1. Overview of the site
The Dunhuang Dry Gorge Jade Mine Site is located in the southeast of Dunhuang City, Gansu Province, in the southeast of the Back Mountain of the Three Dangers Mountains, about 68 kilometers west of Dunhuang City, 57 kilometers northeast of Guazhou, and 140 miles of Gobi in the south. This area is a typical arid Gobi desert area in the interior of Asia, which belongs to the stony mountain hilly area, with continuous remnants of hills, bare gravel, and the Gobi is everywhere. 2014 In 2019, the Gansu Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology conducted several surveys of the site [1]. In 2019, the site was surveyed and aerial surveyed again, and after surveying the site, it was 3,000 meters from east to west, 1,000 meters from north to south, and an area of 3 million square meters. A total of 147 various relics were found, including 116 pits, 8 mine ditches, 12 sentry posts, 8 housing sites, and 3 material selection areas (Figure 1).
Various remains are distributed along three jade ore veins on the north and south sides of the mountain. Most of the pits are remnants of ancient mining, but some of them are modern mining, and there are also a small number of pits and ditches that are modern mining on the basis of ancient pits, and the damage is more serious. The pits are mostly shallow pits with nearly circular, oval and irregular shapes, with small mouths and small bottoms, and a large amount of stone is piled up around the pits (Figures 2 and 3).
The sentry is located on top of a broken stony hill and is mostly nearly rounded square and rectangular stone masonry. The distribution characteristics of various types of ruins show the combined characteristics of the sentry at the top of the mountain, the pits on both sides of the mountain, and the housing site and the material selection area near the foothills.
Second, the main findings
The Dunhuang Dry Gorge Jade Mine site was excavated for 300 square meters, and a total of 12 sites, pits and sentries were cleaned up (Figure 4).
The site includes 1 ground stone wall site and 5 semi-crypt sites. The semi-crypt structure is basically the same, the plane is rounded and square, and it is composed of the main body of the site, the doorway, the storage pit (table), the operation table, the stove, and the moving surface. Among them, F1 F3 was built using the masonry wall of the early pit barrier (Figure 5); F4 was built using the rock wall on the side of the foothill mountain and the ground bastion stone wall, and the internal structure of the site was consistent with the structure of the semi-crypt site, consisting of the main body of the site, the doorway, the stove and the moving surface (Figure 6);
F5 and F6 were directly excavated on the rocks, and then the stone walls were built (Fig. 7). The pit is a shallow pit formed by mining along the vein, with an irregular plane, a large outsole (Figure 8), a partial preservation of jade veins in the pit, and some pit walls to preserve fire marks (Figures 9 and 10).
The sentry is located on a higher hilltop, with rounded or rectangular stone buildings, which are poorly preserved, and only the lower stone walls are preserved. The entire mining area forms a relatively scattered settlement distribution structure characterized by a combination of pits, housing sites and sentries, forming a form of production organization and management integrating mining, material selection and defense.
The excavated relics mainly include pottery, stone tools, jade and stone materials (jade surrounding rock), animal bones, etc. The excavated pottery pieces include Xichengyi culture sand red pottery (Figure 11), some of which are faience pottery, and the surface collects typical Qijia culture orange and yellow pottery pieces, decorated with basket patterns (Figure 12), and the Horse Culture is dominated by sand red pottery, with a small amount of sand gray pottery. Stone tools are mainly mining beneficiation tools and practical tools for life, mining material selection tools include stone hammers and ortholite (Figure 13), and living utensils include perforated stone knives and spinning wheels.
Jade is mainly mining residue of crushed small jade, mainly tremolite, polygonite, sugar jade, from the production analysis can be divided into mountain material and Gobi material, mainly mountain material (Figure 14, 15), Gobi material less (Figure 16, 17).
Third, the main understanding
According to the distribution characteristics and arrangement rules of housing sites, pits and sentries, the distribution characteristics of the hilltop sentry, the pits on both sides of the mountain, the bottom site of the foothills and the material selection area can be judged to have formed an orderly and well-managed form of production organization and management at that time. At the same time, the site is mainly semi-crypt, the site is distributed in the south slope of the mountain (Yang slope) or the low-lying area between the mountains, and the doorway of the site is south or east, which confirms that the crowd at that time has an accurate understanding of the climatic characteristics of the local northwest wind, and pays attention to the adaptation to the local environment in the process of production and life. Some houses are reconstructed using abandoned pits, indicating that there are different periods of mining, and later people use early pits to build housing sites, and there is a phenomenon of changing the structure of the house inside the house, and there are many uses. According to the distribution of the ruins, stratigraphic accumulation, the superimposed relationship of the pit, the multiple use of the site, the internal structure of the site change, and the excavation of pottery, the jade mine site is roughly divided into four phases, the first phase is the Xichengyi-Qijia culture period, the second phase is the early stage of the horse culture, the third phase is the late stage of the horse culture, and the fourth phase is the late natural accumulation after the abandonment of the jade mine.
The jade mine site can be divided into early Xichengyi culture, Qijia culture remains and late Luoma culture remains, excavated Xichengyi culture sand red pottery and Xichengyi site Phase II artifacts are similar [2], the collection of Qijia culture orange and yellow pottery basket pattern pottery pieces consistent with the typical Qijia culture belly jar, the early stage dating is roughly 2000 BC 1700 BC; the excavated Luoma culture sand red pottery is similar to the Huohuogou site [3], and the late stage is judged to be roughly 300 years bc. Through the analysis of excavated artifacts, the jade mine site was mined by the Xichengyi-Qijia cultural population in the early days and by the Luoma culture in the late period, which proved that the ancient people mined jade ore as early as the 2,000 BC period, and greatly advanced the time for the jade materials of the Hexi Corridor to enter the Central Plains. The excavation of Qijia culture and Xichengyi cultural artifacts provides new information for exploring the distribution of Qijia culture and Xichengyi culture, especially the expansion of Qijia culture to the West to dunhuang area. Evidence of jade mining by the Qijia people provides rich information for the study of Qijia culture jade, The study of Western China jade, and the study of the early jade road.
Dunhuang Dry Gorge Jade Mine Site and Ma mane Mountain Trail Baoer Grassland Jade Mine comparison, corridor Nanshan mining jade mine is much earlier than the Beishan area, from the scale of the site and the distribution of ruins, Dunhuang Dry Gorge Jade Mine Site mining scale is small, the distribution of housing sites is scattered, did not form a large settlement of Ma mane Mountain Trail Baoer Grassland Jade Mine, semi-crypt housing sites have both the functions of life and production. Judging from the excavated relics and related relics, the two jade mine sites belong to open-pit mining, and the mining material selection tools are mainly stone hammers and gravel, and it is speculated that the remaining fire marks and jade fire traces on the pit wall are inferred that both use the technology of burning mountain mining [4].
4. Academic value
The western part of the Hexi Corridor has successively discovered the Ruins of Baoer Grassland and Hanyaozi Jade Mine in The North Mountain of the Corridor, the Dunhuang Dry Gorge Jade Mine Site was discovered in the South Mountain of the Corridor, and the three jade mine sites are the earliest tremolite jade mining industrial sites found in China, which provide new ideas for understanding the research of nephrite mineralization in Qilian Mountain and Beishan Mountain and the search for new ancient jade mining sites. The research of artifacts is of great significance to the research of jade mining technology, material selection technology, production organization management, jade transportation and other aspects. The mining of jade mining sites in the western part of the Hexi Corridor continued from the 2,000 bc period to the middle of the Western Han Dynasty, which provided conclusive evidence for the history of tremolite mining in the mainland, the transmission of western jade to the east, and the study of the jade road, provided new materials for understanding the relationship between the ancient mining population in the northwest region and the population in the Central Plains, and even was of great significance to revealing the operation system of ancient jade supply in the Hexi Corridor region to the Central Plains, breaking the traditional understanding that early jade may come from Xinjiang. The excavation of several jade mine sites has provided a new breakthrough in the understanding of the historical geography of the "Three Dangers Mountain" and "Kunlun" recorded in the history books.
bibliography
[1] Gansu Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, School of Earth Sciences and Engineering, Sun Yat-sen University, "Archaeological Survey Report on the Jade Mine Site in Dunhuang Dry Gorge, Gansu Province", Archaeology and Cultural Relics, No. 4, 2019.
[2] Gansu Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, Institute of Metallurgy and Materials History, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, etc.: "Xichengyi Ruins in Zhangye City, Gansu Province", Archaeology, No. 7, 2014.
[3] Gansu Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology: "Briefing on the Excavation of the Yumen Fire Gou Site in Gansu Province in 2005", Cultural Relics, No. 3, 2019.
[4] Gansu Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology: "Ma mane mountain jade mine site in Subei County, Gansu Province", Archaeology, No. 7, 2015.
Source 丨 Gansu Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology (Text/Yang Yishi Chen Guoke)