| Abstract: |
The ancient cemetery described in this report lies to the south of the Tu-pang Mountains at a distance of forty kilometres to the east of Ping-lo County in the Kwangsi Chuang Autonomous Region. It was first found in February, 1974 and then excavated in the last three months of the same year, bringing to light a total of 165 tombs. Of these 110 date from the Warring States period, 45 from the Han Dynasty, and 1 from the Tsin Dynasty. The other nine tombs are of unknown dates. The present report deals only with the Warring States tombs. The tombs are all shaft-tombs each containing a single burial but a few are provided with a tomb passage. Measuring about 34 metres in length and 2 metres in width, they are usually provided at the bottom with a waist-pit which holds a pottery vessel. Some contain a so-called secondary platform (erh tseng tai) or a layer of pebbles. Judging by the remaining traces, most of them had a wooden coffin while a few were further provided with an outer coffin. But all the coffins and skeletons have disintegrated. The tomb furniture found in each of these tombs is rather simple and ranges in number from one or two pieces to about 4050 pieces. They consist usually of weapons, tools and objects of daily use. But the combination of each of these three types of tomb furniture seems to have been governed by a certain rule. For instance, the bronze sword is usually accompanied hy the spearhead and arrow-head, the iron hoe is found along with the scrapper and the ting-tripod is accompanied by the box and cup. Tombs provided with bronze weapons would not yield pottery whorls while those provided with pottery whorls would also not contain bronze weapons The weapons, tools and ornaments are usually placed in the coffin while the objects of daily use are arranged either on the side of the coffin or near the head. Judging from the tomb structure, composition and typology of tomb furniture, most of the tombs probably date from the end of Warring States period, but some may be as late as the Chin or early Western Han. The tombs are marked by some prominent features of the Pai Yüeh Culture 百越文化 similar to the Warring States tombs of Tseng-cheng and Shih-hsing County in Kwangtung Province, indicating that their owners already had a rather highly developed agriculture and handicraft. The people seem to have close contact with the state of Chu. For instance, the Type Ⅰ bronze swords, bronze spearheads of Types Ⅰ and Ⅱ and the bronze tring-tripods of Type Ⅳ unearthed are similar to those found in the Chu tombs while the discovery of a bronze sword bearing an inscription reading Chan Ling 孱陵 which was located in the state of Chu also attests to this fact.
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