THE SURVEY AND STUDY OF SLAB BURIALS IN THE YINSHAN MOUNTAINS

Authors：Ma Jian

Source：欧亚学刊（英文版）, 2017, (1): 54-85.

• Inner Mongolia
• two cultures
• Bronze Age

In 2011-2015,a joint archaeological expedition from China's Northwestern University,the Inner Mongolia Museum,and the Inner Mongolia Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology investigated the slab burials in the Yinshan Mountains.Typical graves discovered were hourglass-shaped graves,stirrup-shaped graves of the Tevsh culture (1300-1000 BCE),and rectangular graves of the Slab Burial Culture (1100-300 BCE).In addition,special dumb-bell shaped graves found in the Yinshan Mountains may reflect the interflow between these two cultures.The Yinshan Mountains would have been one center of Tevsh culture at the end of the Bronze Age,which from the early Iron Age the Tevsh Culture and Slab Burial Culture may retreat from the southern slope to within and to the northern slope of the Yinshan Mountains under pressure from the newly risen nomadic tribes of the Ordos on the south of the Yinshan Mountains and which finally merged into the Xiongnu confederation from the third to the second century BCE.