In books such as "Notes on Tomb Robbery", it is often seen that the description of "Zongzi", which is an ominous thing that tomb robbers are very afraid of. Generally before entering the ancient tomb, the tomb robbers will sincerely burn incense and pray not to encounter large "rice dumplings". Especially in the ancient tombs that are not far away, there are basically "rice dumplings" in them.
Archaeology and tomb robbery are essentially different, tomb robbery is a series of destructive activities, and archaeology is a scientific activity carried out for rescue protection. Therefore, archaeologists are never afraid to encounter "zongzi", once the ancient dry corpses and wet corpses are found, it is still a very exciting thing, because they can understand some of the characteristics of the ancients, which is a very meaningful research work.
Isn't there anything in archaeology that experts are afraid of? It is not so much fear as pain, because many cultural relics are buried in the ground for hundreds or thousands of years, due to long-term lack of oxygen "preservation", once they are exposed to the air, they will change rapidly, so it is difficult to protect. In particular, some antiques such as silk fabrics, paper, and wood are very afraid of oxidation. So experts are generally very "afraid" of these antiquities.
In fact, there is another type of antiquities that are very difficult to deal with in archaeology, and that is food. In the Jia Lake ruins, thousands of years ago wine has been found, of course, these wines are not encapsulated intact, but found in the remnants of pottery, these residues can be said to be the earliest direct evidence of ancient Chinese brewing Jia Lake ancient wine.
When the Mawangdui Han Tomb was excavated, a lacquerware was found containing soup with lotus flakes. How rare is the food that can be preserved after two thousand years. But because there was no psychological preparation at the time, it quickly disappeared after encountering the air, but the precious scene has been recorded by photos. This shows that in the Han Dynasty, it was already common for aristocratic families to eat good food.
The tomb of Liu Fei, the King of Jiangdu, discovered in 2009, is located in Dayun Mountain, Jiangsu Province. When archaeologists learned of the existence of this ancient tomb, they immediately wanted to carry out conservation excavations. When they walked into the mausoleum, they found that there was a table full of food, very realistic as if it had just been burned. But such cultural relics are very tricky, and it is difficult to preserve the soup and water.
There are also meat skewers unearthed from ancient tombs. The meat skewers excavated from the Zhongwei Han Tomb in Ningxia prove that people had already begun to grill skewers at that time, which the ancients called "hot meat". In "The Feast of the Hongmen Gate", What Xiang Yu gave Fan Duo was roast meat, which was originally going to be roasted, but in order to test Fan Duo's guts, what he ate was not roasted.
There is another class of things that are more difficult to deal with, and if found, it is best not to touch, and that is eggs. Even if we usually buy eggs, we must be careful, not to mention the eggs preserved in the ancient tomb for hundreds of years, the egg shell has long become very crunchy. And once it is found that there are eggs in the ancient tomb, it means that the owner of the tomb has a great identity. Why?
It turns out that eggs were a luxury in ancient times, many people can't afford to eat, if you put a lot of eggs in the tomb, then it must be a very solid family, so you won't care if the eggs are expensive. Foods like eggs, which can be preserved until now, are very rare in themselves.
In a Western Zhou tomb dating back more than 2,800 years, eggs were found and packed in the "Western Zhou Geometric Printed Hard Pottery Urn". Just like pearls in a gorgeous box, don't "buy the pearls and return the pearls", if you see the pottery, ignore the eggs inside, it will be a big loss. Therefore, archaeology found that eggs can not be touched, not because of weirdness, but to use special methods to preserve.