sheng and Zhong Mei 2018).

In addition to over 49 houses, 896 so-called ash pits, 9 ditches, and 32 urn burials, a total of 26 kilns were found in Beiqu and Nanqu.^{Footnote 2} Several kilns were dug into the banks of the ditch. In several places, there are layers of pottery sherds in the ditch, as for instance recorded near the “West Gate” of the trenched area. Many of these sherds are restorable (Shaanxi 2009; Wang and Lee 2010). In Nanqu, a development postdating the ditched area, archaeologists found several kilns and 13 cave dwellings arrayed along an ancient cliff, many of them in alternating sequence of kilns and dwellings (Fig. 6). Some of these cave dwellings differed from other houses in the number of hearths found inside: one contained three, another two. The excavators believe that this area was devoted to pottery making and that the cave dwellings next to the kilns served as working spaces, but they do not say why more than one hearth should be needed in some of them. Among the many pits in this area, one (H402) contained a group of complete ceramic vessels, including 22 amphoras, 19 jars, 16 bowls, 9 basins, 5 urns, some unfired pottery, and one object that investigators believe to be a potter’s wheel (Fig. 7).^{Footnote 3}

It seems that this large settlement had no “center” or “central place.” The clusters of houses scattered around the site likewise showed no indication of settlement planning. The buildings were orientated in a variety of directions, and pits were scattered everywhere in between. The anthropogenic deposits at the site consist mostly of household waste, including fragmented building materials of daub, burnt earth, residential matting or floors of animal enclosures, organic waste, and a large amount of broken or otherwise unusable ceramics (Fox 2013). Waste associated with pottery productions were found in many places, some of them deformed pottery but mostly vitrified chunks from broken kilns, and it has thus been suggested that the site may have been a ceramic production center, though further excavation work is necessary to test this hypothesis (Hein et al. forthcoming). The two well-preserved kilns found in the northeast section have intact fire boxes and fire chambers, where the walls show the provenience of the vitrified materials. Household hearths produced no vitrified materials despite repeated firing, indicating that the temperature was not high enough for vitrification.

2.3 Special-purpose buildings

The houses at YGZ were constructed with wattle and daub similar to other Neolithic dwellings in the Wei River Valley. Largely missing at YGZ are large houses of square or rectangular shape as they have been found in earlier or contemporary sites in the valley (Shaanxi sheng and Baishui xian Full size image

2.4 Subsistence and medical knowledge

The YGZ community subsisted on millet cultivation, pig husbandry, wild animal hunting, fishing, and wild plant gathering. Systematic samples taken from one pit (H85) for paleobotanical research show that of all identifiable charred seeds, 31% are foxtail grasses, followed by millet (27%), and legumes (16%) (Ma 2016; Tang et al. 2017). This is consistent with the fact that during the Banpo IV phase, the settlement was compressed to a much smaller space and ceramic production was carried out in a more centralized fashion. More notable is the fact that by “using bivariate plots, a difference between H402 and other YGZ features in terms of clay is apparent” (Bradly et al. 2017). The ceramic types found in H402 were common at sites throughout the Wei River Valley at the time, especially the broad-shouldered amphora with scratched swirling patterns, mostly found in the vicinity of present-day ** 杨利**. 2018. Shaanxi Gaoling Shangxuwucun Ming dai mu di chu bu yan jiu 陕西高陵上徐吾村明代墓地初步研究 (study of the Ming tombs in the Shangxuwucun village of Gaoling county, Shaanxi). Wen bo 2018.5: 31–38." href="/article/10.1007/s41826-020-00036-0#ref-CR42" id="ref-link-section-d187440014e1097">2018). Among them, four had epitaphs dating between 1531 and 1603 (Fig. 11). The tombs belong to at least three generations of the Zhang 張 family who belonged to the local elite, tracing their ancestors back five or six generations, living in three villages within less than 4 km. The epitaphs briefly traced their ancestors’ origins and family history, listing the names of three villages where the family had resided and that still exist today. From the epitaphs, we learn that the Zhang family had lived near YGZ for over 200 years. Their forebears lived in Hancun 寒村, a port village on the northern bank of the **g River. Later, the family moved to Afanzhai 阿藩寨, and finally settled in Xuwucun village 徐吾村 in the early Yuan 元 dynasty (AD 1260–1368) (Fig. 12). The epitaphs do not reveal the cause or dates of the moves, but they seem to have been unrelated to either social turmoil or natural disasters since the moves were very local. The most likely reason was family partition, a common practice as members moved nearby when a family grew too large to be accommodated in the same settlement.

The Zhang’s forebears were known to locals as the Pontoon-Bridge Zhang 桴橋張家, as stated on the epitaph of tomb M54, since each year they built a pontoon bridge across the **g River at Hancun, a port on the northern bank of the **g River. This port is also known as Huangjiadu 黄家渡, as mentioned in the 1541 Gaoling 高陵 gazetteer.^{Footnote 9} Today’s Hancun is further from the **g River, likely due to a shift in the water course to the south and erosion of the bank. Nonetheless, it is still the closest village to the river. A modern cement bridge was built in the year 2000.

The two villages mentioned in the fourteenth century tomb epitaphs, Hancun **村 and the Xuwucun 徐武村, bear the same names as two villages close to the YGZ Ming tombs, and they both first appeared in the Gaoling county gazetteer published in 1541 (Gaoling xian 2000) (Fig. 13). The character for the han 寒 of Hancun differs between the epitaphs and modern usage (**村), but based on location, these refer to the same village. The character of wu for the Xuwucun is also different in the epitaphs. Three of the four epitaphs used the character wu 吾 that is used today, but one chose a different character, wu 吴. The newest Gaoling gazetteer, published in 2000, uses both 吾 and 吴 for Xuwucun and in the map of the 1541 gazetteer, wu 吴 is printed as ju 具, likely a printing mistake (Gaoling xian 2000). All in all, it is highly likely that these all refer to the same place. The only village name that appeared in the epitaphs but not in the Ming gazetteer is Afanzhai, the place the Zhang family moved prior to their final residence in Xuwucun. Afanzhai appears in a much later edition (1732) of the Gaoling County Gazetteer, as Afanzhai Wangjia 阿藩寨王加, later called Jiangwangjia 酱王家, and today, Jiangwang 酱王 (**’an shi 2017a) (Fig. 14).

One of the epitaphs mentions that the family cemetery was located west of Xuwucun and that it is a newly established family cemetery (xin ying 新茔). Today, Xuwucun has two clusters: Upper and Lower Xuwucun (Shang Xuwu 上徐吾and **a Xuwu 下徐吾). The YGZ Ming tombs are located west of Upper Xuwucun and north of Lower Xuwucun, indicating that Upper Xuwucun is the older of the two villages.

It is clear that the Zhang family never lived at Yangguanzhai, as YGZ is not mentioned in the epitaphs, but it appears on the maps of the 1541 county gazetteer (Ma Li 1541 (2020): vol. 2, Fig. 4). The 1732 gazetteer specifies YGZ as occupied by jun hu 军户, military/garrison households (**’an shi 2017). It may have become a garrison already in the early half of the thirteenth century when Ogodei Khan of the Yuan ordered the tun tian 屯田 system of agriculture to be applied to land irrigated by the Sanbai Canal 三白渠. The tun tian system originated during the Han period with soldiers converting newly conquered land into farmland whose crops were used to supply the army. Later, the tun tian system came to be applied to civilians as well, who were given land and farming implements in exchange for half their harvest, which they had to give to the government (Luo et al. 2017). A tun tian office had been set up in the neighboring county of **gyang, which claimed 1020 qing of land (Yuan shi vol. 60, p. 1424). At the peak of the tun tian program during the latter half of the thirteenth century, under the Shaanxi Tuntian Command 陕西屯田总管府, the government claimed a total of 5853 qing of land from the valley and controlled over 7000 farming households (民屯) (Li 1993). In the process of land reclamation, Gaoling County participated actively in the construction of another **g River canal, the Hongkou Canal 洪口渠, to ensure that their land was irrigated. Although the military did not control the Sanbai irrigation tun tian land, it was heavily involved in taxation and in recruiting labor to work the reclaimed land and transport supplies to the military (Song Lian 1370: vol. 65, 1629–1631). It is possible that YGZ and its adjacent land was once reclaimed land, used to support the military.

5 Conclusion

In sum, despite all the missing information on some periods and details of life at YGZ over the past 5000 years that still need to be traced via further fieldwork, the available data from the late Neolithic and the Ming Dynasty provide some interesting insights into human-landscape connections. The land, which sits on the alluvial plain of the **g and the Wei Rivers, is environmentally rich but subject to flooding by a very active river system. During the Holocene climate optimum, the first settlers came to YGZ and settled on the first terrace of the **g River. They were farmers with sophisticated skills in pottery making, practicing millet cultivation, raising pigs, chickens, and dogs, hunting animals on land and water, and gathering wild plants and herbs. They had forged relationships, directly and indirectly, with other groups living in the same valley and further afield. No clear social hierarchy is evident from their burials or habitation sites. Perhaps young children and women were treated differently, but at present the evidence is inconclusive. We hope that future excavation will pay close attention to ditches and pits, as they preserve the most valuable archaeological data, as in-depth analysis of H85 has shown.

The lack of human occupation and cultural remains after the Neolithic has generated many questions. Although surface collection in and around the Neolithic settlement include a few pottery and porcelain sherds from the second century BCE to the twelfth century CE, archaeologists found no cultural remains of this period. There is some evidence for rather limited human occupation in the vicinity for the early imperial period, though not at YGZ itself. At first sight, this seems surprising, considering that the Guanzhong Plain became the political center and home to the capital for the early empire and beyond. Indeed, we see a large gap between Neolithic and Ming dynasty remains. The main reason that we can see at present is a change in river courses, bringing with it an increase in flooding that made the area around YGZ less attractive to settle in. Even prior to such changes, which are geomorphologically attested, living in this area was always somewhat risky, though the access to water, fertile soil, and routes of exchange seems to have outweighed these risks at least in the view of the Neolithic inhabitants, though not thereafter. The lack of occupation for the Qin and Han period in particular may have been connected to the establishment of the capitals of the Qin and Han in the Guanzhong Plain, i.e., in the immediate vicinity, attracting large numbers of people with business opportunities and hopes for a better life. Nevertheless, these cities required an extensive hinterland to supply them with grain and other food and raw materials, so one would expect there to have been a number of farmsteads and villages making use of the fertile land. We hope that further geoarchaeological research will establish more accurate readings of the river’s movement, the floods, and human land use in the river valley. Additionally, newly excavated texts may provide further insights into administrative structure and population movements at least for the Qin and Han periods (Korolkov and Hein 2020).

The modern landscape of YGZ had already taken shape by the thirteenth century. The three villages mentioned in the Ming epitaphs still exist today. Some villages, such as Xuwucun, split up into two or more villages; others remained one community but expanded in size. YGZ, which was not mentioned in the epitaphs for reason that the village had never been a destination of the Zhang family, appears first in the Gaoling gazetteer of the Ming. It is to say, that although we do not know when the first terrace of the **g River was reclaimed, we are certain that for centuries, even though flooding still posed a threat to people, they still lived there (Gu et al. 2015) . We also noticed that the Neolithic burial ground for its community turned into the Zhang family’s cemetery of the Ming centuries later. We cannot tell why that plot of land was perceived as a place for the dead by the residents, whether they lived 5000 years ago or 500 years ago: we see discontinuity of human settlement in this location, as well as continuity of human behavior in terms of land use.

The landscape around YGZ has been continuously changing since 2004 when the Shaanxi provincial government designated the area as an economic development zone. Change has accelerated after the announcement of the Belt and Road Initiative. Another terminal has been added to the **anyang-**’an airport, and an inland free trade port has been erected, all within a radius of 15 km from the site. The impact of economic developments on the environment is enormous, as we have noticed intensely during our fieldwork over the past ten years as we have worked on a project that attempts to understand the relationship between human activity and the natural environment.

Notes

The ditch has been only partially excavated on the east and west side. The north and south sides of the ditch are unclear in their dimensions because modern buildings and a paved road prevent further survey and excavation.
These numbers do not include kilns excavated after 2009 which have not yet been reported, or features indicating open firing without kilns which have not been systematically collated yet.
Nearly identical “potter’s wheels” have also been found at Banpo and Anban (Kaogu 1963).
Research on this feature is still ongoing and micromorphological samples taken from the bottom of the pit still await analysis.
There was no burial equipment such as an urn for the infant body. The International Archeological Field School (IRF) excavated the body. Elizabeth Berger identified the skeleton is 36–40 weeks old. Micromorphological samples were taken where the skeleton was found, and they now await analysis.
The International Archaeological Field School, IFR, excavated H85. A screen with a mesh of 0.5 × 0.5 cm was used and samples were taken separately for each layer. No screen was used at the West Gate excavation. Rowan Flad and his Chinese colleagues discussed this problem in Chinese archaeological practice in 2007 (Flad et al.
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University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), Los Angeles, CA, USA
Wa Ye
University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
Anke Hein

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Wa, Y., Hein, A. A buried past: five thousand years of (pre) history on the **g-Wei floodplain. asian archaeol 4, 1–15 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41826-020-00036-0

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Received: 01 June 2020
Accepted: 25 August 2020
Published: 17 September 2020
Issue Date: November 2020
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41826-020-00036-0

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A buried past: five thousand years of (pre) history on the **g-Wei floodplain

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