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The
Western Zhou Chariot Burial Pit was unearthed at Zhangjiapo, Chang'an
County in 1955. In the Bronze Age, the war chariot was the pre-eminent
symbol of power. "Chariot-and-horse pits" contains funerary
objects for deceased slave-owners for the Western Zhou dynasty. The slave
buried as sacrificial offering testifies to the slave-owner's reactionary
class nature.
This pit is rectangle-shaped with its length of 5.6 meters and depth of
2 meters. Inside the pit there are two chariots, six horses and one slave.
One wooden chariot with only one thill is hauled by four horses, which
was used to do battle and adorned with bronze. The other one is hauled
by two horses, which was used to ride and decorated with seashell.
The unearthed chariots, the remains of horses
and their decorations exemplify that the handicraft industry of three
thousand years ago such as wood work, leather work, the metal work, especially
the bronze production of this period, had reached quite high technical
standard.
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