Images courtesy of respondents
On December 26, the results of the 2021 Zhejiang Archaeological Important Discoveries Selection Were released, and the first phase of the Shaoxing Lanting Wildlife Park Cemetery was selected as one of the top ten important archaeological discoveries in Zhejiang. In the first phase of the Lanting Wildlife Park cemetery, a total of 55 tombs from the Warring States to the Ming and Qing dynasties were found, mostly in the Six Dynasties and Tang Tombs, two of which were large tombs of the Western Jin Dynasty with clear ages, which were rare in Zhejiang. The two large tombs show that the owner of the tomb is noble, and at that time, the Jiangnan Gate Valve Clan had strong financial resources and important cultural relics value.
The first phase of Lanting Wildlife Park is located on the east side of Lanting Village, Lanting Street, Keqiao District, and the overall terrain is a gentle slope in front of the mountain facing the water. The cemetery is 200 meters long from east to west, 80 meters wide from north to south, with an area of about 16,000 square meters, backed by follicle mountain, west of Dogtou Mountain, east of Dao xie mountain, Lanting River from the front of the mountain from east to west, about 2 kilometers northeast of the Yinshan Yue King Mausoleum. From March to September this year, the Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, together with the Keqiao District Museum, conducted archaeological excavations on the project plot in order to cooperate with the construction of the Keqiao District Wildlife Park Project (Phase I) in Shaoxing. During excavations, archaeologists found two double-chamber brick tombs with a total length of more than 16 meters.
According to archaeologists at the Keqiao District Museum, the No. 1 Western Jin Dynasty Tomb is 18 meters long and 3.5 meters wide, and is composed of a tomb passage, a Yongdao, an anterior chamber, an aisle and a back chamber. The interior decoration is luxurious and exquisite, unique. The brick surface is printed with green dragon white tiger pattern, animal face pattern, diamond-shaped three-coin pattern and other geometric ornaments; the brick surface is clearly engraved with the words "Yuankang Sixth Year Un-moon Thirty-Day" and "Yuankang Ninth Year Tai Nian Was Created on August 10th". It can be inferred from this that the tomb dates back to about 1723 years. The No. 2 Western Jin Dynasty Tomb is buried in loess below 10 meters, with a total length of 16 meters and a width of 3.3 meters. The drainage ditches of both tombs are more than 40 meters long.
Experts from the Keqiao District Museum believe that the discovery of two tombs in the Western Jin Dynasty has "two firsts" and "two important values". First, the tomb is super long and wide, and it has been discovered archaeologically for the first time in Shaoxing; the second is that the tomb wall has been well preserved with semi-circular column holes, which is the first time in Shaoxing and even Zhejiang Province; the two Western Jin Dynasty tombs have a clear chronology, which has a ruler significance for judging similar tombs and excavated cultural relics in the same period; the tomb bricks are engraved with exquisite ornaments such as green dragons and white tigers, which fully embody the life and death concepts and customs of people in ancient Shaoxing since the Eastern Han Dynasty, and provide rare information for studying the level of social and economic development of Shaoxing in ancient times.
In the first phase of the Lanting Wildlife Park cemetery, 12 Tang Dynasty tombs were also found, which provided valuable physical information for exploring the issues related to the "Road of Tang Poetry in Eastern Zhejiang", and the discovery of two arc-convex Tang Dynasty ship-shaped tombs was rare in the previous Tang tomb system.
Dr. Luo Rupeng, director of the project management department of the Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology and the head of the archaeological project of the first phase of the Lanting Wildlife Park, told reporters that the reason why the cemetery of the first phase of the Lanting Wildlife Park was selected as the "Top Ten" was because the two Western Jin tombs were of high grade in Zhejiang and were well preserved. The tomb appears in Lanting, which is similar to the age of the Book Saint Wang Xizhi and is an important archaeological discovery. The Lanting Western Jin Tomb is protected by digital records for overall relocation protection, which is also a major feature.
Zhou Nengbing
【Source: Zhejiang Provincial Bureau of Cultural Heritage】