Abstract
The article is devoted to the problem of dating a segment of a long (or “great”) wall built in the pre-Han time within the borders of the present Shaanxi province. Traditionally, the construction of this fortified line, going to the North across the Ordos plateau (including the north of Shaanxi), is attributed to the reign of the Qin Zhao-hsiang-wang (after 272 BC). However, the author previously formulated a hypothesis that the wall of Zhao-hsiang-wang ended no further than the Suide county, and the northern section of the wall across the Jingbian, Hengshan, Yulin and Shenmu counties was subsequently built by order of Qin Shi-huang, which, thus, in 214–210 BC did not hold the entire Ordos, but only a narrow strip of land on its eastern outskirts. The article deals with dating finds (tile fragments) obtained from the first archaeological survey of these long walls in Shaanxi (published in a two-volume report in 2015). The author concludes that all found fragments of tile-ends find analogies in the antiquites of the Qin and Han periods, including two tile-ends made by craftsmen resettled from the Qi kingdom conquered by Shi-huang in 221 BC. Technological imprints on tile gutters either have a wide dating within the 4th–2 nd centuries BC, or unambiguously date back to the Han time. This refutes the assertion of the authors of the 2015 report that the tile finds allegedly indicate the construction of walls in the pre-Qin period.
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