Astana Cemetery
More actions
| Astana Cemetery | |
|---|---|
| 阿斯塔那古墓群 | |
| Astana Cemeteries | |
| Location | |
| Country | China |
| Province/State | Xinjiang |
| Prefecture-level city | Turpan |
| Coordinates | 42.88, 89.53 |
| Site | |
| Type | Cemetery |
| Period | Jin to Tang dynasties |
| In use | 3rd–9th centuries CE |
| Excavated | 1959–1975 (more than 500 tombs) |
| Excavated by | Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region Museum and other institutions |
| Cannabis finds | |
| Found | Seeds, Fibre or textile |
| 18 hemp fruits from tomb 72TAM209; the hemp-fibre tail of a clay horse figurine from tomb 73TAM214 | |
| Dated | c. 658–706 CE |
| Dating | Inscriptions |
| Identified by | Morphology, Microscopy, Chemical analysis |
| Held by | Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region Museum |
The Astana Cemetery (阿斯塔那古墓群) is a burial ground of the 3rd to 9th centuries CE at the foot of the Flaming Mountains near Turpan in Xinjiang, China, where the people of Gaochang buried their dead.[1] Two finds from its tombs have been studied as cannabis. Eighteen hemp fruits lay among the grain offerings of tomb 72TAM209, of the mid-7th century.[1] The tail of a clay horse in tomb 73TAM214, whose epitaph is dated 665, is made of hemp bast fibre.[2]
Site
The cemetery covers about 10 square kilometres on the delta plain of the Mutougou river, below the Flaming Mountains (Huoyan Shan). It holds thousands of tombs. In the hot, dry climate of the Turpan basin the bodies and the objects buried with them have survived without decay.[1] The tombs have yielded mummies, written documents, textiles, plant remains and food, and large numbers of wooden and clay figurines.[2]
The Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region Museum and other institutions excavated more than 500 tombs between 1959 and 1975. By their structure and contents the tombs fall into three phases. The first runs from the Jin dynasty to the middle of the Southern and Northern dynasties, from the mid-3rd to the early 6th century; its graves are of the cave-and-shaft type, some with a sloping passage. The second, from the early 6th to the mid-7th century, is the period of the Gaochang kingdom, when chamber walls became slightly curved and wooden coffins went out of use. The third belongs to the early and middle Tang dynasty, from the mid-7th to the 9th century, when tombs with two chambers appear.[1]
Tao Chen and colleagues place the cemetery in the history of the basin. The Gushi held the Turpan basin from about 1000 to 100 BCE, until the armies of the Western Han defeated them. Han Chinese settlers followed, and kingdoms led by Han people, among them the Gaochang kingdom, ruled Turpan until the 9th century.[1]
Cannabis finds
Hemp fruits
Tomb 72TAM209 held grain laid in as offerings: foxtail millet (item 72TAM209:64), wheat and naked barley (:66), and 18 fruits of Cannabis sativa (:68). The cemetery as a whole has yielded seven grain crops: foxtail and broomcorn millet, hemp, bread wheat, barley, naked barley and rice. The finds were deposited in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region Museum.[1]
Hemp fibre
Tomb 73TAM214 is a shaft grave with a sloping entrance and a cave chamber, part of a family burial ground. It held a man and a woman laid on reed mats, with household pottery, wooden vessels, figurines and textiles, and an epitaph dated 665. From the epitaph Chen and colleagues take the dead to have been of an eminent local family.[2]
Among the figurines is a painted clay rider on a horse, 36 centimetres high, now in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region Museum as specimen 73TAM214:32. The rider wears a round-necked gown, black boots and a traditional Chinese hat; the horse is painted red and white, with a saddle in black patterns. Its tail is a bundle of plant fibre 25 centimetres long, in strands about 1 millimetre thick that still carry a brown cortex.[2]
Dating
Analyses
The 18 hemp fruits were measured with a vernier caliper and examined under a stereomicroscope. They average 4.23 millimetres long (3.27 to 4.96) and 3.30 millimetres wide (2.61 to 3.76).[1]
The fibres of the horse's tail were identified by three methods, each compared with modern fibres. In infrared spectroscopy their spectrum was close to those of modern hemp and ramie and differed from that of velvetleaf, which lacked a peak at 779 cm−1. In a drying test a wet fibre twisted anticlockwise as it dried, as hemp and velvetleaf fibres do, while ramie and flax fibres twist clockwise. Under the light microscope single fibres, about 20 micrometres wide, showed the dislocations, cross-markings and lengthwise striations of hemp, and their cross-sections were polygonal to roughly oval. Together the three results matched the bast fibre of Cannabis.[2]
Interpretations
Chen and colleagues read the grain of Astana as evidence that farming in the Turpan basin widened after the arrival of Han settlers. Before then the region's herders had grown only a few cereals. Comparing the finds with written documents from the tombs, they concluded that hemp fruits and rice were eaten only in small amounts.[1] In their later paper they call the fruits of 72TAM209 a small cache of funeral goods, possibly offered as grain.[2]
On the fibre, Chen and colleagues held that wool had been the main textile fibre of the region in the time of the Subeixi culture, and that after the Han period hemp and silk took its place. Silk clothed the wealthy and hemp the rest. Citing earlier studies, they report that large amounts of hemp cloth, paper and shoes, much of it made locally, have come from the Astana tombs. They note that no other bast fibre, such as flax or velvetleaf, had been found in the cemetery. Cotton was in use at the time but was in their view too soft to imitate a horse's tail. They describe the horse's tail as the only reported use of hemp fibre to decorate a figurine in ancient Turpan.[2]
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 Chen, Tao; Wu, Yan; Zhang, Yongbing; Wang, Bo; Hu, Yaowu; Wang, Changsui; Jiang, Hongen (2012). "Archaeobotanical study of ancient food and cereal remains at the Astana cemeteries, Xinjiang, China". PLoS ONE. 7 (9) e45137. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0045137.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8 Chen, Tao; Yao, Shuwen; Merlin, Mark; Mai, Huijuan; Qiu, Zhenwei; Hu, Yaowu; Wang, Bo; Wang, Changsui; Jiang, Hongen (2014). "Identification of Cannabis fiber from the Astana cemeteries, Xinjiang, China, with reference to its unique decorative utilization". Economic Botany. 68 (1): 59–66. doi:10.1007/s12231-014-9261-z.