Cover news reporter Zhang Jie Xu Yuyang photography Chen Yuxiao
Character business card
Sun Hua (Photographed by Chen Yuxiao)
Sun Hua is a professor of archaeology, the director of the Academic Committee of the School of Archaeology and Literature of Peking University, and the director of the Cultural Heritage Protection Research Center of Peking University.
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In 2021, Sanxingdui will wake up to the world again, attracting the attention of the general public in China and even the world. Professional archaeologists and historians have invested a lot of energy and wisdom in it, and are committed to a more accurate interpretation of it. As a senior professor of archaeology who has been educating and researching for many years in Peking University's School of Archaeology and Literature, Sun Hua has paid great attention to Samsung. Especially since the resumption of archaeological excavations in the Sanxingdui burial pit in 2021, Sun Hua has traveled between Sichuan and Beijing many times to pay close attention to the latest progress in the archaeology of Sanxingdui culture and ancient Shu civilization.
Sanxingdui was discovered and excavated in the current era
"Very rare and lucky"
"Sanxingdui is undoubtedly a great discovery in our archaeology in the Sichuan Basin, the Yangtze River Basin, China and even the world. The ancient Shu ancestors buried all the things in the temple that carried out religious ritual activities, such as statues and furnishings, which were not discovered by the previous ancients, but were found in our contemporary times and excavated by archaeologists, which is very rare and very fortunate. Moreover, in this era, our archaeological work has a very good technical and economic strength, and our media communication is also very developed, which can constantly track it, report it, and publicize it. ”
Sun Hua expects that after the excavation and collation of the burial pit is completed and the related archaeological excavation report of the Sanxingdui site is released, people will have a more comprehensive and clear understanding of the Sanxingdui civilization, and the research on sanxingdui will also go to a new level. He specifically mentioned that "the most important thing after the end of the archaeological excavation work is the restoration work", "only after the restoration of the artifacts can get a complete image and a complete combination, in order to carry out relatively accurate analysis and research and understanding and interpretation." Just like a flower pattern, it is possible to identify what flower is only if we see a roughly complete flower; if we only see the petals of the flower or part of the petals, we may not even be able to identify whether it is a flower, let alone what flower it is. Similarly, the smaller the fragments of material remains that we get, the greater the likelihood of error. Only by restoring, combining and correlating the fragments of history to form a relatively complete canvas can we have a more complete understanding of the political, economic, religious and social life at that time. Therefore, our archaeological work requires solid field and indoor basic research, on this solid foundation, and then make further appropriate analysis and inferences. ”
It is recommended to be cautious about the interpretation of Samsung Pile
"A lot of them are hopeful"
Sanxingdui itself has many unsolved mysteries. Even in the expert camp, there are quite different views and opinions between each other. As a non-professional enthusiast, how should we look at the various inconsistent interpretations of Samsung Heap by different experts?
Sun Hua's suggestion is that we must pay attention to distinguishing which is the definitive information and which is only the speculation of experts, "After all, the Sanxingdui burial pit is more than 3,000 years old, there is no written record, these buried objects have been damaged when they are buried, and many cultural relics are fragments." What is its complete image? What is the image of them combined? What do Samsung Dui people want to show when they make these things? Why are they making these things? The scenes and stories behind their making, use, and burial of these things are not very clear at the moment. In addition to solving the problem of what these cultural relics are through restoration research, it is also necessary to speculate and interpret what is behind the cultural relics and whys through comparison and association. Now the communication media is very developed, in the case of less relevant information, in the case of specialized archaeologists have not yet been in place, some scenes in the process of archaeological excavation will be displayed to the public. Both field archaeology and interior restoration are meticulous tasks that require a long wait, and the media and the public are reluctant to wait, hoping to see and hear the interpretation of archaeological findings by archaeologists or historians, especially well-known scholars. Scholars will analyze and interpret new discoveries based on their own knowledge and experience accumulation, and of course, they will also put forward some hypotheses about the possible stories behind the discoveries through association. Associations and assumptions are all right, which is an indispensable part of scientific research. But we know that phenomenon-based assumptions are not necessarily true after all, and if we make some assumptions based on them, we may push farther and farther away, and the chance of error will increase. So now, some of the current interpretations of sanxingdui's discoveries, whether it is newspaper monographs or film and television programs, many of them are hopeful, and in the end, they may not be able to withstand the test of history by more than 10%, and the others may be some suspense, no basis. ”
The public's quest for knowledge begins with listening to the opinions of front-line experts
Spectators lined up at the Chengdu Museum to watch the exhibition
In recent years, with the increase of public enthusiasm for knowledge, more and more professional scholars have devoted themselves to public knowledge services. Sun Hua is also one of them. He believes that professional scholars in public institutions have an obligation to respond to the intellectual demands of the public. Therefore, while conducting professional research every year, he will also allocate some energy, write a little popular article for the public, and do some knowledge lectures for the public. For example, on December 27, 2021, he was invited to return to his hometown of Sichuan and appeared in the Celebrity Lecture Hall to give a lecture on Sanxingdui culture and history. Sun Hua's speech was in-depth and simple, so that the audience received a watering of knowledge and benefited a lot.
However, it is not a simple task to do a good job in public service of knowledge and build an effective bridge between professional knowledge and the public. In this regard, Sun Hua has enough caution, "The knowledge that scholars disseminate to the public should be those that have been deeply studied and mature knowledge that experts themselves know." Moreover, it should be noted that you should not only talk about your own personal views, but should convey more views that are recognized by most scholars in the academic community. Just like writing treatises and compiling textbooks, scholars can publish their views or opinions when writing papers and monographs, leaving them for future confirmation or to the academic community to judge; but when writing textbooks, we must be cautious, and the views and problems of interpretation should be relatively mature, stable, and systematic knowledge. ”
Nowadays, the modern media is very powerful in disseminating archaeological information on cultural relics, and many archaeological discoveries and researches have been fully reported in depth. While giving praise, Sun Hua also reminded the media that when interviewing experts, we should not only look at which experts are famous or eloquent, but also look at whether their views are pertinent and accurate. For example, when the media disseminates relevant knowledge about Sanxingdui, "first of all, we must listen to the archaeologists who are personally involved in the frontline, and pay attention to adopting the views and opinions of experts who specialize in sanxingdui." Even if their language style is more simple, less funny, not good at telling stories. If an expert does not do field archaeology in Sanxingdui, nor does he specialize in the study of Sanxingdui, but is only a person in the archaeological or historical circles, even if he has rich knowledge and is also very good at telling stories, his understanding and judgment of Sanxingdui may not be much deeper than what the general public sees or hears. ”
The premise of a "second interpretation" of the public
The study of scholars is comprehensive and in-depth enough
Professional scholars share knowledge on mass communication platforms, and how to achieve a balance between the language that the public can understand and the professional accuracy. Some people speak very deeply and professionally, but the public cannot understand it. Some people speak very well, but they are not very accurate in knowledge. Sun Hua believes that in the process of first-hand data analysis and research, scholars have actually gone through the process from sensibility to reason, when he faces the public, he chooses the problems that the public likes to hear, according to his own understanding and interpretation of archaeological problems, and then converts them into a way that the public can understand, and interprets them twice. "As long as the scholar's research is comprehensive and in-depth enough, I think it should not be a problem to carry out secondary interpretation."
Sun Hua has a keen interest in disseminating knowledge to the masses. For example, regarding The Diaoyu City in Hechuan, Chongqing (a defensive system of the Southern Song Dynasty's anti-Mongolian Yuanshan City), he once transformed the expertise he gained from his professional research into a storytelling language and wrote a series of stories about the Diaoyu City. On the basis of professional survey reports such as Southwest Toast and Traditional Villages, he also used public language to convey what he saw and heard to the public. For example, what is the difference between the villages of the Miao or Dong people, what is the appearance of each village, what its characteristics are, why it is important, etc., and express it in plain language. "I'm writing about Sanxingdui, and I've written a book, but I haven't given it to the publisher. Because I also want to wait and see, wait for the archaeological excavations of several pits to be clear, verify that my previous views are correct, and then hand over the manuscript. ”
There are many young people nowadays, including young parents who love to take their children to visit museums. The museum became a second classroom outside of school. For the "museum fever", Sun Hua believes that this is gratifying, but also a natural product of social development to a certain extent, "In many famous large museums in the world, young people are an important audience group. Including the school's teachers, they will take the students to the museum to explain to them. This is already a common phenomenon in museums all over the world. Now young people in our country like to go to museums, which shows that the level of humanistic literacy education on the mainland is generally improving. In the past, people's spiritual and cultural life may have been to watch movies and television and listen to music. Now people are willing to go to museums to obtain knowledge about history, culture, art and other aspects, and to understand the world through museums. ”
Teenagers are guided to the museum to see the cultural relics exhibition, which may not be understood at first, but invisibly bring him a kind of cultural influence. More importantly, "it helps them develop a habit of consciously visiting and studying in museums." The final destination of the cultural relics is in the museum. Contacting through museums, feeling with one's own eyes, and observing these cultural relics at close range is conducive to helping citizens receive education in their hometowns and the history and culture of their own countries in a subtle way, thus generating national pride and enhancing the cohesion of the social community. Sun Hua said.