A Study Of Settlement Archaeology About The Rise And Fall Of The Erlitou Early States

Erlitou settlement relic is one of the earliest capital settlements in the Central Plains of China found so far, and was an early state in terms of social form. From the evolution point of view, Erlitou Site went through settlement development process from general settlement—centre settlement—capital settlement—general settlement. It will help in detailed and in-depth research of rise and fall of Chinese early states, relationship between people and place, and interpersonal relationship by abstracting, sorting and analyzing archaeology info of different stages using archaeological methods from the macro and micro perspective of the settlement pattern to explore the origin, appearance, development and collapse of Erlitou early states.In China, early state is a special social form with some chiefdom characteristics left. It is bred from states competition, and born from chiefdoms. The bases for judgment of whether a complicated state is chiefdom or early state by settlement archeology method are: settlement rank and its levels; relationship between different settlements within the same area; scope of impact of the supreme ruler; scale of labor forces input; special functions of public buildings; production specialization, distribution centralization and economy regionalization; population concentration. The cores of the judgment are the social function and ownership of all relics and remains within the site.From Yangshao CultureEra to Erligang Culture Era, Erlitou Site went through settlement rank development from general settlement—centre settlement—capital settlement—general settlement, and the evolution from centre settlement to capital settlement took place during the Erlitou Culture Era. It's learnt from social form evolution of Erlitou Culture employing settlement archeology method combined with early state theory, that Erlitou Site manifested evidence of origin, appearance, development and decline of early state during Erlitou Culture Era. Erlitou Culture did not achieve early state in terms of material in Phase I; large buildings with special social function, regional economy emerged in the Phase II, which signified early state ranking characteristic; in the Phase III, large building sites, copper and calaite, high quality material flow direction, evolution of social functions of bronze wares, jade wares and calaite products, all indicated the power centralization and enhancement of the ruling class, and growth and decline of religious authority and kingship; in Phase IV, the whole culture presented a decline, but it's still classified as early state.Running of a society relies on a series of systematic operations, which is actually, the joint efforts of some micro-factors. The factors that play guiding roles in different stages of development of different archaeology cultures vary. Environment will affect people's life and production, and is also closely bound up with scale, hierarchy and level of settlement. Research on relationship between settlement evolution and environment change from both natural environment and social environment perspective will help explore origin, development drive, development approach, and collapse of Erlitou early states.Natural resources are the main incentive of population increase and movement in the origin of Erlitou early states, and they are also the roots of all driving forces. Decline and collapse of Erlitou early states are closely bound up with the factors such as, different needs and different satisfaction of different groups, population pressure, waste and scarcity of resources, change of religious sanction and pressure from external forces. The main reason of collapse of Erlitou early states is the social collision resulted from resources. Further more, reinforcement of personal requests awareness is the root of all collapse factors. Collapse of Erlitou early states is a systematic collapse resulted from decrease of remuneration to which is led by reinforcement of ruler class's personal requests awareness.Systematically, proportion of ruler class's personal requests and collective requests is the watershed between the early state and chiefdom. Development and reinforcement of ruler class's personal requests are allowed within the limits of the religious beliefs in both the early states and chiefdoms. When the ruler class's personal requests expanded to a certain limit, that is when the ruler class's needs excessively touch the bottom line of the masses'vital needs, the masses will lose confidence in the state. Under the pressure of survival, religion could not restrain the masses'metal any more, then the power loses its restriction to the masses and the political system becomes weaker and weaker, thus the early states collapse not being able to resist any external attack.