The initial step-shaped wall that subsequently acted as the core of the expanded fortifications had a top width of 6.5 meters and was constructed of alternating layers of 5- to 20-centimeter-thick grayish white
and grayish yellow soil, with each of the layers being well pounded and smoothed. It was flanked with an interior protective knee wall and an outer wall of yellow earth, both of which were smoothed and hardened. The final wall was constructed by heightening and broadening the original by repairing the top and expanding the base with about 4 meters of soil excavated from the nearby moat, thereby covering the original inner knee wall as well. Although never thereafter expanded, the fortifications were repeatedly repaired during the Shang and Chou periods.
Several other important Ch’ü-chia-ling sites dating from 3000 to 2600 BCE, despite really being “fortified towns,” are generally termed cities because of their size and comparatively advanced stage of development: Tsou-ma-ling, Yang-hsiang-ch’eng, Ma-chia-yüan, Chi-ming-ch’eng, and Shih-chia-ho.
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The ancient city at Tsou-ma-ling in Hubei is located about four kilometers from the Yangtze River next to Shang-chin Lake, its water source in antiquity. Six cultural layers ranging from the late Ta-hsi through the Ch’ü-chia-ling and middle Shih-chia-ho are discernible, impressive evidence for the site’s strategic and environmental desirability.
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The fortifications, which were probably erected in the early Ch’ü-chia-ling period, defended a town that flourished throughout the era. The walled enclosure delineates an irregular circle marked by various indentations that obviously resulted from attempts to conform to the terrain’s characteristics. Extending roughly 370 meters east to west and 300 meters north to south, Tsou-ma-ling’s approximately 1,200-meter rectangular circumference encompassed an area of 78,000 square meters.
The fortifications stand a substantial 4 to 5 meters high over the interior platform but a formidable 7 to 8 meters above the surrounding countryside and vary between 25 and 37 meters in width at the bottom and 10 and 20 at the top. The 13-meter-wide core wall was constructed from tamped layers composed of alternating yellow and gray soils that range from 10 to 30 centimeters in thickness. Most of the soil was apparently excavated from the 30- to 35-meter-wide, 2-meter-deep moat that exploited preexisting depressions in some places. Defensive platforms constructed near the town’s gates controlled access to the interior.
The ancient fortified city at Ma-chia-yüan in Hubei mainly reflects the Ch’ü-chia-ling cultural phase but also shows remnants of the later Shih-chia-ho. It was built on a slight tumulus to exploit the terrain’s
configuration and protected by massive walls up to 32 meters wide that were steeply angled on the outside but gradually sloped on the inside. More trapezoidal than square in outline, the eastern and western walls were 640 and 740 meters long respectively, with the southern slightly exceeding 400 meters but the northern much shorter at 250 meters, creating an enclosure of some 240,000 square meters.
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Because the site’s interior stands about a meter above the outside terrain, the walls loomed five meters over the interior and some six meters over the exterior. Foundation remnants atop the fortifications indicate elementary defensive works once existed, and there are openings for gates on all four sides, as well as for additional water gates in the western and lower eastern walls. A protective moat encircled the town, the western portion of which integrated a swiftly flowing river with steep banks that must have furnished the requisite water supply.
Because Chi-ming-ch’eng was located in the middle of the Yangtze watershed, an area with multiple rivers as well as numerous lakes and marshes, flooding had to have been a primary concern.
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Although the Yangtze flows to the north and northeast, where it makes a sharp downward bend, the closest river is the western branch of the Sung-tzu. Within a greater site that extends some 500 meters north to south and 400 meters east to west, the 1,100 meters of fortifications essentially defined a square with rounded corners that encompassed 150,000 square meters.
The massive walls taper from 30 meters at the base to 15 meters at the top, with the remnants varying in height from 2 to 3 meters. Cross-sectional analysis reveals at least seven layers, and the interior contains a tamped earth platform typical of ancient sites. A protective moat some 20 to 30 meters wide with an average depth of 1 to 2 meters and a total circumference of 1,300 meters completely surrounded the town. Being a Ch’ü-chia-ling cultural site, it should date somewhere between 3000 and 2600 BCE.
Yang-hsiang-ch’eng in Hubei reportedly dates to the end of the Ch’ü-chia-ling cultural phase. Its rectangular walls run about 580 meters from east to west and 350 meters from north to south, encompassing about 120,000 square meters within the interior of its 10- to 20-meter-wide bulwark. Apart from the usual city gate openings, a water gate apparently was located on the north side. The walls themselves are composed of
alternating layers of yellow and gray soil of varying thickness and are surrounded by a 30- to 45-meter-wide protective moat with a slight depth of 1 meter.
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Shih-chia-ho in Hubei, the defining site for the Shih-chia-ho cultural phase, encompasses an enormous 1.2 million square meters within a rectangular enclosure marked by slightly rounded corners of 1,200 meters from north to south and 1,100 meters east to west.
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The walls, which towered 6 to 8 meters high and were 8 to 10 meters wide at the top, were constructed in mounded, minimally pounded layers between 10 and 20 centimeters thick. The entire city was protected by an enormous moat some 4,800 meters in circumference that reportedly varied between 60 and 100 meters wide. The Eastern Ho River flowed quite close on the eastern side; mounds and low hills in the northwest, west, and south would have impeded aggressors in antiquity. An enclosure in the northeastern part created by walls that were 4 to 6 meters wide at the top and 10 to 12 at the base defined a separate section measuring roughly 510 by 280 meters, of unknown importance. The total population has been estimated at between 30,000 and 50,000.
It has been suggested that in comparison with other early fortified towns, the walls of the six Ch’ü-chia-ling sites—Shih-chia-ho, Tsou-ma-ling, Ch’eng-t’ou-shan, Yang-hsiang-ch’eng, Ma-chia-yüan, and Chi-ming-ch’eng—are much longer, generally being 100 to 200 meters per side, and their defensive needs different from those of the so-called core Lungshan area in Hubei and Shandong.
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Obviously this is not the only possible conclusion, because greater site sizes and larger walls may simply reflect increased population and material wealth and therefore greater capacity for such projects or even military dominance of the surrounding countryside. Nevertheless, their increasingly formidable character is undeniable. Moreover, based on the walls apparently having been constructed solely for protection against external enemies and other contextual evidence, despite arguments to the contrary it appears that Ch’ü-chia-ling culture was already dominated by martial rulers and that conflict between groups of settlements seeking to increase their wealth and power had already spawned violent clashes. Only significant threats could have made fortifications essential for survival, justifying the diversion of enormous manpower to wall building.
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Finally, down in the southeast a remarkable site in Zhejiang with complex conjoined fortification measures, possibly the remnants of the Liang-chu capital, has recently been investigated. Although reports remain sketchy, this southeastern Yangtze River area city was undoubtedly surrounded by a slightly rectangular enclosure marked by somewhat rounded corners, with rough dimensions of 1,800-1,900 meters north to south and 1,500-1,700 east to west. The walls were erected on 40- to 60-meter-wide foundations created from a ditch that included stone pieces systematically layered on top of a 20-centimeter-thick clay bed, and they were protected by an exterior moat roughly 45 meters wide and 1.5 meters deep. The active city covered a total area of about 2.9 square kilometers, and the area within the walls encompassed five small hillocks in all, one each in the northeast and southwest corners and three more in the center. The yellow earth comprising the walls was brought from the nearby mountains rather than simply sourced around the perimeter, vivid evidence of the inhabitants’ ability to mobilize a massive labor force to execute a clearly predesigned city.
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3.
ANCIENT FORTIFICATIONS, II
C
ULTURES IDENTIFIED WITH the semiarid Northern zone were traditionally deemed semicivilized and disparaged as “barbarian” by the denizens of Imperial China because they were perceived as lagging far behind Hua-Hsia material and intellectual levels. However they might be interpreted, the interminable steppe-sedentary clashes that would plague both realms throughout Chinese history commenced in the Shang, if not earlier. However, vestigial evidence for martial threats having troubled the Northern zone itself exists in defensive works that date back prior to the currently known conflict horizon.
Ditches constituted the primary defensive measures in the Hsing-lung-wa (6200/6000 to 5600/5500 BCE), Hung-shan (3500-3000), and Hsia-chia-tien (2000-1500) cultures.
1
However, recent decades have witnessed the discovery of numerous Lungshan villages where the inhabitants chose to erect walls instead of relying on ditches, including a group of twelve sites in central and southern Inner Mongolia characterized by protective walls and dwellings constructed from stone rather than earth.
2
Originally occupied between 3000 and 2300 BCE, an interval during which localized ecological constraints prompted the initiation of new settlements by splinter groups, they were abandoned by 1500 BCE because the climate cooled below the point of sustainable agricultural yields.
3
The segregated quarters, variation in building size, large sacrificial altars, well-developed pottery, and handful of bronze artifacts discovered in these twelve towns are interpreted as evidence of growing class differentiation and the emergence of localized chiefs. The sites themselves vary in size from a minimal 4,000 square meters to a very substantial
130,000 but are primarily small and must have been inhabited by limited populations of perhaps a thousand.
Although the sites may be geographically divided into three groups, they all appear to have functioned as military citadels because their walls are not only constructed of stone but also display significant defensive characteristics. For example, gate openings are generally protected by screening walls, and the sites with the fewest natural advantages of terrain often employ parallel doubled walls augmented by external moats or ditches. Such extensive, determined measures, undertaken in an era of simple tools, can only be interpreted as evidence of a pervasive fear of aggressors.
These fortified settlements differ in their exploitation of the terrain’s configuration. The five sites in the Pao-t’ou area, despite being situated on comparatively raised ground, are all located on the lower slope of Mt. Ta-ch’ing in the region south of Mt. Yang and thus are marked by north-to-south declinations.
4
They are also fully walled except where precipitous cliffs obviate any need for further defensive works and generally comprise aggregates of smaller citadels positioned in close proximity. For example, Wei-chün has three distinct walled enclaves, whereas A-shan, the largest in the group, and Sha-mu-chia each have two. (Spaced some 250 meters apart, the square one at A-shan measures 260 meters by 120 meters for a total 31,200 square meters; the second tapers from 120 meters to 50 meters along a length of 240 meters.)
In contrast, the four towns studied in the Tai-hai area essentially assume the shape of a traditional Chinese bamboo basket, three of the sides being high and the remaining one low, the equivalent of the basket’s opening.
5
Rather than multiple bastions and semisubterranean dwellings, they are internally marked by smaller, segregated walled areas and vary in size from 20,000 square meters to Lao-hu’s surprising 130,000 square meters.
Insofar as they average roughly 4,000 square meters each, terrain considerations must have heavily constrained the six small sites clustered along the southern flow of the Yellow River.
6
Although they all exploit local heights and take full advantage of the Yellow River’s confluence with nearby valleys and ravines, they also augment their defensive posture with doubled exterior walls, external ditches and moats, and protective galleys on both the interior and exterior of entrances.
Another recently excavated western Liaoning hillside site marked by integrated defensive measures provides further evidence that fear of attack had become a crucial factor in village design and location even in the north during the first half of the second millennium BCE. Dating to the lower Hsia-chia-tien culture (2000 to 1500 BCE or roughly contemporaneous with the Hsia), the 40,000-square-meter village is defined by extensive ditches on three sides and a steep cliff on the remaining or southern border. The ditches on the east and west, both of utilized preexisting ravines, are an astonishing 10 meters deep, and a double stone wall marked by a few crenellations and 17-meter internal spacing runs down the western side. Additional walls isolate a section in the north, and other internal walls provide interior barriers in the remaining portion, completing the formidable bastion.
7
Walls constructed from larger stones stabilized with smaller stones and plugged with pebbles wedged into the gaps define these sites.
8
Since remnants of tamped earth walls may still be found in this area after thousands of years, and the soil in the vicinity of the Yellow River is particularly conducive to rammed earth construction, the inhabitants must have deliberately opted to employ stone. Insofar as stone walls more readily resist scouring by floodwaters than does pounded earth, the inhabitants could have positioned their settlements along the local rivers, which would have been far more convenient for drawing water. Defense against human threat rather than flood avoidance therefore must have been the paramount factor in selecting somewhat distant, moderate heights for their villages.