This is a bronze twisted head figure and ivory photographed at the Sanxingdui archaeological excavation site No. 4 "Sacrifice Pit" (photographed on May 14).
Bronze and ivory newly discovered in the No. 3 "Sacrificial Pit" at the Sanxingdui archaeological excavation site (photo taken on May 26).
Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Liu Mengqi
This is a bronze photograph taken at the Sanxingdui archaeological excavation site No. 3 "Sacrifice Pit" (photographed on May 14).
At the site of the archaeological excavation at the Sanxingdui site, archaeologists work inside the No. 8 "Sacrifice Pit" (pictured on May 12).
At the site of the archaeological excavation at the Sanxingdui site, archaeologists work inside the No. 6 "Sacrifice Pit" (pictured on May 12).
This is a jade artifact photographed at the No. 4 "Sacrifice Pit" at the Sanxingdui archaeological excavation site (photographed on May 14).
At the Sanxingdui archaeological excavation site No. 5 "Sacrifice Pit", archaeologists clean up fragments of newly discovered gold masks (photographed on March 1).
This is a "wooden box" to be excavated (on the right side) photographed at the Sanxingdui archaeological excavation site No. 6 "Sacrifice Pit" (photo taken on March 1).
At the site of the archaeological excavation at the Sanxingdui site, archaeologists work inside the No. 4 "Sacrifice Pit" (pictured on May 12).
This is a jade artifact photographed at the Sanxingdui archaeological excavation site No. 8 "Sacrifice Pit" (photographed on May 14).
This is a bronze twisted-head figure taken at the Sanxingdui archaeological excavation site No. 4 "Sacrifice Pit" (taken on May 14).
This is a bronze fragment photographed at the No. 8 "Sacrifice Pit" at the Sanxingdui archaeological excavation site (photographed on May 14).
[The above pictures are reproduced from Xinhua News Agency, all taken in 2021]
On the evening of December 27, 2021, Professor Sun Hua, Director of the Academic Committee of the School of Archaeology and Archaeology of Peking University, was a guest of the "Hall of Fame" organized by Cover News, bringing a wonderful speech entitled "Sanxingdui Culture and History" and sharing the research results of Sanxingdui with everyone.
He has long been concerned about the archaeological achievements of the ancient Shu civilization and engaged in research on the protection of cultural heritage, and whenever there are major results of Sanxingdui archaeological excavations, he rushes to Sanxingdui for the first time. In his view, the new round of archaeological discoveries in Sanxingdui will affect Sichuan archaeology, Chinese archaeology and even world archaeology.
Sanxingdui culture and ancient Shu history
The Sanxingdui culture is a bronze culture distributed in the Sichuan Basin of southwest China, centered on the Chengdu Plain, with an age range roughly from 1600 BC to 1100 BC, and the typical site of such a culture can be summarized in a few words - it is a strong religious sacrifice color of bronze wood statues, copper statues as the center of the sacrificial vessel, characterized by a large number of jade Guizhang and ivory use. The Sanxingdui culture represented by the Sanxingdui site is the earliest bronze culture in the Sichuan Basin. The discovery, confirmation and research of sanxingdui culture have rewritten the ancient Shu civilization and ancient Shu history in the pre-Qin period of Sichuan.
The ancient culture of the Sichuan Basin presents a characteristic that during the period when the ancient road crossing the Qinling Bashan Mountains or the Three Gorges of the Yangtze River was open, it maintained close ties with the culture of the middle reaches of the Yellow River or the middle reaches of the Yangtze River; and during the period when these two ancient roads were blocked for some reason, it developed independently on the basis of previous accumulation. This cultural interaction began in the Sanxingdui culture period, so Sichuan's cultural tradition with its own characteristics takes Sanxingdui as the source and continues until a period of time after the Qin and Han dynasties, until the Qin and Han dynasties gradually integrated into the Qin and Han cultures, and the pre-Qin culture of the Sichuan Basin is a good witness to the pluralistic integration of ancient Chinese culture.
We talked about Sanxingdui, and then we talked about the history of ancient Shu and the ancient Shu civilization.
What is the history of ancient Shu? It is the process of the formation, development and integration of the Shu people and the Shu state in the pre-Qin period recorded in the ancient history and literature of Sichuan, and the political, economic, religious and cultural conditions of the Shu state in different periods. According to relevant historical information, the pre-Qin Shu is an ancient kingdom that has lasted for nearly three thousand years, and although the kingdom has experienced several eras, the title of "Shu" runs through the whole. In order to distinguish the local governments that later used "Shu" as the name of the country in Sichuan, it is necessary to adopt the opinion of some scholars and call the Pre-Qin Shu "Ancient Shu". So what is the ancient Shu civilization? Of course, the ancient Shu civilization is related to the history of the ancient Shu, but after all, civilization is different from history. The civilization of ancient Shu, if defined, is a collective term for the central system, scientific and technological and artistic achievements of the Shu people and the Shu state in the pre-Qin period recorded in Sichuan's ancient historical legends and documents, including the industrial standards, political systems, artistic creations, and the invention and use of writing and documents in the ancient Shu period.
The Samsung Pile was buried as a result of a major political upheaval
Regarding the Sanxingdui culture and ancient Shu history and civilization, their most important historical information comes from the Sanxingdui site, especially a set of burial pits at the site. Sanxingdui burial pit is a group of earth pits found at the Sanxingdui site to bury a large number of precious cultural relics, since the discovery of pits 1 and 2 in 1986, excavators believe that they are for the purpose of sacrifice to dig pits to bury the remains of sacrificial supplies, so there is also an explanation of "Sanxingdui sacrifice pit". In my opinion, sacrifice is not the only or most reasonable explanation for these burial pits, and in the absence of a final determination of the purpose and nature of these burial pits, it is more appropriate to call the Sanxingdui group of earth pits "burial pits" or "artifact pits" than to call them "sacrifice pits".
Regarding the Samsung Pile burial pit, I have some ideas and inferences.
First of all, let's talk about the Sanxingdui burial pit itself, I think they are all buried after the destruction of the temple. In 1986, two burial pits with rich high-grade artifacts were found in Sanxingdui, and in 2018, six more burial pits were found at the site where pits 1 and 2 were originally discovered, bringing the total number of burial pits to 8. These burial pits, except for the smaller and shallower burial pits No. 5 and 6, are relatively late in age, and the rest of the burial pits are simultaneously planned burials. This has been confirmed by newly discovered strata and artifacts.
In addition to burying a large number of destroyed idols, portraits and offering utensils, there are also construction wastes such as braised earth, charcoal slag, and rubble slabs, and many of the buried artifacts are damaged, indicating that these remains are damaged in the temple.
I think that there must have been a ground building and sacrifice place such as a temple near the burial pit, and the temple enshrined the idols of the Sanxingdui people and displayed their sacrificial supplies and ritual utensils for the gods. The location of this (or more) temple, from the later analysis of the situation in which the sacrificial area of the Jinsha Village site in Chengdu and the architectural ruins are located by the river, is likely to be on the northeast side of the Mamu River near the Sanxingdui Tulang, and the half-moon shaped Sanxingdui tulang separates the temple and the outdoor sacrifice site from other areas, ensuring the closure and mystery of the sacrificial area.
The religious worship area of the Sanxingdui site was originally located in the area of Moon Bay in the north of the ancient city. Around the end of the Sanxingdui culture, the site of religious worship was transferred to the Sanxingdui site in the south of the ancient city. Shortly after the transfer of the sacrificial area of Sanxingdui City, a major political change may have occurred, and the result of the change was that the newly built temple of Sanxingdui was burned, the idols of the gods and the furnishings in the temple were smashed and burned, and the people of the Sanxingdui Kingdom had to bury these items in the temple near the sacrificial area for some reason after the change subsided.
It is possible that the Sanxingdui state was jointly governed by two nobles
Because the bronze statues of the Sanxingdui burial pit provide people with an unprecedented, novel and intuitive image, coupled with the inspiration of the ancient history and legends left behind in the Sichuan area, the number of words, and the mixture of people and gods, they provide us with a wealth of historical information. To obtain correct historical knowledge from this information, we must first place these buried pits in the temporal and spatial framework of sanxingdui sites and cultures, and examine their position in the rise and fall of sanxingdui sites.
We know that the Sanxingdui site has gone through three cultural stages, the first stage is the Baodun culture period before the rise of the Sanxingdui culture, when the people of the Sanxingdui settlement were still fighting with other Baodun culture city-states, and the Chengdu Plain had not yet been unified; the second stage was the Sanxingdui cultural period, at this time the Chengdu Plain had completed the unification, other city-states had disappeared, only the city of Sanxingdui existed, and the people of Sanxingdui built a big city on the basis of the original settlement, and built palaces and temples The third stage is the Twelve Bridges Cultural Period, a period of Sanxingdui, where the temple was burned down and the idols were buried and turned into an ordinary settlement. The ruling class of sanxingdui ancient city has migrated, where have they moved? It is likely to move to Chengdu Jinsha.
In the three stages of development of the Sanxingdui site, people from different regions have joined. At the end of the first term of Sanxingdui, that is, the transition period from Baodun culture to Sanxingdui culture, people from the Central Plains came to Sanxingdui. Archaeologists have found a cemetery in Rensheng Village, west of the Sanxingdui site, which contains some spiral-shaped artifacts, which are very characteristic artifacts of the Erlitou site. I think that on the eve of the rise of the Sanxingdui culture and the construction of sanxingdui city, a group of people from the Erlitou culture of the Central Plains entered the Sanxingdui site, and it was the combination of this group of people and the local culture of Sanxingdui that changed the development process of local culture and formed the Sanxingdui culture and the country. At the end of the Sanxingdui culture, another group of people from the eastern Part of the Sichuan Basin along the Yangtze River or the middle reaches of the Yangtze River entered Sanxingdui, bringing new technologies and arts, forming the essence of the Sanxingdui burial pit. The downfall of the Sanxingdui state is likely to be related to the interaction of internal and external forces at that time.
Sanxingdui bronze portraits are divided into two categories, one is the "braided hair" people who comb their hair into a braid and drag it behind their heads, whose hairstyles resemble the men of the Qing Dynasty; the other group is the "braided hair" people who tie their hair behind their heads and then pin them up with hairpins, which is the mainstream hairstyle of people in the central plains of China for thousands of years. It is worth noting that in the portraits of these two ethnic groups, there are two faces with gold leaf on each side, and the symbolic patterns represented on the gold-clad bamboo sticks are also two groups, which implies that the Sanxingdui state may be a power system jointly ruled by two nobles.
In these two groups of aristocrats who held power, according to the hairstyle and posture of the full-body bronze statue of Sanxingdui No. 2 pit, it can be known that those nobles who engaged in religious etiquette were all "hair-tied" nobles. According to this inference, the "braided" nobles of Sanxingdui are likely to hold the power of religious sacrifice in the country, while those "braided" nobles are likely to hold secular powers such as administrative and military affairs. Sanxingdui is a country ruled by two aristocratic groups, and maintaining a good balance of power is the foundation of national stability. The demise of the Sanxingdui nation may be related to the breakdown of this balance.
The planning idea of Fa Tianxiangdi was pioneered by Sanxingdui
Sanxingdui culture has a development process of more than 500 years, and the ancient city has also gone through several stages to form the final form. The early city site was only north of the Mamu River, which was later a small city in the northwest of the ancient city of Sanxingdui, that is, the small city of Moon Bay. Later, the city expanded to the south of the Mamu River, forming the later Sanxingdui Small City and the Outer City in the east. Further back, it continued to expand south, and in the northeast, a small city of Cangbaobao was built to form the appearance of the ancient city of Sanxingdui that we see now. The ruling class of the Sanxingdui Kingdom has always been the palace area of the northwest small city as the ruling center, and the early religious worship area is also in the northwest small city, and in the late sanxingdui culture, the religious sacrifice area moved from the northwest to the southwest, forming a state where the secular area and the religious area are across the river. With the transfer of religious space, the city of Sanxingdui underwent great changes: the river ran through the city, the north side of the river was the palace area, and the south side of the river was the sacrificial area. Since the capital city not only has theocracy and secular nobles, but also ordinary people, Sanxingdui City also has a north-south inner wall that divides the city into east and west parts.
This kind of planning idea of dividing the capital city into two parts with the river first into the south and north, and then dividing the city wall into the east and west parts, so that the plane of the whole city is "Tian" shaped, and once formed, it is frozen in people's minds, and Sanxingdui City did not disappear after it was abandoned, but also brought to Chengdu Jinsha with the migration of Sanxingdui people. The planning ideas of the Jinsha site are obviously in line with Sanxingdui City. This idea of capital planning continued until the capital of the late Shu kingdom, that is, the Chengdu of the Shu Kaiming clan, the last capital of the ancient Shu state, and it was still divided into two urban areas in the south and north by the ancient Pi River. This kind of capital city planning idea can be named after "Law Heaven and Earth" or "Law Elephant Heaven", and the invention of this urban planning idea was sanxingdui people.
The idea of capital planning in the ancient Shu kingdom did not disappear after the Qin destroyed Bashu, as other factors of bashu culture were integrated into the system of Qin and Han culture. In ancient China, the capital city built using the planning idea of "law and heaven and earth", in addition to the ancient Shu capital city in the southwest corner, the most typical is the Great Xianyang built after the unification of Qin with Chengdu. In the future, the Chang'an City of the Western Han Dynasty, and even the Eastern Capital of the Sui and Tang Dynasties, Luoyang City, etc., also have the relics of the fa-tian-xiang-di planning ideology.
Reprinted from: West China Metropolis Daily