山西芮城清凉寺史前墓地

THE QINGLIANGSI PREHISTORIC CEMETERY IN RUICHENG COUNTY,SHANXI

清凉寺史前墓地位于山西省芮城县东北部，在中条山脉南麓、黄河北侧，为山前丘陵坡地（图一）。由于遗址地跨西陌乡寺里和陌南镇坡头村，所以称为寺里一坡头遗址，面积约200万平方米。最早发现于1955年，1965年公布为山西省重点文物保护单位。1975和1984年，当地村民在清凉寺旁的断崖上取土，

The Qingliangsi Prehistoric Cemetery is located in the northeast of Ruicheng County,which is in the southernmost of Shanxi Province and on the southern foot of Zhongtiao Mountains.Found in 1955,Qingliangsi Prehistoric Cemetery has nearly 5000 sq m preserved.In 2003 through 2005,Shanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology and other institutions conducted excavation to this cemetery,by which totally 355 prehistoric burials were recovered.The excavation to this cemetery was elected as one of the '04 Top Ten Archaeological Discoveries in China and got the Third Class Award of Archaeological Fieldwork issued by the State Administration of Cultural Heritage.All of the burials found in Qingliangsi Cemetery were vertical earthen shaft pit tombs,the occupants of which were all in extended supine position and most of them had cinnabar remains on the skeletons.Based on the stratigraphic relations,these burials could be divided into four phases:the small-sized tombs of Phase Ⅰ,most heading northwest,were distributed in the west of the cemetery;most of them yielded no grave goods but only skeletons,and their features belonged to Zaoyuan Culture which was flourishing around 6000 BP.In the tombs of Phases Ⅱ to Ⅳ,the tomb occupants were all heading to the mountain ridge to the west of the cemetery;the tombs of Phase Ⅱ scattered in the middle to the west of the entire cemetery:they were usually in small sizes which could only contain the tomb occupants;some of them yielded no grave goods,while some had jade or stone implements such as yue-battle axes,bi-discs,rings,knives with multi-perforations,and few of them had crocodile scutes,pig mandibles and pottery jars with bending shoulder and basins with flaring rim,and other grave goods showing wealth and statuses and social polarization.These tombs belonged to the late period of Miaodigou Phase Ⅱ Culture.The large-sized tombs of Phase Ⅲ were distributed in the middle to the west of the cemetery and overlapped with the tombs of Phase Ⅱ,but they were arranged in tidy order with regular distances.Most of these tombs had piled-up second-tier terraces around the bottoms of the tomb pits,and human victims in various positions were very popular in them.The jades found in these tombs were mostly made of fine nephrite(tremolite)and in unique and exquisite shapes.The east part of the cemetery was occupied by the large-sized tombs of Phase Ⅳ which were arranged in clear lines but yielding no human victims and very few grave goods,showing that their statuses were obviously low.The tombs of Phases Ⅲ and Ⅳ belonged to Longshan Age,and they had been disturbed in various degrees occurring in the late Longshan Age.Qingliangsi Cemetery revealed the most human victims among the prehistoric cemeteries in China discovered to date,and the earliest tombs bearing large quantities of jade and stone implements as grave goods in the Central Plains.The special burial systems reflected the progress from social polarization to class opposition,and the conspicuous burial which was not local funeral custom showed the concentrating of the cultural elements and ideas from peripheral areas in here and that a large-scale cultural reformation was taking place at that time,which was very meaningful to the researches on the origins of ancient Chinese Civilization.