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27-1022: The site gave its name to a particular style of objects and architecture called the Xituanshan Culture, distributed throughout Jilin, Changchun and southern Heilongjiang . Xituanshan is a low-lying granite mountain to the west of Jilin City that faces Dongtuanshan across the Songhua River . Together, the two mountains were referred to in the past as the twin tuanshan peaks ( Chinese : 团山相峙 ). The site comprises 11 gulleys on Xituanshan's southwest slope, over which nine stone cist tombs are distributed. On excavation, various stone tools, pottery pieces, pig jaws, and pig tusks were found. In two graves, remains of plant seeds were found in pots: Setaria lutescens and Eriochloa villosa have been suggested to be wild ancestors of Foxtail millet and Broomcorn millet , which has been used to suggest that

54-842: A retaining wall built at Houshishan to protect the settlement from water run-off and soil creep . Buildings at several sites located on hills or promontories also appear to have been enclosed by defensive earthen walls. Grave walls were constructed using stone slabs or piles of smaller stones, but earth tombs appear in the Late Period. Young infants were buried in jars . Objects excavated include stone, textile, and bronze. Textiles made from hemp, goat, and dog hair were excavated from graves at Houshishan and Xingxingshao. Bronze artefacts are predominantly small weapons and tools, such as axes, blades, arrows, mirrors, and fish hooks, as well as decorative beads. Small bracelets made from bronze pieces and wooden combs decorated with bronze are particular to

81-409: A "culture". We assume that such a complex is the material expression of what today we would call "a people". The concept of an archaeological culture was crucial to linking the typological analysis of archaeological evidence to mechanisms that attempted to explain why they change through time. The key explanations favoured by culture-historians were the diffusion of forms from one group to another or

108-465: A culture, rather a combination of traits are required. This view culture gives life to the artifacts themselves. "Once 'cultures' are regarded as things, it is possible to attribute behavior to them, and to talk about them as if they were living organisms." Archaeological cultures were equated separate 'peoples' (ethnic groups or races ) leading in some cases to distinct nationalist archaeologies. Most archaeological cultures are named after either

135-470: A distinction between material cultures that actually belonged to a single cultural group. It has been highlighted, for example, that village-dwelling and nomadic Bedouin Arabs have radically different material cultures even if in other respects, they are very similar. In the past, such synchronous findings were often interpreted as representing intrusion by other groups. The concept of archaeological cultures

162-619: A growing interest in ethnicity in 19th-century Europe. The first use of "culture" in an archaeological context was in Christian Thomsen 's 1836 work Ledetraad til Nordisk Oldkyndighed ( Norwegian : Guide to Northern Antiquity ). In the later half of the 19th century archaeologists in Scandinavia and central Europe increasingly made use of the German concept of culture to describe the different groups they distinguished in

189-456: A new group migrating in with this new style. This idea of culture is known as normative culture . It relies on the assumption found in the view of archaeological culture that artifacts found are "an expression of cultural norms," and that these norms define culture. This view is also required to be polythetic , multiple artifacts must be found for a site to be classified under a specific archaeological culture. One trait alone does not result in

216-511: A specific designation for prehistoric cultures. Critics argue that cultural taxonomies lack a strong consensus on the epistemological aims of cultural taxonomy, The use of the term " culture " entered archaeology through 19th-century German ethnography , where the Kultur of tribal groups and rural peasants was distinguished from the Zivilisation of urbanised peoples. In contrast to

243-605: A specific period and region that may constitute the material culture remains of a particular past human society . The connection between these types is an empirical observation . Their interpretation in terms of ethnic or political groups is based on archaeologists' understanding. However, this is often subject to long-unresolved debates. The concept of the archaeological culture is fundamental to culture-historical archaeology . Different cultural groups have material culture items that differ both functionally and aesthetically due to varying cultural and social practices. This notion

270-403: Is a classifying device to order archaeological data, focused on artifacts as an expression of culture rather than people. The classic definition of this idea comes from Gordon Childe : We find certain types of remains – pots, implements, ornaments, burial rites and house forms – constantly recurring together. Such a complex of associated traits we shall call a "cultural group" or just

297-423: Is itself a divisive subject within the archaeological field. When first developed, archaeologic culture was viewed as a reflection of actual human culture. ...in the traditional view we translate present into past by collecting artifacts into groups, and naming those groups as archaeological cultures. We then make the equation between an archaeological and a human culture by making the assumption that artifacts are

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324-462: Is observably true on the broadest scales. For example, the equipment associated with the brewing of tea varies greatly across the world. Social relations to material culture often include notions of identity and status . Advocates of culture-historical archaeology use the notion to argue that sets of material culture can be used to trace ancient groups of people that were either self-identifying societies or ethnic groups . Archaeological culture

351-1060: The Dongliao River marks the northern boundary of the Xituanshan Culture, where its people interacted with the Baoshan Culture ( Chinese : 宝山文化 ; pinyin : Bǎoshān wénhuà ). The Xituanshan Culture is thought to have developed from local Neolithic cultures. People hunted and fished, as suggested by finds of wild animal bones and fish hooks; however, mortars and grind stones have also been excavated, which suggest that people practised agriculture. While only wild plant species have been found at Xituanshan site, domesticated species of plants have been found in Middle Period settlements. In 1980, excavators also discovered carbonised soy beans at Yangdun Damenghai. Xituanshan buildings were made up to 1.5 m below ground level against mountain rock surfaces or using overlapping stones. People also engineered their environments , as shown by

378-424: The migration of the peoples themselves. A simplistic example of the process might be that if one pottery-type had handles very similar to those of a neighbouring type but decoration similar to a different neighbour, the idea for the two features might have diffused from the neighbours. Conversely, if one pottery-type suddenly replaces a great diversity of pottery types in an entire region, that might be interpreted as

405-446: The archaeological culture found. Accusations came that archaeological culture was "idealist" as it assumes that norms and ideas are seen as being "important in the definition of cultural identity." It stresses the particularity of cultures: "Why and how they are different from the adjacent group." Processualists , and other subsequently critics of cultural-historical archaeology argued that archaeological culture treated culture as "just

432-462: The archaeological record of particular sites and regions, often alongside and as a synonym of "civilisation". It was not until the 20th century and the works of German prehistorian and fervent nationalist Gustaf Kossinna that the idea of archaeological cultures became central to the discipline. Kossinna saw the archaeological record as a mosaic of clearly defined cultures (or Kultur-Gruppen , culture groups) that were strongly associated with race . He

459-484: The broader use of the word that was introduced to English-language anthropology by Edward Burnett Tylor , Kultur was used by German ethnologists to describe the distinctive ways of life of a particular people or Volk , in this sense equivalent to the French civilisation . Works of Kulturgeschichte (culture history) were produced by a number of German scholars, particularly Gustav Klemm , from 1780 onwards, reflecting

486-405: The expressions of cultural ideas or norms. (...) This approach (...) was termed "culture history" by many (...). This view of culture would be "entirely satisfactory if the aim of archaeology was solely the definition and description of these entities." However, as the 1960s rolled around and archaeology sought to be more scientific, archaeologists wanted to do more than just describe artifacts, and

513-468: The more general " culture history " approach to archaeology that he began did replace social evolutionism as the dominant paradigm for much of the 20th century. Kossinna's basic concept of the archaeological culture, stripped of its racial aspects, was adopted by Vere Gordon Childe and Franz Boas , at the time the most influential archaeologists in Britain and America respectively. Childe, in particular,

540-457: The people buried at Xituanshan practised agriculture. Surveys were conducted on Xituanshan during the 1930s by Japanese archaeologist Mikami Tsugio and Chinese archaeologist Li Wenxin. In 1948 and 1949, researchers from Northeastern University 's History Department conducted excavations on burials. In 1950, the new government formally established a Northeast Archaeology Group headed by Pei Wenzhong , which also conducted excavations and excavated

567-475: The site and are not found elsewhere in the region at the same time. Jade axes and beads have also been found, in addition to awls made from deer antler and ornaments made from pig tusks. The Xituanshan culture is divided into three periods according to radiocarbon dates , and these periods are represented by different sites: Archaeological culture An archaeological culture is a recurring assemblage of types of artifacts , buildings and monuments from

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594-618: The tombs. A total of 116 cemeteries and settlements have been identified as having similar architecture or object styles to those found at Xituanshan; these are collectively referred to as the Xituanshan Culture. Only 20 sites have been excavated, the majority of which are centred on Jilin City . Most sites are found in the regions of Siping and Liaoyuan in Jilin Province, and southern Heilongjiang , in addition to neighbouring areas. Chinese archaeologist Jin Xudong has suggested that

621-487: The type artifact or type site that defines the culture. For example, cultures may be named after pottery types such as Linear Pottery culture or Funnelbeaker culture . More frequently, they are named after the site at which the culture was first defined such as the Hallstatt culture or Clovis culture . Since the term "culture" has many different meanings, scholars have also coined a more specific term paleoculture, as

648-641: Was believed to be a monolithic culture is shown by further study to be discrete societies. For example, the Windmill Hill culture now serves as a general label for several different groups that occupied southern Great Britain during the Neolithic . Conversely, some archaeologists have argued that some supposedly distinctive cultures are manifestations of a wider culture, but they show local differences based on environmental factors such as those related to Clactonian man. Conversely, archaeologists may make

675-576: Was particularly interested in reconstructing the movements of what he saw as the direct prehistoric ancestors of Germans, Slavs, Celts and other major Indo-European ethnic groups in order to trace the Aryan race to its homeland or Urheimat . The strongly racist character of Kossinna's work meant it had little direct influence outside of Germany at the time (the Nazi Party enthusiastically embraced his theories), or at all after World War II. However,

702-435: Was responsible for formulating the definition of archaeological culture that is still largely applies today. He defined archaeological culture as artifacts and remains that consistently occur together. This introduced a "new and discrete usage of the term which was significantly different from current anthropological usage." His definition in particular was purely a classifying device to order the archaeological data. Though he

729-551: Was sceptical about identifying particular ethnicities in the archaeological record and inclined much more to diffusionism than migrationism to explain culture change, Childe and later culture-historical archaeologists, like Kossinna, still equated separate archaeological cultures with separate "peoples". Later archaeologists have questioned the straightforward relationship between material culture and human societies. The definition of archaeological cultures and their relationship to past people has become less clear; in some cases, what

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