Sichuan Sanxingdui bronze mask debuted at the CCTV Spring Festival Gala

The bronze mask excavated from the Sanxingdui site was unveiled at the Spring Festival Gala of the Central Radio and Television Corporation

On the evening of January 31, the Chinese New Year's Eve night of the Lunar New Year, the bronze masks excavated from the Sanxingdui site appeared on the stage of the Spring Festival Gala of the Central Radio and Television Corporation, officially released to the people of the whole country to celebrate the Spring Festival.

This bronze mask is 131 cm wide, 71 cm high, 66 cm deep, weighs 131 pounds, and has a history of more than 3,000 years, and is the largest, largest and best-preserved large bronze mask excavated at the Sanxingdui site. Its wide forehead, exaggerated face, eyebrows, eyes, nose, lips, ears and other lines are smooth and angular. The bronze mask is the most characteristic typical artifact in the Sanxingdui culture, and it should be an artifact placed in the temple for worship.

The large bronze mask was excavated from Sanxingdui No. 3 Sacrifice Pit on June 23, 2021. After the mask extraction, the cultural security personnel conducted an analysis and study on the casting process of the bronze mask, and its production was first cast and formed, cast by the face, the face, the back of the cheek, the eyes, the ears and other parts, and then welded and combined into one, which is not only the perfect combination of bronze technology and art, but also the unique expression of the spiritual world of the ancient Shu people. The cultural security personnel also found silk textile residues with warp and weft tissues in the right eyebrow, right eyeball, and right corner of the eye. The combination of silk and mask with the function of "heaven and theosophy" highlights the meaning of sacred sacrifice.

2021 marks the centenary of the birth of modern Chinese archaeology, and the archaeological excavations at the Sanxingdui site have also achieved fruitful results. Archaeologists have successively discovered six new sacrificial pits next to the original No. 1 and No. 2 sacrifice pits at the Sanxingdui site. With the approval of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, in October 2020, the archaeological excavation of the six sacrifice pits in the Sanxingdui sacrifice area was fully launched, and the Sichuan Archaeological Research Institute and Peking University, the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Sichuan University, Shanghai University and other units formed a joint archaeological team, and the number of scientific research institutions and universities participating in the research reached 39 in China, gathering hundreds of scientific researchers and more than 20 disciplines to continue to carry out in-depth and continuous research on an archaeological site is rare at home and abroad, forming a set of archaeological excavations and timely protection of the site 3. System scientific research, open cultural relics restoration and display integration of the "Sanxingdui model".

The multi-functional scientific excavation and research system represented by the "archaeological cabin" has laid a solid foundation for refined archaeology, laboratory archaeology and emergency protection. Environmental archaeology, scientific and technological dating, DNA determination, material analysis, bronze research, metallurgical archaeology, etc. are simultaneously promoted, and at the time when "century-old archaeology" continues to open up the past, it shows the rapid development of China's archaeological concepts and archaeological technology in the new era, which is an active exploration of "archaeology with Chinese characteristics, Chinese style and Chinese style".

By the end of 2021, more than 10,000 numbered cultural relics have been unearthed from the six sacrificial pits of Sanxingdui, and many cultural relics such as gold masks, top statues, green statues, large masks, altar models, kneeling bronze figures, and more than 500 ivory are dazzling. Many cultural relics such as the bronze statue, copper slug, yuzhang, and yuchun in the land show the close connection between Shudi and the culture of the Central Plains and the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, which empirically proves the historical development process of "pluralism and integration" of Chinese civilization, and is of great significance for further building a Chinese cultural identification system and forging a solid sense of community of the Chinese nation.

(China Daily Sichuan Reporter Station)