Urban System Of Ordos Plateau In Qin And Han Dynasties

The Ordos plateau which is vast was in the control of the nomads or the Han nationality alternately in the historical period. Located in the arid and semi-arid regions and the Kubuqi Desert and Mu Us Sand Land being there, the natural environment limits and human beings influence the plateau less, so there are many historical ancient city ruins. Some of the ancient city ruins reserve a little walls and some ancient city ruins has little remains, such as pottery and tiles. These excavations of human activities remains provide important clues to determine the specific distribution of towns in the historical period. The urban evolution of Ordos Plateau in history is more severe. Towns had been set up, abandoned, rebuild and back and forth by frequent wars, change of dynasties, climate change and so on, so remained a large number of ancient ruins on the plateau. Statistics show that there are 64 Qin and Han Dynasty city sites in the area, these city remains provided excellent data for the study of development and evolution of the urban system of Qin and Han Dynasties. The urban system in Qin and Han Dynasty experienced a process from beginning to the forming, becoming the basis of urban system development and evolution later dynasties in the future. The existing research is lack of spatial organization in the urban research. From the modern urban geography theory, this is a problem of the urban system, so this paper will study it from the perspective of the urban system.The main methods are field survey, historical document statistics and spatial analysis. Firstly, this paper will sort out the cities and towns build in the Qin and Han Dynasties by historical documents to discuss the rise and development of the towns. Secondly, the status will discuss briefly the present situation of the ancient city ruins of the Qin and Han Dynasties Ordos, then will combine historical documents, archaeological excavation with previous scholars researches to analysis the home of some cities.Based on these, this paper will analysis the distribution of towns, spatial organization of urban system, rank of scale of towns, factors of urban site selection in the Ordos Plateau town of Qin and Han Dynasties. The main conclusions are as follows:(1) The number of the towns and population increased from Qin Dynasty to XiHan Dynasty and reduced greatly in DongHan Dynasty. The number of towns reduced from 40 to 28, and the number of population of DongHan Dynasty is less than 10% of XiHan Dynasty.It is because of wars of late XiHan Dynasty and movement of the political power to the east in DongHan Dynasty.(2)The number of the towns of Qin and Han Dynasties in Ordos Plateau that the size is less than 2000 meters accounts for 65%, the number of the towns of Qin and Han Dynasties in Ordos Plateau that the size is more than 3000 meters accounts for 13.34%; the number of the towns of Qin and Han Dynasties in Ordos Plateau that the size is in 2000-3000 meters has a share of 21.66%. Therefore, the scale of the towns located in the Ordos Plateau of Qin and Han Dynasties is smaller.(3)The site of towns of Ordos Plateau in Qin and Han dynasties were affected by political and military factors, natural environment, resources and traffic and other factors.(4)The natural environment and resource conditions of the both sides of Yellow River, between the Mu Us Sand Land and the Kubuqi Desert, southeastern edge of the Mu Us Sand were in relatively good condition, and the natural environment and resource conditions of the rest of the Ordos Plateau which could not meet the requirement of building towns were poor by the distribution of the towns and the main traffic routes.