试论二里头选择性下葬制度与祖先信仰系统的重构

Discussion on the Selective-inhumation Institution and the Reorganization of the Ancestral Worship System of Erlitou

本文简要回顾了丧葬研究理念,指出考查下葬人群在整个社会人口中所占比例的意义,并强调时代背景之于墓葬分析的重要性。在此基础上,通过分析二里头墓葬及相关考古发现,结合欧亚大陆其他早期文明的丧葬研究和民族学调查结果,指出二里头社会存在选择性下葬制度,即只有社会上层贵族才有资格在亡逝后土葬。结合二里头政治景观创立的具体情境单元以及政治人类学相关理论,可知二里头选择下葬制度和维系二里头新兴贵族的统治紧密相关。这套丧葬制度赋予了'入土为安'的丧葬典礼将亡逝的社会上层贵族转化为祖先神的象征意义,通过重构祖先信仰系统来调整亡灵空间的秩序,以最终达到合法化生者世界核心贵族权力的目的。

This paper,based on a brief review of the history of funeral research internationally,emphasizes the significance of context as well as the composition of a society’s inhumation pool compared with the composition of the society’s population at large.In particular,it analyzes burials in the Erlitou polity in comparison with those across Eurasia in the Bronze Age.Combined with ethnographic studies,this analysis reveals the existence of a selective inhumation institution in Erlitou,in which only the high-rank elites were privileged to be buried subterraneanly.This institution,which excluded most people from being disposed of in an archaeologically visible fashion,was,the paper argues,devised to affirm the brand-new social order founded by the Erlitou polity,which fundamentally broke away from the previous political regime.Funerals in Erlitou,in this social context,became a rite of passage to transform the deceased into an ancestral divinity.The Erlitou selective inhumation institution went hand in hand with the reorganization of the ancestral worship system.The two functioned together to legitimize Erlitou’s inner elites.