Source: Guangming Daily
"Loulan Archaeological Survey and Excavation Report" Hou Can, ed., Phoenix Publishing House
Archaeological Survey Team Marches to Loulan on Foot Selected from "Loulan Archaeological Survey and Excavation Report"
Loulan Ancient City Ruins Selected from the "Loulan Archaeological Survey and Excavation Report"
【What the Reader Says】
Loulan is an important kingdom in the history of the Western Regions, whether from the history of the relationship between the Western Regions and the Central Plains Dynasty, or from the position of the Cultural Exchanges between the East and the West, Loulan has played an extremely important role and has long been widely concerned by the academic community. At the same time, Loulan was also a large country in the Western Regions that had completely disappeared due to changes in natural conditions. For today's academic community, especially scholars who pay attention to archaeology, geography, environment, history, climate and other disciplines that pay attention to the impact of the ecological environment on human beings, Loulan is a very attractive problem, which has triggered many scholars at home and abroad to study hard for many years, making Loulan a continuous hot topic in the world.
The modern study of Loulan should begin with the archaeological excavation of Loulan by swedish explorer Sven Hedin in 1900. In 1903, the English edition of his documentary, Central Asia and Tibet, was published; between 1904 and 1907, he wrote an eight-volume Scientific Achievements of Travel to Central Asia 1899-1902, which aroused the interest of ordinary readers and professional scholars in Loulan and Lop Nur. In 1906, the British archaeologist Stein rushed to Loulan to systematically investigate and excavate most of the city sites and tombs in the Loulan area before the arrival of other expeditions he had speculated. In 1912, he first published a two-volume personal travelogue, The Ruins of the Khitan Burials, and then in 1921, a five-volume official archaeological report, The Archaeological Atlas of the Western Regions. In fact, Lou Lan's treasure may have ended up in Stein's pocket. In 1909, shortly after his departure, the Japanese Otani Expedition's Tachibana Ruichao excavated the ancient city of Loulan and obtained the "Li Bai Document" that proved that Haitou and Loulan were located. In 1914 Stein returned here and got something more. By the time of the Sino-Swiss Northwest Scientific Expedition from 1927 to 1935, the Chinese team member Huang Wenbi excavated the Han Dynasty wood Jane at the Tuyan site, and the Swiss team member Bergman excavated a prehistoric cemetery at the Xiaohe site, which are very important archaeological discoveries. Since then, the archaeological excavations in Loulan have been interrupted for a while.
After the founding of New China, it became a nuclear test base, and many areas, including Loulan City, were once listed as military restricted areas and ordinary people were not allowed to enter. Therefore, for a long time, there were not many scholars who really had a say in Loulan, because most scholars were not immersed, and even if they had been to Loulan, few people were able to excavate. In 1980, the god of luck fell on Mr. Hou Can of the Institute of Archaeology of the Xinjiang Academy of Social Sciences, when Sino-Japanese diplomatic relations were normalized, and Japan's NHK offered to enter Loulan to photograph the Silk Road, which was approved by Chinese state leaders. After some investigation, in April of that year, Hou Can led an archaeological team into Loulan and conducted a formal archaeological survey and excavation of Loulan and its nearby sites. As a result, he became the first Xinjiang archaeologist to engage in Loulan archaeology after the Sino-Swiss Northwest Scientific Expedition, and the archaeological excavation work of Loulan that he presided over obtained a very rich cultural relics and documentary materials, filling some gaps in the archaeological work of the mainland, so that mainland scholars have a say in the study of Loulan and have attracted the attention of the international academic community.
Shake off the sand on his body, Mr. Hou Can, who returned to Urumqi, worked tirelessly and completed the "Loulan Archaeological Survey and Excavation Report" by March 1987. This is the official report of the archaeological survey and excavation he presided over, which has made a detailed description of the cultural relics obtained from the investigation and excavation and the archaeological excavation, and has made a meticulous analysis and study of similar items excavated by predecessors, with pictures and texts, as well as a large number of line drawings and data statistics tables, which reflects the academic quality of a researcher with a scientific and technical archaeology background. This book can be said to be an important achievement of archaeological research in the new era, but unfortunately, due to various reasons, it has not been published, and Mr. Hou Can also passed away in June 2016, which has become a lifelong regret.
Another important academic field of Mr. Hou Can is the study of Turpan documents and epitaphs, which he has used to conduct in-depth research on Gao Changguo's official positions and era names. After graduating in 1985, I assisted the gentlemen of Peking University in editing the "Dunhuang Turpan Literature Research Collection", and I was ordered to contact him and discuss his manuscript "Newly Unearthed Turpan Epitaphs After Liberation". In the future, I have the opportunity to go to Xinjiang, or Mr. Hou Can comes to Beijing, so that I can meet and study. In 1990, Mr. Hou Can published the "Collection of Research Papers on Gaochang Loulan", which was given as a gift and rewarded for later study.
In 1998, Mr. Hou Can retired and moved to Chengdu, still concerned about Xinjiang archaeology, and successively sorted out and published three volumes of "Loulan HanWen Simple Paper And Paper Collection" (November 1999) and "Notes on the Collected Bricks Excavated from Turpan" (April 2003). Today, we are glad to see the publication of his "Loulan Archaeological Survey and Excavation Report", which is worth celebrating. (Author: Rong Xinjiang, Liberal Arts Chair Professor, Peking University, President of Dunhuang Turpan Society, China)
【Error correction】【Responsible editor: Li Ran】