| Studying on the restoration of the layout of the ancient cities is an important part of studies on the geography of historic cities. It is an important access to exploring the original appearance of ancient cities, the foundation of understanding the development of modern cities and is of instructive meaning to the modern urban planning. The Yongcheng city in the ancient Qin dynasty had been the capital city of the Qin Empire for about300years, during which the Yongcheng city became the most influential capital city in the contemporary states owned by vassals with the painstaking management of19emperors; thereby it set an example for moving the capital city to Xianyang later. With Yongcheng as the capital, politics, social economy as well as military power of the Qin dynasty developed rapidly, which helped consolidate the slavery state power and prepare conditions for the transition to feudalism. Based on a comparative textual research on the historical documents and archeological materials the thesis restores the layout of the Yongcheng city in Qin dynasty and concludes the layout features, which will hopefully serve as reference for modern urban planning and great ruins preservation.The thesis is divided into five chapters.The first chapter explores the historical and geographical backgrounds of the growth of Yongcheng city. This chapter illustrates mainly from the two perspectives of natural geographical environment and historical humanistic environment. The Yongcheng city locates in the west of Guanzhong Plateau, close to mountains and rivers, and of positional significance. The local climate and water resources are superior to others. In addition, the Yongcheng city has been a significant transport hub of the western Guanzhong area since ancient times, thus it has very convenient transportation conditions. With a long history, the Yongcheng city inherited and earried on the advantages while got rid of the disadvantages in terms of both economic basis and super structure during the period of Xia, Shang and West Zhou dynasties. Therefore, Yongcheng was the most economically advanced city with descent material base in the west Guanzhong area in the Spring-Autumn and Warring States period. The introduction of this part demonstrates the historical and geographic backgrounds of the growth of the Yongcheng city, laying a foundation for the whole thesis. Chapter two mainly illustrates the space structure and layout of the internal Yongcheng city, including the walls, road distribution, structures and layouts of palaces and temples as well as those of commercial markets and handicraft workshops. The road layout was strict, with four roads in the horizontal direction while crossing with four roads in the vertical direction, shaped like the chessboard. In some areas, the roads were distributed along the flowing direction of the river. The major trunk roads were the central axis of the city. The great palaces and temples were distributed along the two sides of the central axis, while other various buildings scattered in other parts. The distribution of palaces, temples and markets conformed to the urban planning principle of "placing ancestors’ temple on the left and the altar of land and grain on the right while situating the royal courts in the front and the markets in the back." Palaces and temples were symmetrical.The space structure and layout of the suburban Yongcheng city is illustrated in the third chapter. There were imperial villas, facilities to offer sacrifices to gods and ancestors, parks with animals, mausoleum parks where the Qin emperors were buried as well as the tombs of some citizens, which formed the layout characteristics of the whole suburban Yongcheng city. All these buildings and facilities were mainly distributed in the Sanzhiyuan Plateau in the south part of suburban Yongcheng city. Their geographical position reflects the common feature in distribution:all of them were located in high places. What’s more, Sanzhiyuan was not far from the capital city, thus it was convenient for the emperor to go to their villas and parks for recreation and to go to Qinsizhi and Qingong Mausoleum parks to offer sacrifices to gods and ancestors. These imperial villas and facilities to offer sacrifices had been used for long and carried on until the Qin dynasty and West Han dynasty.The fourth chapter, detailed restored Taiqin which is one of palaces in Yongcheng city, Qin Temple, Ling Yin and Qin Jing Gong cemetery which is one of the mausoleum parks where the Qin emperors were buried, as a special case to see the construction and layouts of Yongcheng city.The fifth chapter is the conclusion part, which sums up and extends the content of the whole thesis. According to the results achieved in the former chapters, this chapter has a summary of the layout characteristics of the Qin capital city Yongcheng and the developing process of the layout of Yongcheng city in the Spring-Autumn and Warring States period. On the basis of these results, the chapter also explores the referential significance of the layout of Yongcheng city for the later capital city construction.There are many innovative points in this thesis. Studies upon Yongcheng city has been concentrating on perspective of archeology, whereas studies from historical and geographical perspectives are relatively weak; special studies from historical and geographical standpoints mainly focus on the Qin capital city of Xianyang, with Yongcheng city taking a rather small part; besides, although some scholars have done research on the restoration of the layout of individual buildings in Yongcheng city, their studies on the overall layout are not comprehensive and systematic. This thesis will set the Qin capital city of Yongcheng as an independent case and have an all-round study on the layout restoration from the historical and city geographical perspectives, including the space structure and layout of both the urban and suburban areas. This thesis summarizes the layout features and their referential significance for the later capital cities, thereby filling the gap in this research field. |
