Cover News Reporter Tian Lu
On the stage of the Spring Festival Gala of the Year of the Tiger on January 31, the "new top stream" in the domestic cultural and expo industry - Sanxingdui is out of the circle again! The famous actor Zhang Guoli, together with Ran Honglin, director of the Sanxingdui Archaeological Research Institute, released the latest excavated cultural relics of Sanxingdui on the Spring Festival Gala stage - bronze masks, reproducing the ancient Shu style of "sleeping for thousands of years, waking up and shocking the world" in front of hundreds of millions of viewers, and presenting a "New Year gift" for the 100th anniversary of the birth of modern archaeology in China.
Since 2021, the archaeological excavations of 6 new sacrifice pits in the Sanxingdui site sacrifice area have attracted great attention at home and abroad.
Behind this remarkable achievement, there are both the hard work of archaeologists and the help of scientific research institutions. Sichuan geologists are honored to be one of them, providing scientific and reasonable suggestions for the protection of the cultural layer of the sacrifice area.
The Sanxingdui site has a history of 5,000 to 3,000 years, and is the largest, longest-lasting, and most culturally rich ancient city, ancient country, and ancient Shu cultural site discovered in southwest China so far, and is known as one of the greatest archaeological discoveries of mankind in the 20th century.
Since December 2019, archaeologists have once again carried out systematic and comprehensive archaeological excavations in the sacrificial area of the Sanxingdui site, and achieved important results represented by the No. 3 to No. 8 sacrifice area.
During the excavation of the Sanxingdui site, the high moisture content cultural layer of the sacrifice area evaporated rapidly after disclosure, resulting in obvious cracking of the soil layer, which adversely affected the continued excavation and later protection of the sacrifice pit.
Entrusted by the Sichuan Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, the Sichuan Exploration Group of the Sichuan Provincial Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources has identified the storage and movement law of groundwater in the loose aquifer through the hydrogeological survey of the sacrifice area through multiple means, focusing on the dynamic characteristics of diving in the loose aquifer and the capillary water in the soil, providing the necessary hydrogeological basis for the protection of the cultural layer of the sacrifice area, and putting forward scientific and reasonable suggestions for the protection of cultural relics and groundwater regulation.
It is understood that during the excavation process of the Sanxingdui site, the surface of the miscellaneous fill soil was stripped away, which changed the original relatively closed storage environment of the cultural layer, resulting in environmental geological diseases such as cracks, weathering, salinization and so on, and it was necessary to investigate the groundwater movement law and seepage field in the site area.
Different from ordinary hydrogeological surveys, the protection survey of cultural relics and sites has its own particularities, and the integrity of cultural relics and sites should be protected to the greatest extent while identifying the required geological information. Based on the scientific survey scheme, the hydrogeological survey of sanxingdui site is based on the scientific survey scheme, in addition to the conventional methods such as engineering surveying, comprehensive geological drilling, on-site standard penetration, and dynamic exploration, the comprehensive survey methods such as multi-gradient groundwater three-parameter monitoring, small environmental meteorological monitoring, and micro-geomorphological large-scale measurement are also adopted in the archaeological excavation area, which realizes the fine hydrogeological survey of the site area and identifies the environmental geological disease mechanism of the soil site.
Hydrogeological technology also plays an important role in the protection of stone cultural relics. Taking the Pilu Cave Grottoes in Anyue County as an example, the Moya Grottoes such as the Ten Liantu of Liu Benzun and the Guanyin of shuiyue can be called ancient cultural treasures, and are rare treasures of stone carvings in the Northern Song Dynasty in the country, with high historical, artistic, research and social value.
The preservation status of the grotto is not optimistic, mainly manifested in the existence of cliff rock defects, flaky peeling and other diseases, the statue area has water seepage, empty drum, deliquescence, breeding moss and other water damage phenomena, which seriously affects the integrity, stability and artistry of the stone statue.
In order to find out the causes of water damage in pilu caves and assess the adverse effects of hydrogeological conditions on the preservation of grottoes, Sichuan Exploration Group carried out hydrogeological survey work, identified the lithology and structural characteristics of stratigraphic lithology and structure, hydrogeological conditions and their degree of impact on cultural relics, the development of advantageous water diversion channels such as joint fissures, the infiltration of atmospheric precipitation and the drainage of water in the air-containing belt, analyzed the causes of water damage in grottoes, and proposed the cause mechanism of water damage in grottoes, providing hydrogeological basis for the effective protection of stone carvings, and improving the protection level of stone carvings in Pilu Cave.