In a relatively relaxed, healthy environment, more attention and more relevance is not a bad thing, at least it is conducive to archaeologists to carry out projects and help spread knowledge.
▲ Aerial photography of the tomb of Emperor Wen of Han, a large number of precious cultural relics in the tomb were exposed. Video/Beijing News our video
Text | Zhou Wenhan
On the morning of December 14, according to the Beijing News, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage held an online meeting in Beijing to focus on three important archaeological discoveries and research results in Gansu, Henan and Shaanxi. At the meeting, it was announced that the great tomb of Bailuyuan Jiangcun in Xi'an City, Shaanxi Province, was the tomb of Emperor Wen of Han. For a time, the "discovery of the tomb of Emperor Wen of Han" caused widespread concern.
▲On the morning of December 14, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage held an online meeting in Beijing. Photo/CCTV
Such a seemingly partial "archaeological news" turned out to be the first in the hot search. Of course, this is not unrelated to the story that most of the Chinese people are keen on the emperor - even at auction, all the emperor's royal objects such as seals, utensils and even inscriptions of calligraphy and painting collections can sell for tens of millions of "sky-high prices". It is worth pondering whether this is the cultural consciousness shaped by a long history, or the influence caused by the palace fighting drama and the emperor drama in the past few decades.
Of course, this also has to do with the drama of the news content. Because in the nearly 700 years of the Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties, people thought that the tomb of Emperor Wen of Han was in the place of the "Phoenix Mouth" that bulged like a mountain, and many local officials also erected monuments as evidence, such as Bi Yuan, a scholar of the Qing Dynasty and the inspector of Shaanxi, who also erected a stone stele of "Emperor Hanwen's Tomb" there for people to hang. The core area of the key cultural relics protection unit set up by the state here is also in Fenghuangzui, attracting thousands of Mugu people to visit.
Today's archaeologists have studied, investigated, and tried to excavate to prove the true location of the Han Wen Emperor's Tomb, and in the "Jiangcun Tomb" one kilometer away from the Phoenix Mouth (previously speculated that this was the tomb of Princess Guantao, the daughter of emperor Han Wendi), this "subversive" cognition certainly makes everyone full of curiosity.
The factors that can be linked to this matter are particularly rich. Jiangcun Tomb is located in Bailuyuan, which is easy to think of Chen Zhongzhong's famous novel "White Deer Plain", as well as related movies, dramas, etc.; it can also be associated with the stories recorded in the "History" and "Book of Han" such as "Wenjing Zhizhi", and think of the exclamations in Tang poems and Song poems.
And this archaeological excavation, like some previous archaeological discoveries, was forced by tomb robbers to "have to do so".
As early as 2002, stolen cultural relics that may have come from the Xi'an Imperial Tomb appeared on the auction market. In 2016, the public security department found that the seventh batch of national key cultural relics protection unit "Han Yun Ling" (the tomb of The Concubine of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty "Lady Hook Yi") was invaded by thieves, and the police followed the vine to find the melon, arrested several tomb robbery gangs, and found that they had invaded and stolen several tombs in Shaanxi and Gansu, including the Duling tomb of emperor Xuan of Han and the large tomb of Bailuyuan Jiangcun.
These tomb robbers were later tried to serve sentences, and officials responsible for negligence in the Western Han Dynasty Imperial Tomb Protection and Management Center and its subordinate Department of Baling Management and Protection were also punished by party and government discipline. Subsequently, there was archaeological exploration and excavation by the Shaanxi Provincial and Xi'an Archaeological Research Institute.
In short, this matter makes history lovers, cultural relics and art lovers, criminal case researchers and many other people in many fields have something to say, which can naturally cause ripples. Of course, this is also inseparable from the support of television, mobile phone mobile push media, newspapers and periodicals, etc.
Of course, archaeology is a humanities discipline or social science with historical and cultural heritage in the sense of theory, method and practice, but an archaeological event can attract people's general attention because this "event" links many social realities, cultural traditions, public consciousness and other factors, as well as criminal cases and economic interests.
▲Exterior view of BalingLing District. Photo/CCTV
This reminds us that today's "archaeological practice" has been closely linked to the construction of social public culture. Sometimes, it may not be a study within the archaeological academic community that drives the development of "archaeological practice", but the stimulus of an accident outside — a tomb robbery, a popular novel, a movie, a real estate project going on or infrastructure construction.
Of course, it is also possible that the cultural relics management system has changed, the technical means have been revolutionary, and various factors can contribute to an important archaeological discovery.
In fact, the origin and development of modern Chinese archaeology has always been promoted under the interaction with "many practical factors" at the social level. In a relatively relaxed and healthy environment, more attention and more correlation is not a bad thing, at least it is conducive to archaeologists to carry out projects and help spread knowledge.
The development of archaeology is also inseparable from the rigorous work of archaeologists. Since 2017, the team of the Shaanxi Provincial Archaeological Research Institute and the Xi'an Institute of Cultural Relics Protection and Archaeology has continued to carry out rescue excavations of the Outer Hidden Pit of jiangcun tomb and the outer pit of Nanling for several years, and finally confirmed that the most likely owner of the "Jiangcun Tomb" is Emperor Wendi of Han, and it is their down-to-earth research that provides evidence from the academic level and uncovers this secret.
In short, the discovery of the Tomb of Emperor Wen of Han is not just an archaeological event. This is a "hot search" caused by a variety of social factors. This may point to the trend of future archaeological excavations: although it is archaeology, it is not limited to archaeology. In any case, we look forward to seeing more archaeological discoveries that fill historical research and enrich social life.
Beijing News special writer | Zhou Wenhan (Architectural and Art Critic)
Edit | Chi Daohua
Proofreading | Li Lijun
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