Urn coffin burial is one of the ancient forms of tombs, with urns and basins as burial tools, most of the children's bodies are buried in it, buried, and used to bury adults. This burial custom was popular from the Neolithic period to the Han Dynasty.

Urn coffin burial, one of the ancient burial customs. In ancient times, it was a form of burial with pottery such as urns and pots as burial tools. It is mostly seen in prehistoric times (China was popular from the Neolithic to the Han Dynasty). It is often used to bury young children and teenagers, but in Japan there were adult urn coffins in the Jomon and Yayoi periods. In some European cultures of the Bronze Age and Early Iron Age, urn coffins were also prevalent for storing ashes. Most of them are buried near houses or under indoor living surfaces in residential areas, and there are also special burial cemeteries for children's urns. Some people refer to the burial utensils of bone washing and cremation as bone storage vessels or urns to distinguish them from ordinary urn coffins.

Urn coffin burial, the funeral custom is specifically: put the bones of minors (mostly infants) after death into a pottery urn, cover the lid, and bury them in the ground. These urns and their lids were not specially fired, but were used randomly for burial purposes. Therefore, the unearthed urn coffins have different specifications and shapes, and the urn lid is also composed of pottery shards, pottery bowls and pottery pots. The large number of children's urn coffins and tombs not only shows the low standard of living in the society at that time, the extremely high mortality rate of children, but also shows that children were given special care. In addition, many urn coffins or pots used as coffin lids have a small hole, some drilled into a very regular circle, some are hammered into an irregular shape, and the small hole is often covered with a small pottery shard, and its inner surface is also coated with red pigment.

Urn coffin burial appeared in the Neolithic era, and before liberation, some ethnic minorities in the southwest frontier of our country still retained this custom. The vast majority of urn coffin burial utensils are pottery used in people's daily life. Some artifacts still have a layer of black ash or grass and soil traces on the surface when they are unearthed. In Yangshao culture Banpo and other sites, there are also pointed bottom bottles, urn coffins or clay pots, the mouth is opposite, and the urn coffin is horizontal. In the Han Dynasty, urn coffins were mostly made of pot-shaped and cylindrical pottery utensils.

Infant urn coffins mostly appeared in residential areas, reflecting people's consideration and love for children at that time, so as to prevent wild beasts from harming children's corpses; Some researchers believe that the urn coffin is a simulated "womb" where the deceased lived before realizing reincarnation, and the tomb owner of the adult urn coffin is the elite of some primitive clans and tribes, and the urn coffin burial of these elites and children is to accelerate the second rebirth of the deceased.

The urn coffin of the Yuan Dynasty with an arc belly

The urn coffin of the Yuan Dynasty was collected by cultural relics workers in Shebiya Village, Hohshi, and the urn coffin of the Yuan Dynasty was buried as muddy gray pottery, with a straight mouth and a short neck, an arc belly, a flat bottom, and the shape of a tower.

According to relevant historical records, urn coffin burial is often used to bury young children and teenagers, and it is a burial method in which the corpse or ashes are buried in an urn, and then buried in the ground or thrown into water. In China's Neolithic sites, there are often children's urn coffins, and individual adults also use urn coffins, generally with 2 or 3 larger pieces of pottery fastened together, most of them are buried near houses in residential areas or under the indoor ground, and there are also special children's urn coffin burial cemeteries. Some people refer to bone burial and cremation burial utensils as bone vessels or urns to distinguish them from ordinary urn coffins.

Why does the urn coffin have small holes

The urn coffins unearthed in Inner Mongolia, China, have small holes on them, the purpose of which is to allow the souls of the deceased to enter and exit freely. Historical records record that ethnic minorities are also affected by this burial method, but they often use it for secondary burials and unnatural deaths. For example, in the old days, after the death of the She people in our country, the coffin was first parked in the wild, and after a few years, the ashes were incinerated with fire, and the ashes were put into a jar, and then buried; the Shui tribe believed that people who died of leprosy and women who died of dystocia were unlucky, and their ghosts would infect future generations, so they cremated such deceased first, and then put the ashes in the altar or in an earthen jar, and then closed the burial. This burial method is commonly known as "inverted tank burial".

There are generally five different types of burial forms in the urn coffin burial of Yangshao culture

The combination of burial tools is:

1. Lid and straight cylinder tank (or cylinder);

2. Bowl (or basin) and sand jar (or urn);

3. Bean-shaped device and tripod;

4. Two halves of pointed bottom bottles;

5. Half-cut pointed bottom bottles and straight cans, etc.

Among the above five types of burial tools, except for the first and second types of urns and basins, which have a second burial for adults, the rest are all for children to be buried once. According to physical observations, the vast majority of the burial utensils used by people as "urn coffins" at that time were pottery used in people's daily life, and some of the utensils still left a layer of black ash or grass and soil traces on their surfaces when they were unearthed.

Urn coffins are generally buried around people's residential areas. Except for the fourth and fifth categories (pointed bottom bottle burial) or the burial utensils opposite the mouth of the urn and the jar are buried horizontally, the rest are erected or slightly inclined to bury. Several types of urn coffins are common in Yangshao culture:

The first category: the combination of straight cylinders (cylinders) and covers. Five or six inverted "mud buttons" are attached to the outer wall of the can, on which a lid is fastened, and the skull and limb bones of an adult are placed in the can. Two such urn coffins have been found in the Yangshao cultural site of Tumen in Yichuan County. In the summers of 1960 and 1962, the archaeological internship team of Peking University went to the Yihe River Basin twice for archaeological investigations, and found more than 10 identical urn coffins in the Yangshao cultural site in Tumen. The adult skulls, limb bones, and pelvic bones placed in the jar were all reloaded into the "urn coffin". However, no pit tombs have been found in the vicinity of these urn coffins.

The second category: sand jars (urns) are synthesized with pots or bowls. The jar (or urn) contains the corpse of a child, which is covered with one or two pottery bowls, and a small hole is drilled at the bottom of the bowl. It has also been found at the Wangwan site in Luoyang, Henan, Dazhang in Linru, Pixian in Shaanxi, and along the Danjiang River in southwestern Henan Province.

There are also adult urn coffins (secondary burials) of this type. For example, in 1972, it was found in the Yangshao cultural site of Jiangzhai in Lintong.

The third category: the combination of beans and tripods, there are also burial utensils with a lid (three-legged plate) and a sand jar, all of which are children's urn coffin burials, and six are found in the Yangshao cultural site of Qiu Gongcheng in Lushan

Category 4: Synthesis of two half-cut pointed bottom bottles. Three different forms of "small-mouthed pointed bottom bottle burials" were found in the Yangshao Cultural Site of Wangwan in Luoyang, totaling more than 40. One is the top half of the conical flask and the bottom half of the other, the top half of the two culet flasks, and the second half of the two pointed bottom flasks. All three burial utensils were used to bury children. It is usually placed horizontally, buried around the perimeter of the house.

Category 5: The upper part of the conical bottom bottle is synthesized with a straight cylinder (cylinder). The body of the child was buried near the house. This burial tool was found in the Yangshao cultural site of Wangwan in Luoyang.

Hebei Qian'an discovered the form of "one kettle and two urns" of "urn coffin burial" during the Warring States Period.

In 2005, archaeologists from Hebei Province discovered tombs from the Han and Tang dynasties in Hejian City, including 7 urn coffins and 3 tile coffins in the Western Han Dynasty. In order to cooperate with the construction of the highway from Cangzhou to Baoding in Hebei Province, the Hebei Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics took the lead in carrying out archaeological surveys along the line, in the south of Xiaozhangzhuang Village, about 7 kilometers northwest of Hejian City, a tomb group of the Han Dynasty and the Tang Dynasty was found, through excavation, a total of 13 tombs were found, divided into two areas in the north and south, including 7 urn coffins in the Western Han Dynasty, 3 tile coffins, and 3 brick chamber tombs in the Tang Dynasty. Urn coffins and tile coffins are mainly found in the northern area, and only two brick chamber tombs of the Tang Dynasty have been found in the southern area. Exploration has indicated that large burials may also be present in the southern and western parts of the North Zone. Urn coffin burial and tile coffin burial were both ways of burying underage children in the Han Dynasty, and the discovery of so many urn coffins and tile coffin burials proves that the child mortality rate in this area was high at that time.

On August 31, 2014, the Hebei Provincial Department of Cultural Relics recently conducted the second archaeological excavation at the site of the Guodu of the Western Han Dynasty Gaoguo Hou in the north of Houzhao Gezhuang Village, Qingta Township, Renqiu City.

The ruins of Yuchi Temple

Archaeology of the site of Yuchi Temple - the first discovery of children's urn coffins

The ruins of Weichi Temple, known as "China's first primitive village", are the place where primitive people lived 5,000 years ago. Of the 40 tombs found in archaeology, 32 were buried in urn coffins for children.

November 21, 2003 - On November 18, archaeologists found the earliest children's urn coffin in the Dawenkou cultural layer, a prehistoric site of Weichi Temple in Mengcheng County. According to Wang Jihuai, a researcher at the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, this is the first earliest children's urn coffin found at the prehistoric site of Yuchi Temple since the thirteenth excavation.

This children's urn coffin was found in the northwest of Tanfang, and from the exposed tombs and strata, it was buried on the site of the red clay house in Dawenkou, directly breaking the red clay living surface and the earliest building surface. According to experts, this tomb is buried on the building of the house, it is the earliest group of tombs buried, and it is also one of the earliest tombs in the prehistoric site of the entire Yuchi Temple.

Researcher Wang Jihuai said: "From the stratigraphic point of view, it breaks the architectural layer of the house, at the same time, the unearthed artifacts also have obvious early characteristics, there are obvious cultural characteristics of the chisel foot, because the house is earlier than the tomb, the foot unearthed in the house is duckbill-shaped, it is not only flat, but also wider at both ends." And what was unearthed in this early tomb is the chisel, which is like a chisel, which means that the tomb is later than the house. ”

Experts also analyzed the burial utensils, and the experts believe that this is an incomplete Dakouzun, and the bottom of the tomb is made of other pottery as the lower half of the burial utensils, and after the child is put in, there is another thing on the top, which belongs to the burial utensils composed of two types of utensils. Although the specifications of this burial tool are not high, they do not belong to the children of poor families, and it is likely to be the burial of children of ordinary families.

Shandong

The Guangrao County Detention Center in Shandong Province found a group of pottery while digging the foundation of the pigsty under construction, and reported the situation to the Dongying City History Museum while protecting the site, and Wang Jianguo, deputy director of the museum, immediately led two comrades from the Department of Archaeology to investigate. After cleaning and excavation, this is an urn coffin tomb in the Western Han Dynasty, 1.3 meters from the ground, and the bottom of the tomb has been tamped. The urn coffin is east-west, with a total length of 0.67 meters, and is composed of three pieces of Han Dynasty pottery: a sand red pottery pot with a bottom and two gray pottery pots are buckled together, and the baby corpse in the jar has been decomposed due to the age. Experts identified it as an urn burial for a baby under one year old.

Henan

Five adult urn coffins have been found in the Yangshao cultural site of Qiu Gongcheng in Lushan County, Henan. The lid is hemispherical, and there are five inverted "mud buttons" along the outer wall of the mouth, which are symmetrical up and down, probably after the bones of the deceased are loaded, the lid is fastened on the top, and the "mud buttons" are hooked with ropes on the outside to tie them together. The briefing said that the five urn coffins were "buried together when they were unearthed,...... The molars of the deceased in Tomb 10 were so worn out that they resembled the bones of an old man."

In the Henan Provincial Museum, there have been several pieces of tall bottle-shaped pottery, the pointed bottom, the outer wall of the mouth generally has a circle of barb-shaped "mud buttons", some are bundled roots, the bottom of some utensils also wears a small hole, the joint of the mouth, are attached to the prominent "mud button", and even some of the mouth edge is also made of obvious "mother and son mouth" shape, these very unique utensils, may be a special burial tool.

Sichuan

Santai County, Sichuan Province, found urn coffin burial for the first time

On October 28, Santai County, Mianyang City, Sichuan Province, recently discovered a Qing Dynasty tomb similar to an urn coffin burial - the tomb of the Queen Mother Li.

According to the website of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, the tomb is located in Fuli Village, Le'an Town, Santai West Road. It is bordered by Wuchaliang in the north, and the east and west sides are long beams that stretch for about 1 kilometer. At the end of the last century, the construction of the three (Taiwan) and the middle (river) highway led to the complete destruction of the tomb, and now only stone burial tools and tombstones remain. The hollow stone burial tool is composed of two parts, the coffin has a straight mouth and flat lips and an oval abdomen, with a height of 0.98 meters, an inner depth of 0.77, an abdominal diameter of 1 meter, and a bottom diameter of 0.62 meters. The mouth part has two layers inside and outside, concave and convex inside, the outer diameter is 0.85, the inner diameter is 0.67, and the inner and outer walls are decorated with chisel lines. The coffin cover is green sand stone, divided into two layers inside and outside, convex outside and concave inside, the outer diameter is 0.81 meters, the inner diameter is 0.68 meters, and the cover thickness is 0.18 meters; According to his descendants, the burial vessel was originally a clay pot, and the remains of the Wang family who were first buried in other provinces and then moved to Sichuan were inside. Wang's descendants have moved the tomb to 70 meters away from the hillside, and re-erected the tombstone, the coffin cover is inlaid in the front of the mound, the tablet is a rectangular peach head stele, 1.2 high, 0.7 wide, 0.23 meters thick. The front of the stele is inscribed: the tomb of the queen mother Li Laotaijun, the fifteenth year of Daoguang in the Qing Dynasty;

According to the records, urn coffins are mostly seen in the Han Dynasty, often used to bury young children and teenagers, and most of them are pottery, but the tombs found this time are adult tombs in the Qing Dynasty, the materials are also different, and the preservation is relatively complete. The discovery of the tomb provides new materials for the study of social development and funerary customs in the middle of the Qing Dynasty in the region.

Adult secondary urn coffin burial

Adult secondary urn coffin burial is a unique cultural phenomenon, popular in the middle of Yangshao culture in a specific area of western Henan, specifically, that is, north of Funiu Mountain, south of Longmen Mountain-Yellow River, west of Songshan Mountain, and east of Xiong'er Mountain, because of the name of the main river in the region, it can also be called "Yiluo River Basin". Some scholars refer to the middle Yangshao culture in this area as the "Yancun type" with the representative characteristics of the second urn coffin burial of adults, and then some scholars discuss in detail from the three aspects of burial customs, pottery and faience patterns, and analyze the particularity of this burial custom. Based on the archaeological discoveries in the Guanzhong region in the middle reaches of the Yellow River and the Jinnan region in western Henan, this paper hopes to trace the origin of adult secondary urn coffins in western Henan.