呈贡天子庙滇墓

ANCIENT DIAN TOMBS AT TIANZIMIAO,CHENGGONG COUNTY

天子庙位于呈贡县龙街区小古城乡境内,这里依山傍水,风景秀丽,交通方便;北距昆明市15公里,南至呈贡县城3公里,西临滇池2公里,东靠高约10米的黄土山;附近有古马料河通过,还有贯穿滇南的昆洛公路北来南去(图一)。

The anciont Dian tombs dealt with in this paper are located at Tianzimiao in Cheng-gong County about 15 kilometers south of Kunming.From December 1979 to January1980,the Commission excavated 44 tombs,among which Tomb No.41 ranks first both insize and in number of funeral objects.Tomb No.41 is a rectangular earth pit with a wooden chamber.The structure of thechamber is still visible.The funeral objects were placed atop and inside the chamber.Thelargest number of them are bronze articles,followed by pottery,iron objects,lacquerwareand jade and agate ornaments,totalling over 1000 pieces.There are besides 1500 shells andten thousands of turquoise beads.Most of the bronzes are weapons,the important ones ofwhich include gc-dagger axe,spear,duble-edged sword,peck,axe,yue-battle axe and ar-mour;tools of production including plough,hoe,sickle and a complete set of spinning andweaving implements;articles for daily use including ding-tripod,tub-shaped container,er,cauldron,ladle and pillow,most of which are great in variety,exquisite in craftsman-ship and strong in local color,making most of them rare treasures of art of the Dian cul-ture.It is especially so with the newly discovered bronze ding-tripod with sorcerer figuresand the bronze tub-shaped container with a quinque-ox cover,the latter being extremely im-portant for further understanding the Dian culture and studying the origin of the bronzetub-shaped object and its relationship with the bronze drum.The date of Tomb No.41 cor-responds roughly to the middle period of the Warring States or a bit later,and its occu-pant must be some great slave owner or noble in the Dianchi Lake district at the time.All the other tombs are also rectangular pits,but they are much smaller and with onlya few funeral objects,most of which are pottery with features of the Dian culture.Bronzeobjects were found merely in rare cases.For example,Tomb No.33 yielded a bronze shellcontainer with a quinque-ox cover,and on the outside of its body are engraved seven war-riors garmented in local style and armed with spears.This container is worth special at-tention and study.These 43 tombs of small and medium size may be divided into three chronologiealgroups,and their date corresponds to the middle period of the Warring States and the earlyperiod of the Western Han Dynasty.Most of their owners appear to be commoners of theDian people.