Two pieces of tower pottery excavated in Datong
"Cultural Relics World", 2004.03 Shi Hong
In September 1996, the Museum of Datong City, Shanxi Province, excavated an ancient tomb in conjunction with the Longxin Garden Infrastructure Project of Datong Longxin Industrial Company. Located in the north of Yingbin West Road in Datong City, on the south side of Longxin Garden, this tomb is a large slope tomb with an earthen cave. This tomb sits north and faces south, and is composed of three parts: the tomb door, the tomb passage, and the burial chamber. From the ground excavated by the construction party to the bottom of the tomb, the deepest point is about 3.5 meters, the tomb door is closed by a stone stack, the south end of the tomb has been excavated, but it can still be seen that the tomb is sloped, with a total length of 3.2 meters, a width of 1.05 meters, and a depth of 3.5 meters. The tomb is rectangular in plan, 4.2 meters long and 3.6 meters wide, there are no traces of burial tools in the room, no human skeleton has been found, and the burial style is unknown. In the northwestern part of the burial chamber, two burial items are placed side by side: one is a gray pottery tower -- (fig. 1) and the other is a painted flower-piled tower-style pottery (fig. 2). This group of funerary products is well preserved, the shape is peculiar, the production is exquisite, with distinct regional characteristics, specially introduced as follows: 1. Gray pottery tower pottery: gray pottery, handmade, all-over phototrophots, composed of two parts of the base and the tower body, the base is hollow, the upper part of the base is a jar-shaped, the round lip is rolled out, the round shoulder oblique abdomen, the bottom of the tank belly is adducted with the lower upside-down flared mouth base, bottomless. The base mouth is flat folded along, the tower body is a long-necked pot, the mouth is pinched along one side into a head shape, the other side is flat and round, the lips are curled, the long neck, the shoulders are slipped, and there is a flat round hole on the bottom end of the neck and shoulder, the vertical abdomen, the largest abdominal neck is in the lower part, and the base of the pot is inserted into the mouth of the pot, and the two can be separated. The height of the pass is 99 cm, the base diameter is 46 cm, and the diameter is 4 cm (Figure 3).
2. Painted plastic flower tower pottery: pottery, handmade, pottery as a whole as a tower, the whole body of the self-clothing, self-clothing painted with pink, by the base, the tower body, the top of the tower three parts. The three are separated, the tower body and the top of the tower are hollow, the base is raspberry-shaped, the bottom plane is circular, the lower mouth is shortly folded along the square lip, and the four walls are obliquely straight. Near the bottom equidistant cast 5 pot door-shaped cutouts, between the holes pasted with 5 standing figures, the image is consistent, one hand for upward lifting, the other hand inserted in the waist, one foot raised, the other leg slightly bent as a squat, facial expression is serious, clothing is difficult to distinguish. It is applied to the two-week circular horizontal hoop, and 10 vertical beaded mud strips are attached to the equidistant distance between the horizontal hoops, and the color drawing between the beads is not clear. The upper mouth of the base is in the shape of a circular platform, and a circle of mud strip horizontal hoops is applied to the edge of the platform, and the tower body is fixed in this horizontal hoop. The tower is a five-story pagoda with a volume from bottom to top
The combination of tower-style pottery excavated from the early tombs of Xintianbao Liao in the new garden and the exquisite plastering technique reflects its regional characteristics more because of its peculiar shape and exquisite plastering technique.
In addition, some scholars believe that; The burial method of excavated tower-shaped pottery may be related to the relevant tribal burial customs of the time. The DatongLong New Garden Tomb only unearthed a set of tower pottery, the cultural appearance is extremely simple, so whether the tomb of such excavated tower pottery is related to the remains and cultural features of the Turkic or other tribes remains and cultural features, it remains to be further confirmed by new and detailed archaeological data.
Photo: Cao Chenming Photography: Xinhua