Does the "Morvis Line" isolate East Asian paleo-humans from the advanced stone tool-making techniques of Western paleo-humans? What kind of heroic leaders emerged at a time of social unrest and consolidation in China's prehistoric era around 5,000 years ago? What is the significance of the Sanxingdui site of "waking up to the world"? How did the 230-square-meter Warring States large-scale tomb found in Jiangxi, built with precious nan wood, witness the strength and prosperity of the Yue Kingdom? What new historical materials have been recorded in the "First Long Wen Yao of China" in Yunmeng, the hometown of Qin Jian? What are the breakthrough discoveries in Tuguhun's "Valley of the Kings"?
On March 18, six major new archaeological discoveries announced by the "Archaeological Forum of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences • New Archaeological Discoveries in China in 2021" can solve our doubts. In 2021, the 100th anniversary of the birth of modern archaeology in China, these important discoveries have also added dazzling brilliance to the centenary of Chinese archaeology.
Thin-bladed axe collected from the posterior edge section of area B of the Pirot site Courtesy of the Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
The highest elevation of the Asheli technique remains
Located in Daocheng County, Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province, the site of Pirao has an average altitude of more than 3,750 meters, and within a range of about 1 million square meters, it is scattered with various stone products, and more than 3,000 typical specimens have been collected. Within the excavation area of 200 square meters, a number of ancient human activity surfaces were revealed, and more than 7,000 stone products were unearthed. According to the stratigraphic relationship, accumulation characteristics and relics found, the seven strata found can be roughly divided into three phases, which constitute a rare Paleolithic cultural "triassic layer" as a whole, with the upper age no later than 130,000 years ago. In all three stages, paleoanthropological activities were found with dense distribution of stone products and manual gravel. About 20% of the stone products are "burned stone", which may be related to the more frequent use of fire; semi-circular "stone circle" remains surrounded by flat gravel have also been found, indicating that humans have engaged in activities such as fire and stone tools at the site.
The most eye-catching are the hand axe, thin blade axe and other typical Ashel technology relics, which are the highest known ashori technology relics in the world, and also the most exquisite, most mature and most complete assheli technology relics seen in East Asia, completely ending the debate on whether the advanced Ashley technology stops at the "Movis line" and that East Asian ancient humans can only make rough stone tools, which is of special significance for understanding the migration and cultural exchanges of ancient people on the east and west sides of eurasia. The carved traces on the excavated rock blocks are symbolic acts with modern human characteristics, showing that the diversification of human behavior in East Asia may have occurred much earlier than in the past, and providing key materials for in-depth discussion of major issues such as the behavior of ancient humans in the Middle Pleistocene and the emergence and spread of modern humans.
Huangshan site excavated Qujialing culture jade Huang Courtesy of the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
"Pompeian" prehistoric large-scale jade-making settlement
The Huangshan site covers an area of 300,000 square meters, surrounded by three underground ancient rivers and white rivers, and consists of two parts, the mountain and the lower parts of the mountain, and is the largest Neolithic site in the Nanyang Basin. The total area of the disclosure is 2400 square meters, and the remains are mainly building foundation sites, tombs, ash pits, etc. The excavations are mostly sandstone jade tools, about 23,000 pieces, in addition to 116 pieces of jade, more than 500 pieces of semi-finished or wasted Dushan jade, 3,518 pieces of jade pieces, more than 4,500 pieces of jade; 14 pieces of ivory ware; 73 pieces of bone tools; nearly 700 pieces of pottery; and more than 1,500 pieces of pig mandibles. Among them, the three gravel stones are painted with maroon character labor, lying pig, and orchid writing intentions, which is a masterpiece.
The Huangshan site is a central site involving the nature of jade production in the Neolithic Yangshao, Qujialing and Shijiahe cultures supported by Dushan jade and stone materials and supplemented by jade from other places, filling the gap in the Neolithic jade handicraft system in the Central Plains and the middle reaches of the Yangtze River. The Fangju-style building complex of Yangshao culture 'Qianfang and Houju' is one of the best preserved prehistoric buildings in China, which has well preserved the details of architectural technology and daily life, which can be called "Pompeii-style" remains. Around 5,000 years ago, the Qujialing cultural population centered on the Jianghan region moved north strongly and occupied the Nanyang Basin. The human bones of the Qujialing culture tombs found at the Huangshan site are the best preserved in the country, and the hierarchical differentiation is the most obvious. In a large tomb, the owner of the tomb is tall, with a longbow arrow and jade cymbal placed next to him, and more than 400 pig mandibles are piled up at his feet, which is one of the highest-grade tombs of the same period discovered so far, showing the heroic posture of the social leaders of Qujialing.
Gold masks unearthed from Sanxingdui No. 5 Pit Courtesy of the Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
The light of Bashu civilization
The excavation of the six sacrificial pits in Sanxingdui has attracted worldwide attention and made a number of major breakthroughs. The stratigraphic relationship, accumulation formation process, shape structure and burial status of the six "sacrifice pits" have been basically clarified, and more than 11,000 cultural relics with numbered cultural relics have been excavated, and more than 2,400 pieces of nearly completed instruments have been excavated. Among them, there are more than 870 pieces of bronze, 510 pieces of gold, more than 450 pieces of jade, more than 120 pieces of stone tools, 13 pieces of pottery, and more than 400 pieces of complete ivory are extracted. Important cultural relics include gold masks, bird-shaped gold leaf ornaments, bronze-crowned kneeling figures, bronze head-turned kneeling figures, bronze standing figures, bronze heads, copper masks, copper statues, copper "altars", copper dragons, copper grid-shaped turtle back shapes, jade zhang, jade ge, jade chisels, sacred tree pattern jade qun, jade seats, jade knives, stone ge, pottery dwarf collar urns, pottery tip bottom cups, silk fabric residues, ivory carvings, sea shells, etc. Some cultural relics have never been seen before from the perspective of modeling and ornamentation.
The excavation further enriched the cultural connotation of the Sanxingdui site, and provided detailed physical data for the study of the sacrifice behavior and sacrifice system of the ancient Shu civilization. A large number of cultural relics excavated in Pits No. 1 and No. 2 excavated in 1986 have both ancient Shu civilization, Central Plains civilization and cultural factors in other parts of the country, indicating that ancient Shu civilization is an important part of Chinese civilization. A number of new artifacts excavated this time, such as the bronze-topped statue of a kneeling figure and a copper round-mouthed square statue excavated from Pit No. 3, the jade and silk fabrics excavated from Pit No. 4, and the ivory carvings excavated from Pit No. 5, further strengthen this understanding.
Guozishan Cemetery excavated copper sat on the human upset Courtesy of the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
An empirical study of the multicultural fusion of the Warring States period
The Guozishan Tomb is a subsidiary remain of the Central City Site of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty in the Qingjiang Basin, the Zhu acropolis, located at the top of a hill about 300 meters west of the Site of the Acropolis, and is the largest archaeological excavation in Jiangxi province. The tomb of Guozishan is surrounded by a ditch and has a grand scale, with an area of about 230 square meters. Using the multi-chamber structure of the double tomb passage, the rafter chamber is divided into 25 sub-chambers, the burial tools are ship-shaped single wooden coffins, with high specifications; the burial varieties are complete, and although the tomb has been disturbed by early theft, there are still more than 2600 pieces/sets of utensils excavated. The unearthed lacquer is gorgeous in color, complex in pattern, very exquisite; the kite is well preserved, with a total length of 2.3 meters, which is the longest kite found in the pre-Qin period; some bronzes are decorated with gold and wrong gold; and exquisite ornaments such as dragonfly eyes, jade dragons, and jade phoenixes have also been unearthed. According to the overall characteristics of the tomb and the excavated inscriptions, it is speculated that the tomb owner may be closely related to the Yue royal family. The Acropolis was the regional political center of Yue culture during the Eastern Zhou Dynasty.
The Guozishan Tomb is the largest archaeological excavation in Jiangxi to date in the Eastern Zhou Dynasty. The tomb has prominent Yue cultural factors, such as the surrounding ditch, the rafter board covered with wood veneer, the use of ship-shaped coffins, and the burial of primitive porcelain, geometric printed pottery, Yue-style Ding, dove staff, etc. At the same time, it is accompanied by a considerable number of Chu cultural factors, Qunshu cultural factors, and its own unique cultural factors.
The excavation of the Guozishan tomb is a new breakthrough in the archaeology of Yue and Yue cultures, which has opened up a new situation for the study of Baiyue culture, and is of great value for the study of the relationship and political pattern evolution of Wu yue chu in the Eastern Zhou Dynasty of Jiangxi region as "Wu tou Chuwei".
Relics excavated from area A of Zhengjiahu Cemetery The Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences provided a picture
"China's First Long Literary Scholar"
Zhengjiahu Cemetery is located in Chengguan Town, Yunmeng County, Hubei Province. There are 116 small and medium-sized tombs in the Qin culture excavated since the late Warring States period excavated in 2021, all of which are earthen pit vertical cave tombs, with a total of more than 1,000 pieces/sets of burial items, mainly lacquered wood, followed by pottery, a small number of copper, jade, material, bamboo, etc. Among the precious written materials unearthed, the most valuable is the rarely shaped Changwen wooden yao (a polygonal wooden mule) excavated from the late Warring States tomb M274. There are seven lines on each side of the wooden yao, each line is about 50 words, the full text is about 700 words, the font is typical of Qin Li, which is the earliest era seen so far, which can be described as "the first long chinese text". It contains the words of the strategist scraping the Qin King's sleeping soldiers to establish righteousness, and the "Zonghengjia" is rich in color, and the style and style of writing are similar to the "Warring States Policy" and the "Warring States Zongheng Family Book". The Yao wen is not found in the records of the generations, providing us with a new type of policy literature, enriching the political history materials of the late Warring States period, and is a precious text for studying the social thought of that time. The text deals with the war relations between Wei, Yue and Wu during the Spring and Autumn Warring States period, of which the "Battle of Wei Yue Su Xu Zhiye" and other events are the first to be seen, which provides new materials for exploring important historical events during the Spring and Autumn Warring States period. A number of rare funerary paintings have also been unearthed, which provide key materials for the study of funerary customs, religious ideas, costume culture and artistic modeling in the early Qin and Western Han Dynasties, and are of great significance for tracing the formation of Chinese tomb murals.
Yunmeng is the strategic point of the Qin people to unify the south, and the Zhengjiahu cemetery and the Chu Wangcheng city site and the surrounding cemeteries such as Sleeping Tiger Land, Longgang, Jiangguo, and Datutou are an organic whole. These materials vividly show the historical process of the gradual integration of Qin culture and Chu culture, unification with Han culture and integration into Chinese civilization, and provide typical cases for studying the formation of a multi-ethnic unified state in China from the late Warring States period to the middle of the Han Dynasty, the process of Chinese civilization from pluralism to great unification, and the national identity reflected behind it.
A set of gold and silver dining utensils unearthed from Murong Zhi's tomb courtesy of the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
Looking for Tuguhun "Great Khan Mausoleum"
Gansu Wuwei Tuguhun Tomb Group is a Tang Dynasty Tuguhun royal family tomb group. Since 2019, a series of major discoveries have been made, creating a number of firsts in Tang Dynasty archaeology: the first time to find physical remains of Tang Dynasty white wine, wooden hu beds, complete sets of iron armor, six-curved screens, large wooden painted beds, pen and ink paper stones, wooden column house models; the first confirmation of Tugu Hun Wen, Tugu Hun Pengzi family cemeteries; the first time to find such a large number of well-preserved and diverse Tang Dynasty silk fabrics.
The tomb of Murong Zhi, the King of Xi, is the only well-preserved tomb of the Tuguhun royal family seen. The archaeological cleanup of the laboratory has protected more than 800 pieces of textiles, painted pottery figurines, lacquered wood and other burial items excavated from the tomb, and many of them are found for the first time. The unearthed epitaph of Murong Zhi mentions for the first time the existence of the "Great Khan's Mausoleum" in Tuguhun.
In 2021, in order to solve the specific location and layout of the "Great Khan Mausoleum" and enrich the cultural connotation of the Tuguhun royal family tomb group, archaeological excavations were carried out on the newly discovered three tombs in the Changling-Machangtan area of Qilian Town, Tianzhu County. The tombs are all "A" shaped single-room brick chamber tombs with sloped tombs, and there are whole horses buried in the tombs, ranging from 1-3 horses, and there are also burned sheep bones, cattle bones, etc. There are more than 290 pieces of burial items such as lacquer, wood, pottery, stone, leather and various metal utensils unearthed in the tomb, most of which are residual lacquer woodware, and some lacquered wood ware has painted paintings, and is pasted with gold and silver foil, which is exquisitely made and richly decorated. From the excavated epitaphs, it can be seen that the tomb group at this place is the tomb of the Tugu Hun Pengzi family in the early and middle Tang Dynasty. The records of the Tugu Hun Pengzi clan in the epitaph are of great value to the study of the history of Tugu Hun, the history of the relationship between the Tang and the ethnic minorities in the west, the military establishment of the Tang Dynasty, especially the Tang Wars before and after the Anshi Rebellion, the Yanzhou Gemen Mansion, and the origin of the "Ansai Army".
As in previous years, the new archaeological discoveries of China's "Six Majors" in 2021 have once again refreshed the existing cognition from different aspects, opened up new research directions, and made us more deeply aware that archaeological work is an important work to build the history of the Chinese nation and display the treasures of Chinese civilization, which is not only an important cultural undertaking, but also a work of great socio-political significance.
(Author Affilications:Center for Historical and Cultural Communication, Chinese Academy of History)
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