Origins of Burial Practices in Eastern Part of Eurasia:
The Case of Zhoukoudian Cave

O. V. Yanshina

List of issues > «Geoarchaeology, Ethnology, and Anthropology Series». 2022. Vol 41

Origins of Burial Practices in Eastern Part of Eurasia: The Case of Zhoukoudian Cave

Full text (russian)

Author(s)

O. V. Yanshina

Abstract

This paper examines characteristic features of the Zhoukoudian cave. This site is rather well known to specialists, but mainly from the work of anthropologists, but not as a funerary complex. Therefore, there is every reason to consider its records from this point of view to understand how they fit into the general line of burial practice development in the eastern part of Asia. New carbon dates determine the cave age in the range of 33.5–38.4 thousand years cal. BP and turn it into the earliest burial complex of the region. However, in this case, there appears a gap of ten to fifteen thousand years between it and other Upper Paleolithic burials known in estern part of Asia. Besides Zhoukoudian, there were only two burial traditions in the Upper Paleolithic there. The first, in the north, is associated with the ritual burials of children (Mal’ta, Ushki, Upward Sun River) and suggested to be originated in the Eastern Europe, but seems was not inherited by the regular burial activity arose later in the Early Neolithic. The second, in the south, came up immediately as a regular burial practice being connected with cave interments, crouched position of the dead, after-death manipulations with their bodies, including cremation, and poor burial offerings (Xom Trai, Doi Pha Kan, Tron Bon Lei, Niah cave, Liang Nabulei Lisa, Liang Lembudu, etc.). The origin of this tradition is under question, but all Neolithic cultures to the south of Pearl River followed and abided it up to the agriculture spreading. Although ritual rites of the Zhoukoudian burials cannot be reconstructed because of the data dearth, ornaments assemblage definitely associates this site with north areas of Eurasia. Moreover, the distribution of the main jewelry types, found in the eastern part of Eurasia, has shown that those of Zhoukoudian cave (perforated animal teeth and bone tubes) are met to the sites located to the north, west and south-west of Baikal and absent to the east of it where eggshell beads were popular. This looks like that of the single area of two former kinds of ornaments was split into two parts by the eggshell bead bearers. From this, the Zhoukoudian cave has seemed culturally more associated with areas to the west of Baikal and the earliest waves of Homo sapiens intrusion into East Asia.

About the Authors

Yanshina Oksana Vadimovna, Candidate of Sciences (History), Senior Researcher, Department of ethnography of the peoples of America, Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography RAS; 3, Universitetskaya emb., Saint Petersburg, 199034, Russian Federation, e-mail: oyanshina@mail.ru

For citation

Yanshina O. V. Origins of Burial Practices in Eastern Part of Eurasia: The Case of Zhoukoudian Cave. Bulletin of the Irkutsk State University. Geoarchaeology, Ethnology, and Anthropology Series. 2022, Vol. 41, pp. 81–91. https://doi.org/10.26516/2227-2380.2022.41.81 (in Russ.)

Keywords

East Asia, Zhoukoudian cave, burial practice, ornaments, radiocarbon dating.

UDC

903.25 (903.52)

DOI

https://doi.org/10.26516/2227-2380.2022.41.81

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