A Study Of Human Bones In The Northern Wei Dynasty At Yuchang Jiayuan Cemetery In Datong,Shanxi

Datong is located in the northern part of Shanxi Province,and was also known as "Clouds" and "Pingcheng" in ancient times.As one of the important capitals of the Northern Wei Dynasty in China,it began in July in the third year of Huangshi(AD 398),when Tuobagui,Emperor Wudi of the Northern Wei Dynasty,moved here from Shengle(now Inner Mongolia and Linger County),and ended there.In the eighteenth year of Taihe(AD 494),Emperor Xiaowen Yuanhong moved the capital to Luoyang.During the 97 years when the political power was concentrated in Pingcheng,the nomadic people continued to absorb different cultures from the Han ethnic group,and the handicraft operation and urban construction developed rapidly,gradually opening up trade exchanges with countries in the Western Regions,laying the foundation for the prosperity of the Silk Road in the Southern and Northern Dynasties;The establishment of such systems as the three chiefs system has played an important role in ensuring national tax revenue,consolidating and strengthening centralization;the implementation of the immigration policy has also changed the composition of residents in the Pingcheng area.The distribution center where the Han,Xianbei and other ethnic groups gathered and collided with various cultures was the extremely prosperous political center,economic center and cultural center in northern China at that time.The research object of this paper is the human skeletal remains unearthed from the Yuchang Jiayuan cemetery,which is located on the north side of Heng'an Street and the west side of Hongyan Road in Yudong New District,Datong City,Shanxi Province;it is one of the hubs for urban development and construction in this area.In 2013,the archaeological excavation work was carried out by the Datong Archaeological Institute in cooperation with the infrastructure project.The tombs were identified by the excavators,and the age should belong to the middle period of the Northern Wei Dynasty.In this paper,using the research methods of physical anthropology such as cranial morphology,ancient ethnology,biostatistics,etc.,to measure,analyze and compare the cranial morphology and phylogeny types of the Northern Wei population in the Yuchang Jiayuan cemetery,and correlate them with the relevant The data of ancient populations were compared,and the kinship relationship between the Northern Wei population and other populations in the Yuchang Jiayuan cemetery was analyzed.The results show that the characteristics of the population in the Northern Wei Dynasty in the Yuchang Jiayuan cemetery are most similar to the East Asian types in the modern Mongolian race;It is mainly based on the "Ancient Central Plains type" group in the pre-Qin period,mixed with a small number of factors such as the Xianbei and other groups.Pingcheng in the Northern Wei Dynasty was a central area integrating economy,politics and culture.People of all ethnic groups had close contacts under the influence of trade activities and immigration policies,which may be the reason for the diverse types of hostages of this group.This paper also made a preliminary judgment on the population structure,pathological phenomenon and health status of the Northern Wei people in the Yuchang Jiayuan cemetery by means of physical anthropological research methods such as paleopopulation research,paleopathological research,and oral disease research.The ratio of males to females in the Northern Wei Dynasty population in Yuchangjiayuan cemetery was 1.35:1,showing a certain imbalance,which may be related to the preservation of bones in the cemetery and the lack of some registered bone data;in terms of age structure,male individuals,The peak mortality rate falls in middle age,followed by prime age,and the mortality rate in youth is the lowest;the highest mortality rate of female individuals occurs in prime age,followed by middle age and youth,with similar values.On the whole,the physical characteristics of the Northern Wei people in Yuchang Jiayuan are relatively healthy: the pathological types of bone diseases are relatively rich,but the attack rate of the disease is not extensive,and most of them are only individual cases;the trauma rate is low,and Most skeletal injuries belong to the daily trauma in life and labor,and there are fewer conflict and violence injuries,showing a relatively stable social situation;however,more dislocations in the process of bone healing reveal that this population is poorer in medical care.level.In terms of dental pathology,the oral health status of the Northern Wei population in Yuchangjiayuan is not optimistic,showing a moderate to lower overall level-the probability of suffering from dental caries,apical abscess,periodontal disease and other oral diseases is relatively high.In addition,through the comparative analysis of height estimation,body mass estimation and limb bone research based on research theories such as anthropometry,we can have a more comprehensive understanding of the body shape characteristics of the Northern Wei population in Yuchang Jiayuan Cemetery.