Pit No. 3 unearthed a bronze-topped statue of a kneeling figure
Pit No. 3 unearthed a bronze statue wearing a pointed hat
A site can and often contains the accumulation of multiple archaeological cultures, and the staging of sites and the staging of archaeological cultures should be strictly distinguished. This is the consensus and common sense of the archaeological community since the discussion on the naming of archaeological cultures in the 1950s[1]. "The staging of the site explores the order in which different archaeological cultures accumulate within the same site. The staging of archaeological culture refers to the division of relative chronology of the history experienced by an archaeological culture. [2] But for quite some time, there was considerable ambiguity in the understanding surrounding the Sanxingdui site and the archaeological culture it contained. As early as 20 years ago, some scholars pointed out that "in the past ten years, scholars have been entangled in two completely different concepts of 'Sanxingdui culture' and 'Sanxingdui ruins', thus delaying the study of Sanxingdui culture and its related cultures, making the chronological sequence of Sichuan's pre-Qin archaeological culture in a fog" [3]. Combing through academic history, I feel that until recent years, around the Sanxingdui site and the Sanxingdui culture, this problem is still "in a fog", and the Sanxingdui site pre-Qin era remains belong to multiple archaeological cultures, and the Consensus that the Sanxingdui culture began in the second phase of the Sanxingdui site was not easy to come by.
First, the confusion between sites and cultural staging
In the first excavation briefing (1980-1981) of the Sanxingdui site published in 1987, the excavators pointed out that among the identified three phases of culture, "the characteristics of the first and second phase cultural relics have changed greatly, the judgment is different, and there is a clear gap layer between them, so we believe that the ages of the first and second phases of culture are far apart, and the characteristics of the second and third periods of the relics are not very different, and there are many inheriting factors, and the ages of the two periods of culture may be closely linked" [4]. At the end of the briefing, although the concept of "Sanxingdui culture" was proposed, it did not give a precise definition of its connotation; and there was a reference to "Sanxingdui site culture" in the text, which was ambiguous.
Since then, the so-called "Guanghan culture" and "Sanxingdui culture" in the papers of the scholars involved in the excavation originally refer to all the cultural remains of the pre-Qin era that contain the remains of the first phase of the Sanxingdui site. Therefore, the concept of "Sanxingdui site culture" has been repeatedly mentioned [5]. At that time, scholars quoted the relay excavation briefing as also regarded the four phases of the site as a whole:
(Author: Xu Hong, Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences; originally published in: "Three Generations of Archaeology" (IX), Edited by the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the Archaeological Research Office of Xia Shangzhou, Science Press, 2021)