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Record W4407423704 · doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0318926

Sacrificial animals as evidence for the disintegration of the ritual and music system: A case study of the Zhuolu site (790-410 BC)

2025· article· en· W4407423704 on OpenAlexaff
Yu Xin, Hailin Liu, Zhe Zhang, Wei Dong

Bibliographic record

VenuePLoS ONE · 2025
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldEarth and Planetary Sciences
TopicArchaeology and ancient environmental studies
Canadian institutionsBC Research (Canada)Simon Fraser University
FundersChina Scholarship CouncilJilin University
KeywordsShang dynastyChinaWestern ZhouFront (military)Power (physics)SacrificeHistoryArchaeologyGeography

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

Ritual and music are important approaches to convey the ethical and moral concepts in the Zhou Dynasty (1046-256 BC) in China. The ritual and music (liyue) system, therefore, was established by the Duke of Zhou to maintain social order, create and strengthen the power of the Shang royalty. The essence of the system was the division of classes. The primary objective of this study was to analyze the sacrificial animals from the Zhuolu site (40°13´N, 115°24´E) in Hebei Province, China. We summarized the characteristics of sacrificial behavior during that period by examining the types of sacrificial animals and the specific parts of their bones. Ultimately, we discussed whether these characteristics align with the established rules of the ritual and music system. In this study, excavated animal bones were subjected to species identification, surface mark recording, and carbon and nitrogen stable isotope analyses. Skeletal surface marks and stable isotope analyses indicated that there are various methods by which people access and utilize animal resources. There are various animals, including pigs, deer, hares, ring-necked pheasants, and fish, were utilized in the burials. Included in these bones are not only the left and front parts of the body, but also the right part and the hind limbs. Not only is this inconsistent with the specified combination of animal species designated for sacrifice within the ritual and music system, but it also deviates from the requirement to utilize the left and front halves of the limbs. People may have changed and reduced the use of certain sacrificial animals according to their personal preferences and needs. This may be attributed to the disintegration of the ritual system during that period. By comparing different sites, it is possible to infer that the stringent execution of rules regarding the use of animals in burial rituals was directly related to the level of ritual system development during the period to which the site is associated.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.001
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.001
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Observational · Consensus signal: none
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score0.012
Threshold uncertainty score0.024

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0010.001
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0010.001
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.000
Bibliometrics0.0020.002
Science and technology studies0.0060.005
Scholarly communication0.0010.001
Open science0.0020.002
Research integrity0.0020.002
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0020.000

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.076
GPT teacher head0.247
Teacher spread0.171 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designObservational
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations2
Published2025
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

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