Source: Guangming Daily
Zhang Chunlong
Excavation site of Well 1 at the ruins of the ancient city of Riez
The Han Law Inscription Wood Mu excavated from the Rabbit Mountain site
Under the pen of Mr. Shen Congwen, his hometown of Xiangxi is a place of pure beauty and simple folk customs, full of a mysterious charm.
On June 3, 2002, it was here that Zou Boping, the person in charge of the site of well No. 1 of the Liye Ancient City Ruins, found a strange ink mark on a piece of wood. Thus began the excavation and research of Riye Qinjian, which some have called "one of the most significant archaeological discoveries of the 21st century".
Zhang Chunlong, a researcher at the Hunan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, was only 37 years old at the time, and he personally experienced the whole process of this archaeological research, and this experience has also become a shining record of his archaeological research.
"The major archaeology of Hunan, he has caught up"
In 1986, Zhang Chunlong graduated from the Department of Archaeology of Peking University and joined the Department of Archaeology of Hunan Provincial Museum. In the same year, like the establishment of cultural relics and archaeology institutes throughout the country, the Ministry of Archaeology was separated from the provincial museum and renamed the Hunan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology.
Since then, Zhang Chunlong has taken root here.
He successively participated in the archaeological excavation and research of the Neolithic Ruins of Hujiawuchang in Linli County, Hunan Province, the Ruins of Pengtou Mountain and Chengtou Mountain in Lixian County, and the Ruins of Liye Ancient City in Longshan County, and presided over the excavation of the Zhangjiajie Ancient Causeway Site, the Chongqing Jiangdongzui Ruins and the Maituo Ancient Tomb Group, the Chenzhou SuxianQiao Ancient Well Group, the Yiyang Rabbit Mountain Ruins and the Xiangxiang Three-Eye Well Ruins.
Year after year, his archaeological footprints have spread across Huxiang, unearthing a string of precious cultural relics. Among them, there are ancient rice fields, villages, walls, houses, rice grains and pottery, as well as a large number of ancient Janes that record precious historical materials, so that a number of ancient ruins and cultural relics buried deep in the ground can replay the light of the past civilization, showing the unique value and charm of Huxiang culture.
Some peers said, "Hunan's major archaeology, he has caught up!" Such a rich archaeological experience and rare opportunities are not encountered by ordinary people, and they are rare in the archaeological community."
Zhang Chunlong himself said that it may be because he has been staying in the untouched place of the Hunan Archaeological Institute, just like "guarding the plant and waiting for the rabbit", he has been bumped into by himself.
The archaeological excavation of the ruins of chengtou mountain in Chexi Township, Lixian County, made Zhang Chunlong feel deeply lucky and shocked.
Excavated from 1991 to 2000, this site is the earliest ancient city site of the late Neolithic period found in China, dating back to about 6500 years ago. Relatively well-preserved walls, house sites, altars, kiln sites have been found at the site, in addition to large paddy fields with primitive irrigation systems. "The ruins of the ancient city of ChengtouShan are three hundred meters square, and the moats and rice fields outside the city have been found around the city, which can reach such a large scale in the Neolithic period, which is really remarkable!" Zhang Chunlong said with emotion. The excavation and research of the ruins of the ancient city of ChengtouShan has twice been rated as one of the top ten archaeological discoveries in China.
With the accumulation of archaeological practice, Zhang Chunlong's professional foundation has become more solid and his vision has broadened. In the 1990s, the protection and finishing of Jian Mu was still weak in the Hunan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology. In 1997, on the recommendation of Mr. Hu Pingsheng, an expert in jianshu studies, Zhang Chunlong returned to his alma mater, Peking University, to worship under Mr. Li Jiahao and study the Warring States script.
It's really hard work. The birth of Liye Qinjian and the subsequent discovery of a number of ancient Jian Mu in Hunan have brought Zhang Chunlong new opportunities for career development, enabling him to return to Peking University to study the paleography school of great use, and gradually become a comprehensive archaeologist who can not only excavate ruins and cultural relics, but also interpret and sort out ancient Jane.
"Riye Qinjian's discovery changed the focus of my work"
In Shen Congwen's article "Several Docks in the Baihe River Basin in Western Hunan Province", he exquisitely outlined the local customs of Liye, Qianling and other places, especially in a long text, describing the Baihe River, which was once famous for its unitary water in history, and after entering Hunan from Hubei through Chongqing, it flowed leisurely through the mountains and villages of western Hunan, and finally merged into Dongting Lake.
Located on the banks of the Youshui River, Liye is an ancient town in Longshan County, Xiangxi Province. In the local Tujia language, the word Riye means to open up this land. In 2002, it was still a very remote place, and after the train arrived in Jishou, the capital of Xiangxi Autonomous Prefecture, it was followed by a winding road, which took another four hours to get there.
What is surprising is that such a remote town has stumbled upon a large number of Qin Jian, which makes Liye seem to have returned to the historical stage of the Qin Dynasty more than 2,000 years ago overnight, becoming a hot spot in archaeological research. Some people say, "There are Xi'an Terracotta Warriors in the north and Liye Qinjian in the south", which is not an exaggeration.
"The more than 38,000 Qin Dynasty JianMu excavated at the Liye site are archives of Qianling County, Dongting County, Qin Dynasty, and the number and breadth of involvement are another major discovery of Qin Dynasty archaeology after the Terracotta Warriors of Qin Shi Huang." Zhang Chunlong said.
According to experts, the most concerned about this batch of Qin Jian is the daily official documents left by the local government more than 2,000 years ago, involving population, fields, property, taxes, warehousing, mail, armaments, justice, medicine, education and other aspects, which reflect the entire process of the Qin Dynasty from its establishment to its collapse, which is extremely precious.
A total of three ancient wells were found at the Liye site, and Qin Jian was concentrated in the first well. The wellhead of this ancient well is about 3 meters from the surface and more than 14 meters deep, making the excavation work very difficult. "It would be dangerous if you rushed down. How to build the brace reinforcement, how to dig out the pile in the well from the top to the bottom layer, and transport it up are all difficult problems. There are no tools on the scene, even a small roller skating, which is borrowed from a fellow countryman... These big and small things were all solved by Zhang Chunlong and Long Jingsha and other colleagues Zhang Luo at that time. Zhang Zhongwei, editor-in-chief of the Selected Research Papers of Liye Qinjian and professor of the History Department of Chinese Min University, said.
The discovery of Liye Qinjian greatly enriched the previously almost blank historical documents of the Qin Dynasty. For example, the world knows the Qin Dynasty's "book and text" policy, but how it was implemented throughout the country at that time is little known to posterity. The "renamed Mufang" unearthed by Liye Qinjian provides specific physical evidence of "book and text", enabling people to more truly restore its original appearance.
Marked by the excavations and research at the Riye site, Zhang Chunlong's archaeological career has a new goal. "In the past, I was mainly doing Neolithic archaeology, but the discovery of Liye Qinjian changed the focus of my work, and my work interest gradually shifted to the protection and sorting of Jane." Zhang Chunlong said.
The excavation of the Yiyang Rabbit Mountain site is another major archaeological discovery after the excavation of Liye Qinjian. In 2013, Zhang Chunlong presided over the excavation of the Rabbit Mountain site, and unearthed more than 15,200 ancient Janes from the late Warring States period to the Three Kingdoms period, of which a batch of Janes can be traced back to the Chu State in the Warring States Period, which was the first time to discover the physical materials of the Chu State County Ya Documents archives. Zhang Chunlong believes: "This archaeological excavation can make it clear that the rabbit mountain site is the location of the Yiyang County Office of the Chu, Qin, Two Han and Wu Dynasties of the Three Kingdoms, and the Jian Mu of each period has made up for the lack of historical documents. ”
The Rabbit Mountain site also found a large number of relics of the life of the ancients at that time, which was also extremely valuable in the eyes of Zhang Chunlong and his colleagues. He explains: "In fact, these things are not advanced, but they are wastes that were thrown into the well by the ancients as garbage, such as clay pots, crock pots, awls and hoes, but they can truly reflect the actual production level and living conditions of that year." In the archaeological excavations, because these debris are mixed with Jian Mu, we can't use a hoe to plan, we can only use our hands to pick them up little by little. ”
"Archaeological excavations are commonplace, but discoveries are important"
A few days ago, in order to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the excavation of Liye Qinjian, the Chinese and Western Bookstore published the "Selected Research Papers of Liye Qinjian". As one of the excavators, protectors, and interpreters of Liye Qinjian, Zhang Chunlong said with great satisfaction: "Nearly 20 years later, there were still many unclear places about Liye Qinjian at that time, and now I can basically understand it." ”
To see clearly what is excavated by archaeology is Zhang Chunlong's consistent pursuit in archaeological work.
"Archaeological excavations are commonplace, but discoveries are important, and all kinds of archaeological discoveries have their own value and are irreplaceable. Although I have made some discoveries over the years, and now the unit arranges new excavation work and often sends me, this is not how high my work level is, but it just shows that my luck is good and my experience is a little more. Zhang Chunlong said modestly.
When sorting out Qin Jian, Zhang Chunlong can always find something through some seemingly ordinary phenomena.
Excavations at Well 1 of the Riyer site have unearthed a carved tooth jane, which is no different in shape from the general jane, except that it is carved on the left or right side.
For a long time, when sorting out the concise materials, the academic community has focused on the text. Zhang Chunlong, on the other hand, also pays attention to the characteristics of the artifacts themselves, which may be due to his professionalism from archaeological training. He was keenly aware that the symbols cut from the carved teeth were likely to have some correspondence with the numbers seen in the simple text, so when sorting out the explanations of the simple texts, he deliberately marked them.
This important finding was confirmed in subsequent studies.
When sorting out the Yiyang Rabbit Mountain Jane, the record of Han Law also attracted Zhang Chunlong's attention. He noticed that Mu Mu divided the Han law into two parts, "prison law" and "side law", and recorded 44 kinds of Chinese law titles, most of which were previously unheard of. According to this, we can go beyond the previous understanding that the Qin and Han dynasties followed the "Nine Chapters Law" and conduct new classification research as a whole.
Looking back on his experience in archaeological work, Zhang Chunlong has this feeling: "These archaeological excavations are a process of accumulating experience and increasing knowledge, and everything is ordinary, but it has its value. This is like a historical and cultural tree, some are branches, some are leaves, some are roots, and none of them can be missing. ”
(Reporter Ji Yanan) (The pictures in this article are all provided by the Hunan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology)