Capital city were the political, cultural, and military centers of a nation, and
by their very nature, they embodied the most essential and important material
culture of their time, regardless of the country. At the same time, they were
constantly und...
Capital city were the political, cultural, and military centers of a nation, and
by their very nature, they embodied the most essential and important material
culture of their time, regardless of the country. At the same time, they were
constantly undergoing internal changes according to the nature of their social
structure and the demands of their sophisticated development, which was
never an accidental phenomenon. The changes in the city were inevitable and
took place under certain rules, which reflected the ideas of the society at the
time, and the people who built the city considered and enforced the conditions
for a facility to function according to its purpose according to these rules.
Through this, it can be said that the Capital city system was gradually formed
as an institution. Therefore, the history of the development of cities is also
the history of the formation of the Capital city system.
The main topics of research in Chinese urban archaeology are the origin of
cities, the rise of civilization, the process of urban change and development,
spatial layout, prehistory and location, economic structure, design plans and
ideas, castle structures, walls, and defense systems. Among them, researchers
have focused on the planform and spatial arrangement of the city, which has
been dominated by linear and uniform schematic descriptions. This has been
an excellent tool for explaining the development of Chinese cities in a clear
way through schematic research, but it has also caused a simplistic
understanding of Chinese cities. It does not provide a complete interpretation
and explanation of the changes in the cities of each period, which were
actually much more complex and detailed. In other words, the macroscopic
interpretation blocks the view of the diversified possibilities reflected in the
cities. I believe this is due to the lack of comprehensive comparative review
and consideration at the same level of analysis as the primary data analysis.
At the same time, the focus was on individual cities and a limited scope of
research, or conversely, the scope of research was wide, but the conclusions
were low-resolution, based on macroscopic perspectives and coarse-grained
analytical studies. To this end, I have attempted to interpret and restore the
origins of Chinese cities and the process of their formation by
comprehensively analyzing and examining the construction techniques, castle
structures, spatial arrangements, and landscape processes from the earliest
holy sites at the end of the Prehistoric period to the cities of the Qin and Han
periods, when China's first unified empire was formed.
Walls were not a requirement for cities in the Third Dynasty of
Xia-Shang-Zhou, and even in Zhou cities, the foundations of walls have not
yet been identified. However, this does not mean that wall structures were not
built, only that defenses were not constructed. Within the city, the outer
perimeter had already begun to be built from the Relative Period, but at that
time, the city was more for the purpose of the wei army than the people. The
technique of wall construction utilized plate shafts, which originated from
prehistoric sacred sites in the middle reaches of the Yellow River. Therefore,
the two can be said to have a succession relationship, at least in terms of
construction techniques. The plate-axis structures until the late Haidae period
were rather crude, but they seem to have been greatly improved after the
entry of the opponent. The construction of the wall and the moat were almost
simultaneous, as documented in the literature. Drainage was considered
essential for the gate, and its construction formed the universal structure of
palace and garden architecture after the appearance of the wirak type. After
the entry into the opponent's territory, the appearance of quadrangular
architecture began to emerge, which developed from the existing wororak-type
structure. At that time, the principle and regulation of composition was that
the palace-nursery area must be equipped with defensive facilities, and the
early handicraft workshops were distributed in the vicinity of the palace and
gradually moved to the outlying areas.
Walls were an essential facility in the cities of the imperial states of the
Spring and Autumn Warring States Period, and it is understood that the
reason why the imperial states of the period considered walls and other
defense facilities in their cities is highly related to the background of the
period. The crucial difference between the cities of the Three Kingdoms period
is that the bisexual cities were not limited to the inner and outer ramparts,
and the bisexual cities were not limited to the inner and outer ramparts. Even
the east-west parallel cities, which had very similar castle structures to each
other, did not have uniform elements such as palaces, gates, and spatial
arrangements. This cannot be seen as a regional similarity or difference, but
rather as a difference due to various causes such as historical background
and political factors at the national level. In particular, the interpretation that
the bimodal castle structure that emerged during the Spring and Autumn
Warring States Period originated from the enhancement of defensive functions
is disagreeable. The wall construction inherited the plate shafts B, C, and D
that appeared in the Three Kingdoms period, while the construction technique
of E was added. On the other hand, there are cases where different
construction methods were applied to different sections within the same wall,
both in prehistoric sacred sites and urban walls of the advanced period. This
phenomenon is particularly noteworthy and reflects the possibility of
diversifying the construction process. The countries of the Spring and Autumn
Warring States period applied and modified the city structure flexibly under
the basic principles, and the basic principles applied here are that after the
construction of the palace, a secondary outer wall was built when the
expansion and extension exceeded a certain range, and the palace and
nursery, which are the core facilities of the city, were built on a high point
within the city. In conclusion, there was no unified model and regulation of
castle structures in the Spring and Autumn Warring States period, and some
similarities can be observed between different empires. However, the similarity
is also an optical illusion that comes from the similarity of the plane of the
castle structure.
The reality of the city regulations in the Rites of Zhou and Crafts, which
have been controversially debated by many researchers, did not exist in the
cities of the Advanced Period, but were most likely formed under the influence
of the Western Han Jiajing, and furthermore, were the result of the imperial
system cities that had already been formed in the Qin and Han periods