The Archaeological Observation On The Southward Diffusion Of Chu Culture

During the Zhou Dynasty(周朝),the drainage area of the Dongting Lake(洞庭湖)was inhabited by bunches of people called“Baiyue(百越)”and“Miaoman(苗蛮)”.In the early stage of the middle of the Warring States Period,Chu started political reform in the lead of Wuqi(吴起).Meanwhile,it bagan to stretch aggressive force to the south part of its land,in order to swallow up the whole drainage area of the Dongting Lake.Such historical event deeply changed the area’s historical trace,and laid solid foundation for the process of the Qin-Han Empires.This article mainly focuses on the process of the Chu culture expanding its force to the drainage area of the Dongting Lake and its governing strategy to this area,by building the chronological framework of the whole region using the tombs during the East Zhou Period(东周)to the Qin Dynasty(秦代)in this area.The whole paper includes seven chapters as follows.Chapter 1 is an introduction of this thesis.It carefully reviews the academic history of researches on funeral system of the East Zhou period to the Qin Dynasty in the drainage area of the Dongting Lake,and concludes the main achievements and shortcomings of previous studies.And on this basis,research aim and methods of this thesis is revealed.Chapter 2 bulids the chronological framework of the drainage area of the Dongting Lake.This research mainly analyzes the burial artifacts of the Chu(楚)and Yue(越)Cultures by means of archaeological typology,and divides it into 4 phases and 8 sections.Chapter 3 is about the analysis of the archaeological artifacts coming from other cultures,namely the Central Plains’(中原地区)Culture,the Wu-Yue(吴越)Culture,the Ba-Shu(巴蜀)Culture,the native Culture from the Xiang-Xi region(湘西土着文化)of the Hunan Province,the Qin(秦)Cultrue,the Qun-Shu(群舒)Culture,and some other artifacts combined with different culture elements.At the same time,we discuss their transforms from the perspective of the Space-Time and the historical backgrounds of those changes above.Chapter 4 focuses on the classification of the tomb forms of the whole area and the cultural partition from the perspective of archaeology.The tomb forms of this area mainly includes 2 types,that is the type A(a rectangle)and the type B(a wedge),both of which can be divided into some small types.The research of cultural partition is carried out from the perspective of time,and it finally divides the whole region into 6 parts,the F part from which is futhermore cut into 4 smaller sections.Chapter 5 is a research about the Southward diffusion of Chu Culture.At first time,the paper discusses the time and character of some remains of the so-called “the early stage of Chu Culture”,and safely comes to the conclusion that these remains totally are just slightly influenced by the typical Chu Culture and can’t be regarded as the typical Chu Culture.Based on this,we propose that the southward diffusion of Chu Culture can be divided into 4 stages,that is the stage of germinating,the stage of starting,the stage of developing,and the stage of booming.Chapter 6 is about the integration process of Chu Culture and Yue Culture.Firstly,the so-called“narrow Tomb”is studied,and then the criteria of the tomb’s character is defined.On this basis,the integration process of Chu Culture and Yue Culture in three traditional gathering areas of Yue people,that is the lower reaches of Xiangjiang river(湘江),the middle and upper reaches of Xiangjiang River and the lower reaches of Zishui River(资水),is analyzed.Chapter 7 analyzes the governing strategy of the state Chu in the drainage area of the Dongting Lake coming from the archaeological observation.Firstly we discuss the cites of the East Zhou Period found in this area,and then turn to the situation of the Jun-xian system(郡县制)and Feng-jun system(封君制)carried out in the drainage area.On the basis above,we divide this region into 5 sections from the respects of political management,that is the section of politics and economy,the section of military,the section of subinfeudation,the section of ethnic groups,the section of cultural corridor.Chapter 8 is an conclusion of the whole thesis,which mainly makes a conclusion on the achievements and points out the limitations of the thesis.