In the early morning of December 17, 2000, a villager named He Jiangong knocked on the door of Xu Guangde, head of the Anyang Workstation of the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. He Jiangong is from Huayuanzhuang Village, Yindu District, Anyang City, Henan Province, one of two villages in the Zongmiao District of Yinxu Palace, and the famous Tomb of Nühao is one of the most important archaeological discoveries in this area. This time, he brought a bad news: someone may want to rob the tomb!
Upon learning of this news, Xu Guangde immediately took He Yuling, who had just graduated and worked for more than a year, to the east of Huayuanzhuang Village to check it out.
According to He Jiangong, some people were active in the wheat fields here at night. Winter in north China is very cold, the land is frozen, and it is not conducive to archaeological excavations. In previous years, at this time, the Anyang workstation carried out indoor restoration and finishing work. The tomb reported by He Jiangong was discovered by the archaeological team in November of that year, and due to the judgment that it was well preserved, it was originally planned to declare excavation after the next spring thawed. But can't wait.
At the wheat field site, there are more than a dozen holes of different sizes in an area of tens of square meters, which are drilled by Luoyang shovels with different pore diameters. The large holes that appeared in the wheat fields at this time were not left by the small holes used by the archaeological team to investigate and drill the Luoyang shovels - these large holes were mainly used to fill explosives, and were often used by tomb thieves to quickly excavate ancient tombs.
In order to race against the tomb robbers, Xu Guangde immediately asked He Yuling to organize manpower to prepare for the excavation. That night, five people, including He Yuling, set up a simple work shed and were on duty at the intersection, "Looking back now, if we hadn't made a decision at that time, the tomb might have been stolen overnight." Because tomb robbery is very fast now, they use explosives to blow up a hole, and then drill in, and soon the artifacts are stolen out. ”
In the subsequent excavation process, the archaeological team cleared out the explosive fuze installed by the tomb robbers from the tomb filling soil, and also found a large number of pinholes left by "probes" at the bottom of the tomb. This "probe" is as thin as a copper rib, and it can detect the location of the burial items in the tomb without bringing soil.
These discoveries made the archaeological team even more fortunate. This rescue excavation allowed a shang dynasty nobleman who was sleeping in the Yin Ruins and his jaw-dropping wealth to reappear in front of the world.
This article is from B08-B09 of the Beijing News Book Review Weekly's December 31 issue "I Dig for Antiquities in China: A Hundred Years of Chinese Archaeology".
"Theme" B01丨I dig up antiquities in China: A Hundred Years of Chinese Archaeology
"Theme" B02-03丨I dig up antiquities in China
Theme B04-05 | Sanxingdui with a group of archaeologists in recourse
"Theme" B06-07 丨Ming Ding Mausoleum: An Exploration and Regret of Imperial Tomb Culture
"Literature" B08-09 丨Wen Wang's Mansion: Exploring the Legend of Shang Zhou in the Qishan Mountains
"Literature" B10-11 丨 Yin Ruins: Uncovering the Secrets of the Tombs of The Nobles of the Shang Dynasty
"Literature" B12 丨 Book List: Footprints Left by Archaeologists
The published content is detailed in: Tiger Head Tiger Brain's Sanxingdui New Year is new again! How many more surprises you have that we don't know
3,000 years ago "King Ranking": The counterattack of King Wen of Zhou in the Oracle
(This article is the B10 edition of the special issue of "I Dig Antiquities in China: A Hundred Years of Chinese Archaeology" on December 31, 2021, which reported "Yin Ruins: Unveiling the Secrets of the Tombs of Nobles in the Shang Dynasty", and the full text of the main manuscript of "I Dig Antiquities in China" is coming soon, so stay tuned.) ）
Written | Ho An Ann
01
Yin Ruins: A rich mine for archaeologists
"As an archaeologist, I was fortunate to be able to excavate the Yin Ruins."
As the deputy director of the Anyang Workstation of the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, He Yuling has a deep affection for Yin Xu. It has been 22 years since the first line of archaeological excavations at Yin Ruins. We know the significance of this site. Because the Yin Ruins of Anyang, Henan Province, which is "known to the world with a piece of oracle bones", is believed to mark the birth of modern Chinese archaeology. On October 13, 1928, the Institute of History and Linguistics of the former Academia Sinica sent Dong Zuobin, together with Guo Baojun, a member of Henan Province, and others to Anyang for the first trial excavation, which was the beginning of the excavation of The Yin Ruins in Anyang and the beginning of the independent scientific archaeological excavations carried out by Chinese academic institutions.
Dong Zuobin (right) during the first excavation of Yin Ruins in the autumn of 1928.
It is no accident that the "ancient trend of doubt" that emerged after the "May Fourth" destroyed the traditional ancient history system, and scholars at that time urgently needed to use archaeology that had just been introduced to China from the West to find reliable ancient historical new materials. In this context, the Yin Ruins, which have been excavated by a large number of Yin Dynasty royal family inscription oracle bones, have become the starting point.
The first three excavations of the first phase of the Yin Ruins excavation were mainly aimed at finding oracle bones. According to the book "Anyang" written by Li Ji, the first trial excavation unearthed 784 pieces of oracle bones with characters, and Dong Zuobin hand-copied 392 pieces of oracle bones with characters, and made many interpretations. After contacting Dong Zuobin personally and reading the excavation report he wrote, Li Ji believed that the Xiaotun site was clearly the last capital of Yin Shang. Since then, excavations have gradually transformed into a comprehensive disclosure of the entire Capital city of Yin Ruins, with relics such as palaces, royal tombs, noble tombs, oracle bones, bronzes, jades and a large number of relics, which directly confirm the existence of the Shang Dynasty.
After the first phase of excavations, from 1950 to 1979, the excavation of Yin Ruins entered the second phase. Since 1980, the archaeological excavation of Yin Ruins has entered the third stage. To date, the archaeological excavations of Yin Ruins have been 93 years old – and it has thus become the largest and longest-lasting site in China, ranking first among China's "100 Major Archaeological Discoveries" in the 20th century and regarded as the cradle of Chinese archaeology. The artifacts hidden underground, despite a century of excavations, remain a rich mine in archaeology, surprising a new generation of archaeologists from time to time.
But at the same time, the cultural value of Yin Ruins also attracts a large number of tomb robbers who covet wealth. The tomb robbery activity 21 years ago, He Yuling still mentioned it to this day, and he still has palpitations. If those tomb robbers had been lucky enough to get their hands on it, then the Yin Ruins and even the entire Chinese archaeological community would have suffered a huge loss.
Archaeology and tomb robbery are a pair of natural enemies. Tomb robbery is a greedy and shameless theft and destruction of ancient underground remains, while archaeology is a civilization created for the protection of the ancestors of present and future generations. Therefore, archaeologists maintain a strict and cautious attitude towards ancient tombs. They know that every excavation will cause a certain degree of damage to the underground remains to a greater or lesser extent, so the best way to protect it is to let it be buried in the ground before the protection technology matures, so as not to disturb the tranquility of the ancestors.
But now, since the tomb robbers have extended their black hands to this ancient tomb, archaeologists can only race against the tomb robbers to protect the cultural heritage left by their ancestors with rescue excavations.
"When we were digging, there were a lot of idle people watching every day." He Yuling said that it is difficult to say that there are no tomb robbers who are closely watching the excavations. Later, they learned that the tomb robber was from a nearby village.
The excavations lasted for more than two months, for which the archaeological team overcame very great difficulties. Fortunately, there is no danger. The emergency excavation was very fruitful: there were 579 burial items of various types in the tomb, including 267 bronzes, 222 jades, 21 pottery, 6 stone tools, 60 bone tools, 2 ivory ware, and 1 bamboo ware. There are also 881 copper hammers, 149 copper bubbles, 125 pieces of gold leaf, and more than 1,000 pieces of cargo shells.
But who is the owner of the tomb here?
The Mystery of Yachang, by He Yuling, Edition: Yunnan People's Publishing House, February 2021
02
"Ya Chang": The life and death of a Yin shang nobleman
The rank, status and identity of the tomb owner is the core issue of tomb research, the tomb area, the number of martyrs, martyrs, the number of bronze ceremonial vessels and jade with the burial and other indicators of comparison and analysis with other tombs can be seen that the level of the tomb owner is second only to the woman good, and the seven pieces of copper with the burial show that the tomb owner has a lot of military power, may not be lower than the woman good. So, how to directly confirm who the owner of the tomb is? It can only rely on words.
For example, the tomb of Women's Good, the reason why it is confirmed that the owner of the tomb is "Woman Hao", is one of the three spouses of Wu Ding, the "King of Zhongxing" in the Shang Dynasty: Yu Xin, precisely because a large number of oracle bones have been excavated in his tomb. Tang Jigen mentioned in the article "Zheng Zhenxiang and the Tomb of Women's GoodNess - She is not only the excavator of the Tomb of Lady Good, but also a researcher" that archaeologist Zheng Zhenxiang believes that "Women's Good" is the "special reference" of the tomb owner, "Woman" is his lord, and "Good" (or "Son") is his surname. In the Shang King's genealogy, the woman is Yu Xin, and "Xin" is its "temple number" in the genealogy.
Returning to the previously mentioned tombs, fortunately, the archaeological team found 131 inscriptions in the tombs, most of which were the words "sub-long". Based on this, the archaeological team judged that the owner of the tomb should be a military attaché, because "Ya" is the position of military attaché, and "long" may represent the family name. That is to say, the owner of the tomb is a military attaché or aristocratic general named "Yachang", and the part that ordinary archaeological research institutes can do is over.
But He Yuling said that the tomb here still has great particularity. Why? A big reason is that in this tomb, the bones of the owner of the tomb have been preserved. Generally speaking, in the noble tombs in the northern region, human bones are difficult to preserve, such as no bones are found in the tombs of women, because a large number of bronzes buried in high-grade tombs have a certain corrosive effect on human bones.
After conducting a physical anthropological identification, human bone archaeologists unveiled the mystery of the identity of the sub-chief: the sub-chief is a male, about 35 years old, and the height is between one meter six and one meter seven. Through the identification of the teeth, archaeologists found that there were caries before sub-immortality. Through human bone identification, human bone archaeologists also found that the first tarsal bone of subchang's right foot had obvious bone deformation, which was also the first time that the archaeological team observed bone deformation on the human bone of Yin Ruins' tomb. Scholars believe that this is related to his long-term kneeling. Before the Qin and Han Dynasties, people often used this sitting posture.
Snow scene at the time of excavation in early January 2001.
Using human bones, archaeologists can also discover the cause of death of the owner of the tomb. After the identification of the human bone, archaeologists found that there were many obvious slashing wounds on the left side of the subchang bone, which were likely to come from copper spears, copper goughs and even knives, and one of the perforations penetrated the iliac bone, and from the trauma marks, this scar was considered to be fatal, because the penetration of this part was likely to hurt the femoral artery, and it was because of this that the subchang died of blood loss. Through the above scar identification, archaeologists believe that the owner of the tomb should have died directly from the cause of the war.
At this point, can archaeologists do more work? The answer is: Yes. In the tomb of Subchang, in addition to the owner of the tomb, there are 15 martyrs and 15 martyr dogs. Among them, 6 martyrs with relatively complete limbs were with the tomb owner, and it is believed that they may be the close followers of the tomb owner. The location of Yin Ruins was the capital city at that time, and through the isotope determination of strontium, it can be concluded that Yachang and his relatives were not natives of Yin Ruins. So, where will he come from?
In 1997, the Henan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology excavated a tomb in Luyi County, Zhoukou City, southeastern Henan, about two hundred years later than the long tomb of Ya, and the inscriptions of the bronze artifacts excavated from the tomb here also have the word "long", which is "Changzikou", and the writing of these inscriptions is very consistent with the long tomb of Yin Xuya. After oxygen isotope testing of human bones, archaeologists found that the owner of the tomb was likely from the area east and south of Yin Ruins. Coincidentally, the Tomb of Changzikou happens to be in the southeast direction of the Yin Ruins, and archaeologists deduce that there may be a certain connection between the two tombs.
Why aren't sub-long bones corroded in the same way as the human bones of other high-ranking tomb owners? In the opinion of archaeologists involved in the excavation research, it is very likely that the tomb here uses anti-embalming technology. At the time of the excavation, the archaeological team found a large number of charred peppercorns on the owner of the tomb. This is also the only case found so far in the Tombs of the Shang Dynasty in the Northern Region. This custom is precisely found in the tombs of the Shang Dynasty in the same period in the southern region, and the custom of burying peppercorns in the tomb has been used until the Warring States and the Two Han Dynasties, and the discovery of this custom also points to the east and south of Henan. In this way, archaeologists have uncovered a mystery from more than 3,000 years ago.
Sub-long inscription rubbings.
He Yu
03
New discoveries are constantly updating older perceptions
The latest discovery of the Shang Dynasty "satellite city"
Beijing News: Not long ago, there was a news report that near Yin Ruins, the "Huanbei Shangcheng Satellite City" was found in the east of the Taojiaying site. In recent years, what new progress has been made in the excavation of the Yin Ruins site?
He Yuling: In 1999, the Anyang archaeological team discovered a new capital city in the northeast of Yin Ruins, which we called "Huanbei Shangcheng". Why is it called "Huanbei Mall"? Because it is a new Shang Dynasty capital on the north side of the Huan River. The Shang Dynasty has a history of more than 500 years, and in the early days of Zhengzhou, there was a Zhengzhou mall, which was discovered in the 1950s. The late Yin Ruins, we call it the ruins of the Yin Ruins Capital. But in the middle of this, there is still a hundred years or so, and the capital city has not been clear.
The area of "Huanbei Shangcheng" is about 4.7 square kilometers, with Guocheng, Miyagi, and Palace, which filled the gap in the middle of the Shang Dynasty, and the capital city of the early, middle and late periods was found. The palace of "Huanbei Shangcheng" is very well preserved, and its overall structure is very similar to today's "courtyard". We can learn from this that Chinese culture, thousands of years of architectural patterns, until the Ming and Qing dynasties were like this.
Since 2015, I have been excavating in the "Huanbei Shangcheng", mainly excavating the handicraft workshop area of the "Huanbei Shangcheng". At the same time, the Anyang Municipal Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology excavated on the outskirts of Yin Ruins, including the periphery of the "Huanbei Shangcheng". The taojiaying site is four kilometers north of the "Huanbei Shangcheng" and is a newly discovered ring trench settlement.
Within this settlement there are its own residential areas, production areas, and burial areas, of which a total of 27 tombs have been found, arranged in an unconventional manner. These tombs are basically well preserved, divided into two rows, north and south, the north row of tombs is relatively large, mainly male, with a large number of bronzes buried; the southern row is dominated by women. This should have been a family cemetery at the time, and it was possible that the husband and wife were buried together.
Through bronze burials, the social status of men and women at that time can be reflected. A large number of bronzes have been excavated from the tomb, about 170 pieces, which is the site with the largest amount of bronzes unearthed so far in the Chinese Shang Period, so it has aroused great concern from everyone.
The area of this ring trench settlement is 185,000 square meters, and the "Huanbei Mall" is 4.7 million square meters, which shows the difference between the size of the capital city and the size of the secondary settlement. Inspired by this discovery, I speculate that there may be multiple satellite cities on the outskirts of the capital city of Huanbei Shangcheng. This is a very important discovery for archaeological research. I think that the importance of the Taojiaying site is not only reflected in the site itself, but also in the nature of its satellite city, which played a key role in our study of the social structure and governance model at that time.
In addition, there is another site is the ruins of Shaojiapeng located on the southeast edge of Yin Ruins.
He Yuling is a researcher at the Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and deputy director of the Anyang Workstation. Mainly engaged in archaeological excavation and research in the Xia and Zhou dynasties, he has been adhering to the front line of archaeological excavations of Yin Ruins for many years. The palace area and handicraft area of the capital city in the middle of the Shang Dynasty were systematically excavated, filling the gap in the archaeology of the capital city in the middle of the Shang Dynasty. He has long been committed to the research on the layout of the capital city of Yinxu and the production of handicrafts. Excavations have been made of the well-preserved tombs of high-ranking nobles in the Yin Ruins after the Tomb of The Lady Of Good: the Tomb of Yachang, which for the first time revealed the family graveyard of the oracle bone divination wizard, a special group of people during the Yin Ruins period.
Beijing News: From the 1920s and 1930s to the present, the history of Yin Ruins archaeology has also approached a hundred years. Why did the excavations of the Ruins take so long?
He Yuling: Many people may think that the Yin Ruins have been excavated for more than 90 years, and among all the sites that have been excavated in China at present, the Yin Ruins have been excavated for the longest time and the area has become larger, as if there is nothing to do. But in fact, according to our statistics, the current excavation of Yin Ruins may only account for about 3% of the entire Yin Ruins site.
It is actually difficult and impossible to get a comprehensive understanding of the Yin Ruins through 3% of the excavation area. The process of archaeological excavation is very slow, the annual excavation area is 1000-2000 square meters, but the scope of the Yin Ruins, conservatively estimated to be 36 square kilometers, you can imagine this concept.
In the past ten or more years, archaeological excavations have continued to break through, and our original understanding has been constantly broken. In the oracle bones excavated from yin ruins, it is often recorded that merchants living in Yin ruins call themselves "Dayi merchants". So far, we have not found the walls of Yin Ruins like other capitals. Therefore, what is the concept of "Dayi Shang", we have always had no bottom in our hearts. In recent years, we have successively discovered some important sites outside the traditionally known Yin Ruins, such as a Xindian ruins 10 kilometers north of the Yin Ruins Palace District. What is now known is 1 million square meters, of which 500,000-600,000 square meters are workshop areas for casting bronzes.
In the past, we said where the royal tomb of Yin Ruins was and where the palace was, but in fact it also had a large number of handicraft workshop areas, aristocratic settlements, etc. The regions needed to be connected by roads to each other, and at that time, urban domestic water, drainage ditches, etc., all needed to do a lot of work, and many important gains were also achieved.
A large number of tombs in Yin Ruins were stolen in the Western Zhou Dynasty
Beijing News: On the Internet, some people say that the most terrifying cultural relic in China is none other than the Anyang Yin Ruins Bronze Urn, because this bronze urn contains a human skull. Is this the same way of martyrdom or sacrifice as the martyrs found in the tomb of Subchang?
DH: This is a question that many people will ask. In the oracle bone literature, it is mentioned that in the Shang Dynasty, especially during the Shang King Wuding period, a large number of sacrifices would be held, especially the killing sacrifice and the killing sacrifice, and the scale of this sacrifice would be very grand. The oracle also records that these animals were mainly from prisoners of war. From the perspective of our modern people, the cruelty of this kind of murderous sacrifice is indisputable.
But the evolution of civilization requires a certain process. This phenomenon began to contract on a large scale in the late Yin Dynasty, and was even abandoned, and by the time of the Shang Dynasty, this custom had begun to disappear. After entering the Western Zhou Dynasty, this situation only happened occasionally. So, how did the sacrifices after the Western Zhou Dynasty proceed? We can see the appearance of figurines in tombs, there are wooden figurines made of wood. After the Warring States, pottery figurines began to appear, like the Terracotta Warriors of Qin Shi Huang, which was also a way of martyrdom, and this kind of pottery figurines continued until the Ming and Qing dynasties.
Bronze urn was a very practical and common kind of steamer at that time, similar to the cage drawer we use to steam steamed steamed buns now, which can hold water underneath and a grate on top, which can hold things inside. The phenomenon of human skulls found in bronze urns, there may be three or four cases found so far, some people think that this is cooking.
We need to look at this history objectively, rather than blindly criticizing it, which may be a necessary stage in the process of human development, which is not limited to the Middle Ages, but also exists in Central and South America, including Indian or Maya civilizations, even in the 14th and 15th centuries there were still ways of living sacrifice.
Beijing News: You once mentioned that the Yachang tomb was almost stolen by tomb thieves, and many reports and articles also mentioned that the ancient cultural relics of Yin Ruins were frequently excavated, and even some people said that the pirate caves near Yin Ruins were like "tunnel warfare", and the entire underground area of Yin Ruins was dug like a sieve. What is the situation of illegal excavations against the Yin Ruins site?
He Yuling: The matter of excavation has existed since ancient times. I personally believe that a large number of tombs in yin ruins, especially the tombs of high-ranking nobles, including royal tombs, were actually stolen during the Western Zhou Dynasty. This kind of excavation is because it may be a way to destroy the country, such as Wu Zixu avenging his father and digging up the tomb of King Chuping to whip the corpse, which is an act of revenge. In addition, the Tombs of Yin Ruins in the Western Zhou Dynasty, especially the tombs of high-ranking nobles, buried a large number of bronzes, jades, etc. in the royal tombs, which also became one of the reasons for the theft and excavation.
Another peak of excavation may have occurred during the Northern Song Dynasty, when many people began to collect bronzes due to the rise of epigraphy. At the end of the Qing Dynasty and the early years of the Republic of China, the trend of excavation was very rampant, and in the 1950s and 1980s, because of the country's severe crackdown, in fact, the excavation of Yin Ruins was not so serious. After entering the 1990s, due to cultural relics smuggling and other reasons, the price of cultural relics became increasingly high, and the excavation was very serious throughout the country, and yin ruins were inevitable. Among them, the tomb of Yachang was also almost stolen.
Excavation is a stubborn disease, many people are desperate to take risks, we can not avoid, can only find ways to fight, to govern. In reality, we have also found that some tomb robbers rent houses and dig holes in the ground. Since 2018, the Anyang area has taken some strong measures to crack down on the excavation of cultural relics and captured a group of tomb robbers. Including the construction of local governments funded by the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, a Skynet monitoring system has been established in Yin Ruins, a special public security detachment and a Yin Ruins Management Committee have been established, grid members have been set up for grid management, and regular inspections of Yin Ruins have been set up. From the current point of view, it is basically well governed.
Beijing News: What irreparable and irreversible losses will be caused by theft and excavation?
He Yuling: Excavations can cause great damage to cultural relics. Whenever we dig up a high-ranking noble tomb, especially the kind of tomb with a tomb passage, the whole tomb has been painstakingly dug for two or three months, and after going down, there is not even a piece of pottery, and it is completely swept away, and there are many examples of this, such as the royal tomb area and the noble tomb area I mentioned earlier. In fact, not only Yin Ruins, but also some other places, such as Shaanxi, Hubei and other places, this phenomenon is more numerous.
He Yuling at the archaeological site.
The "Dayi Shang" reached the peak of China's bronze civilization
Beijing News: What kind of country was the "Dayi Shang" in history?
He Yuling: The Shang Dynasty was the most powerful country in the whole of East Asia, and the "Dayi Shang" where Yin Ruins was located was the political, economic, cultural and military center at that time, through its unique governance model, it controlled and managed the surrounding areas, and at the same time it was able to wage war against the surrounding areas. Especially in the period of King Wuding, it reached its peak, so history also called this period "Wuding Zhongxing".
Another major feature of this period is that it reached the peak of Chinese bronze civilization and had a very great impact on the follow-up of Chinese civilization. In particular, the Chinese characters represented by the oracle bone have always been the carrier of the inheritance and recording of Chinese civilization, and have continued until now. I believe that the Chinese characters represented by the oracle bone are the genes and ties of Chinese civilization, and it is in this way that the Chinese nation can form a continuous, pluralistic and integrated cultural outlook.
"Sleep for three thousand years, and wake up to shock the world."