徐州狮子山西汉楚王陵发掘简报

Excavation of an Imperial Tomb of Chu at Shizishan near Xuzhou

1984年12月,江苏省徐州市狮子山西麓发现大批兵马俑群,后来建成了“徐州汉兵马俑博物馆”。7年后,在1991年7月14日。

The excavation took place from December 1994 to February 1995. Despite the robbery in early years, the excavation yielded more than two thousand funerary objects includingbronze weapons, jade articles, seals and seal clays, gold and silver objects, and so on. The ex-cavation ranked among the 1995 ten major archaeological discoveries. This south-facing tomb with an orientation of 188 degrees is located on the southernhillside to the east of the horse-and-chariot pit excavated in 1984. This large tomb consistsof an exterior and an interior tomb passage, a patio, a side chamber, a tunnel, a coffin cham-ber, a rear chamber ana an accessory tomb. The tomb passage was filled up with a largestone. The unearthed jade articles are remarkable for their good texture and craftsmanship.They include big variety of forms such as bei, zhi, bi, yuan, huang, heng, ge, dragon-like or-naments, etc., made either of white jade from Khotan or green jade from Manas River. Altogether 200 pieces of seals, all official ones, are unearthed, telling us a lot about thesystems of the Chu Kingdom palace, army territory, etc. in the Western Han dynasty. More than one hundred thousand copper coins unearthed are mostly the so-called sizhuand yujia banliang circulated in the early Western Han dynasty. The rest of them are spe-cially made for the funerary purpose. All were minted locally. Judging by the tomb structure, funerary objects and the fact that some of the tombchambers were yet to be finished, the tomb owner seems to be the second generation kingof the Chu Kingdom, Liu Ying, or his successor Liu Wu, buried there either in 175 or 154BC.