Small pieces of gold ornament unearthed from Nanling K1. Courtesy of Shaanxi Archaeological Research Institute
In October 2010, Ma Yongyi (first from left) and Jiao Nanfeng (second from left) at the Changling exploration site. Courtesy of respondents
Ma Yongyi (first from right) surveys the mountainside of Fenghuangzui with his staff. Courtesy of Shaanxi Archaeological Research Institute
Smiling pottery figurines lie neatly in the Outer Hidden Pit, one of the 115 Outer Hidden Pits in Baling. Dense steel frames support the pit, and the "zigzag" soil steps are preserved on both sides, and the robbery hole at the bottom of the pit is clearly visible. Latecomers stepped on the newly laid wooden staircase, carried cameras, and swept over the terracotta figurines below.
"The Great Tomb of Bailuyuan Jiangcun in Xi'an City, Shaanxi Province, is the tomb of Emperor Wen of Han, not the mouth of the phoenix." On December 14, 2021, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage officially announced this archaeological result, solving the mystery of the location of the Tomb of emperor Wen of Han.
Behind this is the unremitting efforts of the hanling archaeologists for decades.
In the 1960s and 1970s, Wang Xueli, Wu Zhenfeng, and others rescued and excavated small burial pits in the east of Jiangcun and the northwest of Empress Bo's Nanling Mausoleum; later, Liu Qingzhu and Li Yufang of the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences conducted a systematic investigation of the Eleventh Tomb of the Western Han Dynasty; in 2001, the black clay figurines were stolen, exiled to the United States, and returned to Xi'an several times; in 2006, large tombs such as the Jiangcun Tomb were discovered, and the discussion on the specific location of the Baling Tomb was opened...
Hunt for black clay figurines
This is a flat loess plateau, bordered by the Qinling Mountains to the south and the Bahe River to the north. In the depressed winter, the cherry groves are bald, and the strawberries on the roadside stalls are stacked into small red baskets, waiting for the passers-by to take them away.
Bailuyuan, located in the southeast of Xi'an, is named after "there is a white deer swimming" and is also famous for the novels of writer Chen Zhongzhong. Under this undisturbed loess, Emperor Wen of Han was buried. Since the Yuan Dynasty, people have thought that the Han Wen Emperor's tomb was the "phoenix mouth" on the White Deer Plain, and several generations of people erected monuments as evidence.
On December 14, 2021, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage announced that the location of the Han Wen Emperor's mausoleum was determined to be the Bailuyuan Jiangcun Tomb.
On that day, the entire Hanling archaeological team was busy. Archaeologist Jiao Nanfeng and ma Yongyi, captain of the archaeological team, went to the Shaanxi Provincial Cultural Relics Bureau and participated in the release of this heavy news online; vice captain Cao Long stayed at the archaeological base in Bailuyuan to receive many media who came to report; Zhu Chenlu, a member of the team, was busy preparing various materials for the press conference...
"I didn't expect that the discovery of Baling would receive so much attention." Just after the press conference of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, Cao Long found that the courtyard of the archaeological base was already full of reporters, and there was a series of missed calls and text messages on his mobile phone.
Located in the northeast corner of Jiangcun Tomb, no. 15 Waizang Pit is a must-visit punching point for journalists, and the excavation length is about 39 meters and the depth is about 8 meters. Under the protective greenhouse, dense steel frames support the pit, and the original "zigzag" soil steps are still preserved on both sides. In order to protect the cultural relics, the archaeological team laid a new wooden staircase on the side of the steel frame, and thousands of ceramic figurines appeared in front of them.
"This is a dressed clay figurine, the highest specification funerary product used by the emperor." Cao Long, wearing a red hard hat, introduced himself to the camera, following his gaze, and at the bottom of the pit lay neatly naked terracotta figurines, decaying silk staining them red, and wooden arms long gone. The footsteps of the latecomers became more restrained, for fear of accidentally disturbing the smiles on their faces.
Take a few steps inside, you will see a large pit with a diameter of three or four meters, and after a few steps, a large hole will appear on the side. This is a robbery hole left by tomb robbers, and fragments of pottery figurines that were blown up are scattered around.
The discovery of Baling should also start from the robbery cave found 20 years ago.
In 2001, many cultural relics in and around Jiangcun Tomb were stolen and illegally flowed into the market. The following year, 6 stolen black pottery figurines of the Western Han Dynasty appeared in the auction catalogue of the Sosby Auction House in the United States and were about to be auctioned. Those black clay figurines are like the clay figurines excavated from the Gangchon Tomb, naked and armless.
How to prove that the black clay figurines are Chinese? Why are they said to have been unearthed in Shaanxi? How can we be sure that they originated in the Western Han Dynasty? At that time, the Us side raised 11 questions, and Jiao Nanfeng, then director of the Shaanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology, spent two days answering these questions in detail.
After many efforts, 10 minutes before the auction, the black clay figurines were finally removed from the auction list.
In 2003, 6 pieces of Black Pottery Figurines of the Western Han Dynasty returned to Xi'an.
The relevant departments investigated their origins and found that they were stolen from the White Deer Plains by the stolen tombists. On the flat White Deer Plain, empress Dou's mausoleum and Empress Bo's mausoleum have high sealed soil. The location where the black pottery figurines were stolen, about 800 meters southeast of Empress Dou's mausoleum, there was no sign on the ground.
"When we got the black clay figurines, we felt that it might be related to Baling." Jiao Nanfeng recalled that similar nude clay figurines were uncommon and only appeared in the Emperor's Mausoleum. However, the site of the black pottery figurines was found too far away from the Tomb of Empress Dou and did not belong to the scope of her mausoleum.
Who is the owner of the black clay figurines? Jiao Nanfeng had the answer in his heart, but still needed a series of work to confirm, "We have a rule in archaeology, if you have doubts, when you publish an article, you must have a series of evidence." ”
Investigate the phoenix mouth
Overlooking the phoenix's beak on the White Deer Plain, like a phoenix with outstretched wings, the loess beams protruding out resemble the shape of a bird's head. From a distance, the small hill that rises high does indeed resemble the enclosure of a large mausoleum.
Under the mouth of the phoenix, there are more than ten ancient monuments that have been weathered by wind and rain, and most of the words on them have been mottled. Among them is a tall stone stele with inscriptions in it, with five big characters written on it: Tomb of Emperor Hanwen.
"Emperor Wen's tomb is under the mouth of the Northern Phoenix of Bailuyuan, forty miles east of the Jingzhao Tonghua Gate." The account of Luo Tianjun in the Compilation of the Chronicle of Chang'an in the Yuan Dynasty is the earliest record that archaeologists can find about the specific location of Baling. But to overturn this claim to find the real Baling, archaeologists spent nearly 20 years.
"Since 2011, we have spent more than half a year to deny the claim that the 'phoenix mouth is a bully.'" In that year, the Shaanxi Provincial Archaeological Research Institute cooperated with the Xi'an Municipal Institute of Cultural Relics Protection and Archaeology to establish the Hanling Archaeological Team, which conducted a larger archaeological survey and exploration of the suspected Baling area on the Bailu Plain and the Southern Tomb of Empress Bo.
At that time, Ma Yongyi was the deputy captain and was mainly responsible for the exploration of the Baling Tombs area. Originally a "layman" in archaeology, he was assigned to the archaeological unit after graduating from law, doing administrative work at first, and later turning to the archaeological business. In 1995, Ma Yongyi followed Jiao Nanfeng and knocked on the door of the study of the Western Han Dynasty Emperor's Mausoleum.
When I first arrived at the mouth of the phoenix, there was still a loess slope full of wild grass. The Archaeological Team's Luoyang shovel was inserted vertically into the ground, and soil samples were taken out one after another, drilling from the foot of the mountain to the mountainside. Half a year passed, and the archaeological team found no remains of tombs or cemeteries.
"At first, I thought it was not meticulous enough, so I drilled again." Ma Yongyi narrowed the spacing of the drill holes from three meters to two meters, and dozens of drillers probed for more than a month without finding anything.
For the sake of safety, the archaeological team invited the members of the Shaanxi Mineralization Exploration Team, and the third drilling used high-tech geophysical exploration technology, which was originally used to find underground resources such as metallic and non-metallic minerals and groundwater. Geophysical equipment was nailed into the ground, and radar began to detect, but still did not find Baling.
The three probes of the phoenix mouth did not find the slightest information related to Baling. Ma Yongyin reported the situation to the captain Jiao Nanfeng, and the archaeologists gathered together to comb through the documents, read the drawings, analyze the landform, and began to doubt the records of the predecessor "Baling in the Mouth of the Phoenix".
Baling is not in the mouth of the phoenix, where is it?
The Hanling archaeological team set their sights on empress Dou's mausoleum. According to the shape of the Western Han Dynasty's imperial mausoleum, the emperor and empress would be buried in the same domain after death, each with a mausoleum, also known as the "same tomb". According to this burial system, the tomb of Emperor Wen of Han should be near the mausoleum of Empress Dou. On the White Deer Plain, there are two bucket-shaped seals, which are the Mausoleum of Empress Dou and the Southern Tomb of Empress Bo.
And Baling did not have a seal. In 157 BC, Emperor Wen of Han, who advocated frugality, left a testament before his death: Baling Mountains and Rivers did not change because of it. He hoped that the mausoleum where he was buried would not destroy the original landform and would not be artificially sealed.
Just when the Hanling archaeological team was worried, the Xi'an Archaeological Research Institute provided an important clue: in 2006, they found a very large tomb without sealing soil, jiangcun tomb, 800 meters away from empress Dou's mausoleum, that is, near the site where the black pottery figurines were stolen.
As a result, the relationship between empress Dou's mausoleum and the Fenghuangzui and Jiangcun tombs entered the academic vision of archaeologists, opening up a discussion on the specific location of Emperor Wen's mausoleum.
In 2017, the Hanling archaeological team began to explore and excavate the pit outside the Jiangcun Tomb. The Luoyang shovel continued to pound the loess, and as the drilling progressed, a large-scale, top-of-the-line tomb appeared. The tomb is shaped in the shape of a "Ya" glyph, the edge of the burial chamber is about 73 meters long, and there are more than 110 hidden pits around it.
"In the Han Dynasty, this was the highest level of tomb form, which only the emperor or empress could use." Ma Yongyi felt that the Jiangcun Tomb might be a baling tomb, but archaeology is a science that requires detailed evidence, and the Luoyang shovel in their hands did not stop...
Drill the outer garden wall
As soon as the orange sunrise emerged from the ground, detective Wang Zhaohong came to the archaeological site, wearing a black velvet hat and orange plastic gloves, and picked up a probe shovel for drilling. The pale yellow probe shovel needed to be assembled, a pole was one meter long and weighed four or five pounds, and he could lift up to eight meters of poles. The semicircular shovel was inserted vertically into the ground, and when it was turned and lifted, the pole shuttled back and forth in Wang Zhaohong's hand, and the cylindrical soil samples were taken out one after another.
After 10 minutes, Wang Zhaohong had already connected the 4-meter pole, the depth was getting bigger and bigger, and the waist was getting more and more curved. Even with the cold wind of midwinter, beads of sweat came out of his head. Suddenly, he felt that the feel was not right, and he looked at the soil like a layer of dark blue soil mixed with the loess.
"It's pottery, at a depth of 3.5 meters." Wang Zhaohong picked up the dirt block, broke it, and after identifying it as pottery, he took a tape measure to measure the depth before calling the captain Ma Yongyi to report.
As early as 1984, Wang Zhaohong joined the Shaanxi Archaeological Drilling Company to learn various drilling techniques. Exploring the Han Tombs is a light and familiar road for Wang Zhaohong. He had worked in the Hanyang Mausoleum for more than ten years, and on the first day of his visit, he explored the tomb passage, "That hole was punched 19 meters, and they had not found the tomb before." ”
Later, Wang Zhaohong went to archaeological sites in Jiangxi, Jiuquan, Wuxi and Shenyang. He said he was like a guerrilla, running wherever there was work. In 2018, Ma Yongyi called her old partner Wang Zhaohong back to the Hanling archaeological team, when the exploration of Baling encountered difficulties, and the outer garden wall surrounding baling and Empress Dou's mausoleum had not been fully explored.
Opportunity arose on a rainy day. While the rest of the team members were resting, Ma Yongyi pulled Wang Zhaohong out for a walk. They were walking on the dirt path they had drilled, and suddenly noticed that the cliffs on the side of the road were a little different, and after the rain washed away, they saw traces of rammed earth walls. Ma Yongyi said: "We were very excited at the time, which is also evidence of the discovery of the outer garden wall. ”
Identifying soil is an essential skill for archaeologists. Different soils, textures, colors and structures are different, and archaeologists can see them with the naked eye. Ma Yongyi gave an example, "The vegetation in the warm and humid period is abundant, and the corresponding soil layer is darker; the vegetation in the cold and drought period is sparse, and the soil layer formed is lighter in color." The ancient walls were formed by ramming dirt blocks, and there would be rammed nests on top of the rammed earth, like stone cakes. ”
How to find a rammed wall more than 2,000 years ago under a flat land?
Archaeologists are good at finding the remaining traces. Once, Cao Long was aerial photographed after the snow, and in the vast white snow, there was a place that melted quickly and the land was exposed, which meant that there might be a cemetery below. Another time, they saw a green wheat field with a golden wave of wheat, "There may be a city wall below, and the wheat cannot be rooted and ripened early." ”
"I shovel (drill) just by the feel, take the shovel to hit the soil, there is no feeling." The Luoyang shovel had been held in his hand for thirty or forty years, and Wang Zhaohong had practiced a unique skill. He doesn't have to look at the dirt blocks, and he can distinguish what is in the ground just by the feel of the hand — the rammed earth with moisture is like plasticine, the sound of pottery or tiles is more brittle, the soil with the hole is loose, and so on.
But to find out the badly damaged outer garden wall, it is also difficult for Wang Zhaohong. He opened the field archaeological log, which recorded the holes he had drilled, densely packed. He couldn't remember exactly how many holes he had drilled, wrong, drilled again, couldn't find them, drilled again. Sometimes, it is difficult to find two or three meters of rammed earth traces, and then broken, seven turns, intermittent.
Archaeologists have tried to refer to the scope of the outer garden wall of the previous Han Tombs. Wang Zhaohong and the two drillers kept using the Luoyang shovel to probe the ground, and after more than a month, they finally slowly probed out a section of the wall foundation remains. He once again exerted the power of soil awareness, "the soil is relatively pure, the structure is dense, relatively hard, this is the characteristics of rammed earth." ”
"It was a pleasure to find the rammed wall, that's key evidence!" Ma Yongyi's hands were more wide than the rammed wall, and it was difficult to hide his excitement. This rammed wall encloses the Jiangcun Tomb and the Tomb of Empress Dou in a cemetery about 1200 meters long and about 863 meters wide, which is the burial system used by the emperor and empress of the Western Han Dynasty.
This key piece of evidence emerged in 2019 and was drilled and validated over and over again until 2020. Ma Yongyi sighed: "The location of the Baling tomb cannot be determined in a day. ”
Excavating the "Zoo"
The brush swept the loess soil, and the blue-gray pottery coffin was revealed. Zhang Wanwan wore gloves and carefully removed the lid of the coffin, and a small head of a bird appeared, the size of an egg, and the bird bone lay on its side in the pottery coffin. At that moment, she forgot the soreness of bending over for a long time and felt "surprised and cute".
This post-90s girl has a curly hair of instant noodles and joined the Xi'an Cultural Relics Conservation and Archaeology Research Institute after graduation. Two months ago, Zhang Wanwan came to the Hanling Archaeological Team to participate in the archaeological work of the Baling site.
Surprises often appear under Zhang Wanwan's hand shovel. Once, a brown seed the size of a sesame shell was hidden in a dirt block and was spotted by her sharp-eyed. "Don't look at them as small, these are all one of the evidences that we restore the history of people's lives in ancient times." After the euphoria, it was more trepidation, and she was worried about whether she had missed other seeds and whether she had destroyed the scene.
The findings came from Empress Bo's Southern Tomb, where Emperor Wen of Han's mother was buried.
In addition to the bird bones found, the skeletons of more than a dozen animals such as golden snub-nosed monkeys, red-crowned cranes and tortoises have been found in other outer pits, and the skeletons of giant pandas and rhinos have also been excavated before. The Outer Hidden Pit on the west side of the Nanling Tomb has also unearthed gold and silver objects with animal images, including bears, wolves, leopards, etc., which have a typical grassland culture style.
"The distribution of the skeletons of these animals is very regular, as if entering a zoo, with the animal area to the west and the bird area to the east." Researcher Hu Songmei, an expert in animal archaeology at the Shaanxi Provincial Archaeological Research Institute, introduced that the rare birds and animals buried with them also showed the noble identity of the tomb owner, and also reflected the ancient people's concept of "death is like life".
The Hanling archaeological team is also like a "zoo".
The archaeological team has its own unique "local jokes". If you carefully study the names of the archaeologists, the names of Ma Yongyi, Cao Long, Zhu Chenlu, Zhu Lianhua, Yang Yanwen and others are related to animals. Cao Long explained with a smile: "Horses, sheep, pigs, all eat around the trough." Now that Zhang Wanwan has come, she finally has a 'bowl' and can implement a meal sharing system. ”
There is also a coincidence. Jiao Nanfeng was the first captain of the Hanling Archaeological Team, Ma Yongyi was the second captain, Cao Long was the vice captain, and Zhu Chenlu was the young backbone of the team. And they are all from Shaanxi, and they all have an age difference of just 11 years.
"It's actually a symbol of the legacy of our archaeological team." Zhu Chenlu came to the Hanling Archaeological Team for 4 years, which is more like another home for him. From the first floor house, to the villagers' house, to the archaeological base that moved in three months ago. What has not changed is that more than twenty team members get along like family.
Every morning at 7 o'clock, the master who opens the door will shout "open the door" in Shaanxi dialect, and the door of the archaeological base will open. The team members had breakfast, went to work on the construction site at 8 o'clock on time, and came back at noon to eat bowl noodles. At 6 p.m., the finished team members would play table tennis in the courtyard for a while, and then gather in the canteen to watch archaeology TV programs while eating dinner.
After dinner, it is a rare leisure time for archaeologists. They would go out for a walk in groups of three or five, walking around the Gangchon Tomb and the Nanling Tomb to consume food. Later, Ma Yongyi will play movies for everyone in the conference room, from Hollywood blockbusters to domestic comedies. Zhu Chenlu would occasionally play the flute in the courtyard, and the melodious flute sounded on the quiet white deer plain.
Unsolved mysteries
From the theft of the black clay figurines to the official determination of the Baling Tomb, twenty years have passed.
Archaeological work on Baling has already begun. In the 1960s and 1970s, Wang Xueli, Wu Zhenfeng and others carried out rescue excavations of small burial pits in the east of Jiangcun and small burial pits in the northwest of Empress Bo's Southern Mausoleum; in the 1980s, Liu Qingzhu and Li Yufang of the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences conducted systematic investigation and measurement of the Eleventh Tomb of the Western Han Dynasty, laying a good foundation for the subsequent archaeology of the Western Han Dynasty Emperor's Mausoleum.
In 2001, criminals excavated black clay figurines near Jiangcun. At that time, Jiao Nanfeng and others were doing archaeological work on the Western Han Emperor's Mausoleum on the Xianyang Plain, and then turned to Baling. In 2006, the exploration found the Jiangcun Tomb and its surrounding outer pits and stone boundaries. As a result, the relationship between empress Dou's mausoleum and the Fenghuangzui and Jiangcun tombs entered the academic vision of archaeologists, opening up a discussion on the specific location of Emperor Wen's mausoleum.
A lot of attention and heat, coming and going.
After the media dispersed, Ma Yongyi led the archaeological team to continue excavating, sorting out archaeological data, and assisting local governments in preparing protection plans. On the wall of his office hangs a calligraphy and painting, which is a portrayal of most of his life: "Spring has crossed by the Weishui Bridge, and the rain on the White Deer Plain has begun to clear." ”
In four years, Ma Yongwei will retire. For more than twenty years, the confusion in his heart about Baling was finally solved, and he muttered to himself: "I will not make a mistake in the future." ”
More people are concerned about the future of Baling. Will the tomb of Emperor Wen of Han continue to be excavated? The archaeologists gave a negative answer.
"Archaeology is not a treasure hunt, you can't see one digging one, and what you choose to excavate is what you need for research." Jiao Nanfeng explained that the mainland's cultural relics policy on ancient imperial tombs is not allowed to be excavated in principle. From the perspective of cultural relics protection, many technologies are not perfect enough, and some cultural relics are easily destroyed after they are unearthed. The damage to the mausoleum itself cannot be restored.
"We leave this wealth to future generations and wait until the technology is mature and their research needs are needed." Ma Yongyi said.
The power of protection is indeed growing. On the second day after the announcement of the Baling Tomb, the public security department of Baqiao District held a joint meeting with the archaeological team to set up a police room, install cameras, strengthen night patrols, etc., and strengthen the security of field cultural relics. The village's cultural relics security patrols have also increased the frequency and number of patrols.
Jiao Nanfeng returned to the pile of books, during the day, he read books, consulted materials, and copied useful documents; until 10 o'clock in the evening, when everyone went to sleep, he began to comb and write, until two or three o'clock in the morning. Regarding Baling, he wanted to know more, the gates and sleeping halls of Baling had not yet been determined, where the tombs were located, and what was the number and scale of funerary tombs...
The 67-year-old archaeologist, who has studied the Tombs of the Qin and Han Dynasties for 40 years, has long climbed on his sideburns, but he is still happy like a child. "Archaeology is a job that often has a sense of accomplishment. We explored all the eleven imperial tombs of the Western Han Dynasty, and 9 of them were newly discovered, which is 9 surprises. ”
The night in the White Deer Plains was quiet, only the barking of dogs in the distance. The gate of the archaeological base is facing the Southern Tomb of Empress Bo, and under the moonlight, the shadow of the sealed earth is faintly visible. The lamp in Jiao Nanfeng's study was always on, and the moon quietly climbed above, illuminating the stone stele in the courtyard, on which were engraved the four big characters inscribed by the famous archaeologist Liu Qingzhu: "Knocking Kun Supplement history."
(Reporter Wu Caiqian, intern Li Xinran, Sun Qingyue)
Source: Beijing News