Cemetery of Xibeigang

Site of the Dynasty Shang, with Anyang, in China (XIVe-XIe front century J. - C.).

Though plundered in antiquity, the tombs testify to an incredible richness (bronzes, jade, objects in bone, porcelain shells, sacrifices of men and of dogs, light tanks with two wheels, wood ceilings paints of lacquer). The royal tombs are appeared as rectangular pits with four access paths to north and the south, the east and the west, and a central well. They are of small number and are distinguished from the less important tombs by the more complex character of their architecture and abundance from their funerary furniture. It is there only that one found bronzes. The ordinary tombs contain only vases in pottery, and smallest are deprived of any furniture.

The excavations confirm the practice of the human sacrifices. In only one tomb and his dependences, one belonged more than 300 skeletons, unquestionable intact and others whose head was separated from the trunk. These sacrifices, which seem sometimes voluntary, are reduced during thousand-year-old Ier and are known only in a sporadic way under the empire. At the end of the antiquated time, the use appears to substitute for the human victims of the mannequins of wicker or wood the statues life size or terra cotta. Starting from the empire, it is not any more but of small figurines in pottery, then objects out of paper which are burned at the time of the funeral.

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