Research On Gansu-town’s Defense System And Its Spatial Analysis Of The Great Wall In Ming Dynasty

As an important cultural heritage of the world, the Great Wall of Ming Dynastyis the defense system with multiple significance. On the level of militaryadministration, it is a hierarchical structure covering nine important defense areas; onthe level of material substance, it is a military fortress and engineering facility of alldefense levels. Besides, it is perceived as a military defense system with intricateintegrity. Previous studies on Gansu-Town mainly concentrated on heritage surveysand historical geography and other disciplines. And these studies mainly focus on acertain area, a certain type of defense facilities. Moreover, it is lacking on thecomprehensive study of Gansu-Town defense system.From the perspective of architecture, the paper has incorporated with the theoryof archeology, history, sociology, etc., and studied the Gansu-Town defense system ofMing Great Wall. Firstly, through the historical literature and field investigation, thepaper studied the build history, military status, town evolution, defensive range andother issues of Gansu-Town based on the evolution of nine military system of Mingdynasty. Secondly, based on the system theory of “integrity, hierarchy, structure andfunction, environmental correlation”, the paper analyzed the external environment,internal factors, fortress hierarchy and the integral structure of Gansu-Town defensesystem. Thirdly, with the help of the spatial analysis method of fortress archeologyand GIS, the paper studied the external environment of the Great Wall structure,military fortress, Beacon transmission system and post (traffic) system ofGansu-Town defense system. Fianly, the paper presented reachable domainperspective. With the conception, different realizations, characteristics and function ofreachable domain, the paper analyzed the spatial distribution of military fortress,courier station, beacon tower and watch tower in the Great Wall of Ming dynasty.The innovation of the paper mainly includes the following four points:1. Thepaper clarified historical development of the defense system of the Great wall ofGansu-Town;2. The paper for the first time studied the Great Wall of Xining Wei (i.e.the Great Wall of Qinghai) and military fortress of Ming dynasty from overallperspective;3. By drawing the spatial distribution map of military fortress, the papersuccessfully depicted the integral structural characteristics of the military fortress in Gansu-Town.4. The paper presented a new method on spatial analysis of the GreatWall defense system——reachable domain analysis and a practical researchapproach and perspective for the study of the Great Wall.