The origin of "I"
I was born in a small village in the core area of the Yin Ruins, and "Yin Ruins" accompanied me throughout my childhood. People often use the phrase "a piece of oracle bone to shock the world" to describe the village, but she also has her own name, Xiaotun . The number of technicians involved in the excavations of the Yin Ruins site throughout the year usually numbers in the hundreds, and my fathers were an ordinary member of these technicians. When I was a child, I was most impressed by the fact that my grandfather took me to the archaeological site to play, and the mysterious "castle" - Anyang Workstation.
Anyang Workstation, Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
The Anyang Workstation of the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences is located in the west of Xiaotun Village. When I was 7 years old, my grandfather took me into the Anyang workstation for the first time. At that time, the workstation was wooded and green bricks and red tiles. Grandpa took my little hand and entered the main building, passing through a dimly lit promenade with wooden shelves on either side. Sunlight shines through narrow windows on wooden shelves filled with broken pottery pieces and restored pottery. At the end of the promenade is a bright and spacious room. The room had tables and chairs and some tools I didn't recognize. Grandpa couldn't remember the conversation with them. But I remember sitting quietly in a chair, a fat uncle picking up a small hammer and gently tapping my knee, causing my calves to and make the whole house laugh. It wasn't until many years later that I learned that the fat uncle who knocked on my knee was named Wang Haoyi, a bronze restoration expert at the workstation, and the small hammer was his tool for repairing bronze.
My grandfather Ho Chun Wing was one of the main technicians who participated in the excavations of huixian archaeology in 1950-1952, the tomb of Women's Hao in 1976 and Yin Ruins in 1976. Shortly after the founding of New China in 1950, there was a shortage of people skilled in archaeological excavation techniques. In March 1950, the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, which had not yet been formally established, sent Mr. Guo Baojun to restart the excavation of Yin Ruins. In October 1950, with Mr. Xia Nai as the leader and Mr. Guo Baojun as the deputy head, the Henan Huixian excavation group of more than ten people was formed, including Wei Shanchen, an old employee who excavated Yin Ruins that year, which can be regarded as the "most cattle heavenly group" in the archaeological community at that time. In order to solve the problem of insufficient excavation personnel, my grandfather, since the excavation of Hui County in October 1950, was invited to Hui County together with Qu Ruzhong, Jia Jinhua, Jia Jingui, Wang Fengxiang and others to support the excavation. The memoir mentioned in Mr. Zheng Zhenxiang's memoirs of "Remembering the Good Tomb of the Women in yin ruins" was my grandfather who had a keen eye and found that there was a jade pendant inside the shovel. At that time, Grandpa must not have thought that from the moment he took me into the Anyang workstation, I had formed an indissoluble relationship with Yin Xu and the Anyang workstation.
Proof of Grandpa's work in Hui County
Teacher Qu Guangfu, who is nearly a year old, is a special technician at the Anyang workstation and one of my field teachers. In our spare time, we also talked about my grandfather, and Mr. Qu would always be full of emotions, saying that my grandfather had strict requirements for the quality of excavations, especially when drawing tombs, the draftsmen had to go down to the tomb to measure themselves. When he was young, Teacher Qu once was lazy and asked the master mechanic to go down to the tomb to help measure it, and he sat at the tomb to draw. Later, he was discovered by his grandfather and severely criticized him. Since then, Mr. Qu has always been hands-on when drawing tombs, and Mr. Qu's drawing skills have been unanimously recognized by all the staff of the workstation. I continued to ask, "What happened later?" Teacher Qu said with a happy face on the corner of his mouth: "After your grandfather criticized me, he dragged me to the commissary and invited me to drink soda, the soda at that time was really sweet!" After listening to Teacher Qu's story, I got up and patted the soil on my body and said, "No wonder you always let me go down to the tomb to draw a drawing by myself. "The kind and stern image of grandpa appeared in front of my eyes, the archaeological work could not tolerate a little sloppiness, the excellent traditions and style of the older generation of archaeologists, I, a newcomer to archaeology, must inherit and carry forward!"
He Zhenrong cleaned up the Guojiazhuang car and horse pit, and the person wearing the black sweater was Mr. Yang Xizhang, and the person with long hair in the middle was Mr. Liu Yiman, photographed in 1989
"II" taught
During my university internship, field archaeological excavations were being carried out in the north of Liujiazhuang in Anyang, where my father He Jianmin worked as a technician. With the consent of the workstation teacher, I had the privilege of participating in the excavation. It was the first time I had only heard grandpa and father talk about the archaeological site at the dinner table, but it was the first time that I had really touched it and was personally involved in it.
My main task at the site was to assist the technicians in drawing. Since I was a child, I have followed my fathers in the construction site, and I am naturally familiar with field archaeological drawings, coupled with my love for archaeology, and I have mastered the basic principles and methods of field archaeological drawings in just a few days. Although the speed of drawing is not very fast, I can do simple monument painting work independently, which gives me a lot of confidence.
In my spare time, I would also run to my father to see how he worked. Father did not like to talk, always alone with a hand shovel in the exploration of the shovel, and the relics phenomenon was divided one by one, as if a painter who traveled through time and space, depicted the traces of the merchant life of three thousand years ago little by little. In my eyes, there is no difference between the loess and the loess, but in my father's hands, I can easily distinguish the tomb, the ash pit, and the foundation. Compared with me, a little white who had just entered the pit, my father's ability to distinguish the relics was like a high sky and a lonely moon, out of reach, but like looking at the snow through the window, it was close at hand. I asked my father, "How can I tell the difference between the different relics?" Father's answer was very simple: "Take matters into your own hands and distinguish carefully." "I thought my father didn't want to pass on his experience to me, but when I really calmed down and went to scrape the ruins myself, I understood the meaning: the hand shovel crossed different fills and inclusions, and the tiny vibrations spread to the palms and brains, reflecting different touches. The combination of practice and theory can scientifically and accurately distinguish between different relics and phenomena. Years later, faced with the same questions as the interns, I gave the same answers as my father.
Uncovering Huadong H3 Oracle Bone Left: He Jianmin Right: Fu Laixi
I once asked my father: "Grandpa has been doing archaeology all his life, has he left some treasures for us?" The father said very seriously, "Three treasures are left behind." I asked excitedly, "Which three?" Let me see! But the father said slowly: "Probe shovel, hand shovel, shovel." After I listened to it, I was extremely disappointed, but my father looked at me with a smile and said, "These three 'treasures' were passed on to me by your grandfather, and now I am also passing them on to you, so don't lose them." "My father's words are deeply imprinted in my heart.
"Three generations" grow
After the end of the internship period, Anyang Xiaomintun excavated and sorted out the data and required computer plotters. Because I was familiar with computer drawing software and my performance on the site was recognized by the teachers, after examination and review, I officially entered the Anyang workstation database and began my archaeology study career.
From home, it's a five-minute walk to this "castle" where I have been a neighbor for twenty years. On the first day of work, the sun was shining. The workstation is very different from the memories of childhood, the walls are brand new, the rooms are bright, and there is no mysterious feeling in the previous memories. I sat in my own workstation, feeling like fate, and made a big circle outside, and finally returned to the place where I started, and the archaeological seed in my heart began to take root.
Because I am not an archaeology graduate and only have some site internship experience, I will be confused when faced with some complex monumental phenomena and more demanding jobs. However, with the help of teachers and colleagues at the workstation, they preached and solved my problems and made me progress rapidly. Sometimes I think that the workstation is not like a unit, but more like a big family. Everyone worked together to contribute their own strength to the Yin Ruins site.
Rustic
I graduated in computer science, so I was at a disadvantage in archaeological work, but after hard work, it became my advantage. I use my spare time to learn archaeology knowledge, make up for my lack of professional knowledge, and use my major to serve archaeology to the greatest extent. Under the platform of Anyang Workstation, I not only mastered the use of various computer drawing software, but also learned archaeological photography, and I can skillfully use total stations and RTKs to measure the layout of the ruins. In 2016, he participated in the National Computer Archaeology Mapping Class taught by teachers such as Liu Jianguo and Fu Zhongyang, and graduated with honors. In my spare time, I will also organize my experience and methods in my work into articles and publish them in journals such as "Three Generations of Archaeology" and "Cultural Relics World" to share and learn with my peers. Through these scientific and technological methods that I have mastered, I am proud to be able to contribute my modest strength to providing basic information for the digital archaeology of Yin Ruins, and at the same time, I am sincerely grateful to the workstation!
A thousand years at a glance
Inheritance
The Anyang workstation undertakes many field excavation tasks every year. In the case of insufficient manpower for field archaeological excavations, I will also suspend the indoor data collation work and participate in field archaeological excavations. Every time I participate in a field excavation, my field archaeology knowledge will be greatly improved. Compared with the indoor data collation, field archaeological excavations can contact first-hand archaeological materials and are a real paradise for archaeologists.
One of the field archaeological excavations that impressed me the most was the 2017-2018 Yin Ruins Grand Sikong Resettlement Home Archaeological Site. This is the first time since I have been fully involved in a field archaeological excavation site. From the beginning of exploration to the completion of the last ash pit, for more than 500 days, he rode a small electric car to step into the Shang Dynasty civilization every day to meet the morning sun, and returned to reality with the sunset afterglow. Although the days are hard, they are very fulfilling. I was finally able to do the same as my fathers, and I was able to draw the ruins with a shovel in the scouting area under my jurisdiction. Although I am inexperienced and will also get some relics wrong, I believe that after my own efforts, one day I can also shovel and release the Book of Heaven by hand.
Hand shoveling the Book of Heaven
The spring wind in Anyang was particularly strong, and at dusk that day, I finished scraping the area of the Shang Dynasty houses in the exploration party and waited for aerial photography. Most of the foundations of the Houses of the Shang Dynasty were rammed earth buildings, and due to the later destruction, basically only rammed earth platform foundations and remnant pillar foundations remained. At this time, the sun was setting, and the afterglow sprinkled on me, casting a long shadow into the probe. A warm spring breeze rolled up the loess on the foundation of the house and flew from under my feet to the distance, and a passage of words that I had read suddenly flashed in my brain: The wind does not stop, the dust is innumerable, the former kings are all, and the current wasteland is now. The rise and fall of the Six Kingdoms, how can you care? Perhaps at dusk three thousand years ago, there was also a merchant standing in front of his newly built house, smiling and enjoying the fruits of his hard work!
The clouds are light and the wind is light
There are many technicians in Yin Ruins, like me, who have been involved in archaeological work since the fathers. Some of the technicians have been involved in archaeological excavations for decades, have excavated countless ash pits and tombs, and have excellent skills in identifying the remains and cleaning tombs, and I respect them like my fathers. Among the people involved in the excavation of yin ruins were more migrant workers, who did not know much about archaeology and were only responsible for digging up the soil. But they are optimistic and cheerful, talking and laughing when working, but the work in their hands has not been delayed by half a point. More than 90 years have passed since the scientific archaeological excavation of Yin Ruins, and it is precisely because of the passing on of the torch by the archaeologists of Yin Ruins and the unremitting inheritance from generation to generation that it is possible to gradually unveil the layers of Yin Ruins, reveal the world, and shock the world!
Archaeologist: This picture was taken by the author and won the third prize in the "Commemoration of the Centenary of Henan Archaeology" photo contest jointly organized by the Henan Provincial Society of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, the Henan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology and Henan Daily in 2021
Commemorative Conference for the 90th Anniversary of the Scientific Excavation of Yin Ruins
The lonely indoor data collation and the poor field archaeological environment sometimes make me want to swear. But whenever I face the Dayi merchants of three thousand years ago, my heart is still full of awe and curiosity. What kind of fate made us meet in this way three thousand years later. The craftsmanship spirit of archaeologists is a respect for the ancestors. A pile of white bones in the eyes of others is a living life in our eyes. In the face of hands full of dirt, I remembered Teacher Luo's words, the future belongs to the few of us who are still willing to get their hands dirty! (The author of this article is an employee of Anyang Workstation, Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences)
Author: He Kai
Review: He Yuling
Editor-in-charge: Han Han