Dongfang said| Zhou Yang: What "secrets" are hidden in the Sanxingdui sacrifice pit found that silk is hidden?

One of the major discoveries in the new round of archaeology in Sanxingdui is none other than silk - archaeologists have found some black "ashes" attached to the surface of bronze and jade, which have been integrated with mud and dust, and have even mineralized into soil blocks. At first glance, it was inconspicuous, but after analysis, it was found that it contained a large amount of silk protein, which can be identified as an early silk fabric.

How were silk fabrics found in the Sanxingdui sacrifice pit? What types of silk have been found so far? What does the new discovery mean? This afternoon, invited by the Chengdu Museum, as a supporting academic activity of "Yunxiang Clothing - Silk Road Costume Culture Exhibition", Professor Zhou Yang, deputy director of the China Silk Museum, brought a wonderful online lecture with the title of "Deciphering Sanxingdui Silk: Discovery and Significance", through a thin silk thread, across time and space, unlocking the mysterious Sanxingdui silk code buried for thousands of years.

The lecture was simultaneously broadcast live on multiple platforms such as Chengdu Museum Weibo, Chengdu Museum WeChat Video Account, Chengdu Daily Jinguan News Official Weibo, etc., with nearly 40,000 views, hundreds of times more than the number of previous offline lectures. This is also a new exploration of Cultural Dissemination in Chengdu Museum under the epidemic situation, allowing cultural enthusiasts to share a cultural feast through the cloud.

Rapid qualitative analysis of new technology immunology technology

In 1986, the discovery of Sanxingdui Pit No. 1 and Pit No. 2 "woke up and shocked the world". Since 2019, six more sacrificial pits have been found at the Sanxingdui site. Among them, silk is one of the most exciting new discoveries in the sanxingdui archaeological excavation.

To know how archaeologists searched for silk in the Sanxingdui sacrifice pit, they must first have a basic understanding of silk. Zhou Yang introduced that silk is a protein composed of 18 kinds of amino acids, which is easily degraded during the burial process, and most of the cultural relics unearthed by Sanxingdui have burn marks, at the same time, silk residues and ashes, dirt and various utensils in the pit are mixed together, which brings great challenges to the search for silk. It is difficult to identify with the naked eye alone, at this time, the silk micro-trace detection technology based on the principle of immunology has entered the field of archaeologists with its sensitive, specific and convenient technical advantages.

What is an immunology technique? In short, the essence of its principle is the antigen antibody response, "focusing on the silk hair residues of archaeological sites or tombs, using immunological methods, through simple sampling, sample preparation, dosing, display and other steps, forming a set of rapid qualitative analysis methods suitable for archaeological sites." Using this technique, archaeologists found a large number of silk residues or silk marks in the sanxingdui sacrifice pits 1 to 8, including bronze human heads, animal masks, copper eye bubbles, bronze statues, bronze snakes and other artifacts, as well as ashes and dirt in the pits.

"The discovery of silk in the Sanxingdui sacrifice pit this time depends on great advances in scientific cognitive methods and technology." Zhou Yang said, "With the collaboration of multidisciplinary teams, the research on organic matter residues in the Sanxingdui sacrifice pit has been extended from the level of artifacts visible to the naked eye to the molecular level invisible to the naked eye, which has greatly improved the level of information extraction at the archaeological site." ”

New discoveries have found silk, chi, and weaves

Zhou Yang introduced that most of the textiles of the Shang Dynasty were attached to bronzes to be preserved, which is because the bronze ions were continuously released during the burial process, which can create a bacteriostatic micro-environment in the surrounding soil, which is conducive to the preservation of organic material cultural relics such as silk, and gradually becomes a mineralization mark on the surface of the bronze. The surface of the bronzes excavated from the Sanxingdui Sacrifice Pit also retains a large number of mineralized silk marks, and archaeologists can observe their morphology and can see that the silk varieties include silk, silk and weaving.

Silk, due to changes in density, fineness, twist and other structural parameters, as well as different processing technology, fabric style characteristics vary greatly. Among them, two different styles of silk were found in pit 3 and pit 8, the former is more sparse and the latter is more dense.

Qi was found on copper eye bubbles excavated from pit 2. Qi is "weaving as a text", is a plain pattern of jacquard fabric with floating flowers, with different ability to reflect light with different floating warp threads, forming a dark flower pattern, which belongs to the higher-grade silk fabric.

Multiple layers of fabric were found on the back of the bronze snake excavated from Pit 2, the outermost layer of which was a diagonal weave. Weaving is one of the methods of composition of original textiles, and with the development of the times, weaving technology has been subdivided and improved.

The new meaning is conducive to understanding the ancient Shu ancestors

How to think about the universe and life and death

Archaeological discoveries and studies have shown that the history of silkworm silk making in the mainland can be traced back to the Stone Age, and the Sichuan region is one of the important origins of silk fabrics. Most of the ancient legends about sericulture on the mainland are related to Shudi, and archaeological findings and historical materials can also very clearly outline the development and rise and fall of Shudi silk: during the Spring and Autumn Warring States period, Sichuan's sericulture has reached a certain scale, and the mulberry drawing on the Warring States copper pot unearthed in Chengdu Baihuatan vividly reflects the busy scene of sericulture production at that time; during the two Han Dynasties, Sichuan's silkworm silk weaving industry was more prosperous, and the imperial court's demand for brocade increased greatly, at this time, the southeast corner of Chengdu besieged the city to build a brocade workshop, and appointed "Jinguan" to supervise the construction, called "Jinguancheng". Chengdu has Jinjiang, the market for buying and selling Shu brocade is called "Jinshi", the place where the brocade workers live is called "Jinli", and the official's residence is called "Jinguanyi", which shows the prosperity of brocade weaving at that time... In 2012, four models of Shu brocade looms were excavated from the Laoguanshan Han Tomb in Chengdu, according to which the world's earliest jacquard loom and the "five stars out of the East and China" Han brocade were restored, confirming the prosperous history of the Shu brocade industry and its indispensable significance to the Silk Road.

Zhou Yang believes that the discovery of silk is more conducive to our understanding of how the ancient Shu ancestors expressed religion three thousand years ago, how to think about the universe and life and death. "Chinese civilization has long formed a grand pattern of pluralism and integration. The ancient Shu civilization represented by Sanxingdui and Jinsha is not only an important source and component of Chinese civilization, but also one of the most distinctive regional cultures in the community of ancient Chinese civilizations. Qin and Bashu, Shu and the vast southwest region were gradually integrated into China. In the process of integration, silk is a very significant element of convergence, and myths and legends, historical records, and archaeological discoveries all show that about silk, Bashu and Zhongyuan adhere to roughly the same knowledge system and value system. ”

Chengdu Daily Jinguan News reporter Duan Zhen Responsible Editor He Qitie Editor Wang Juan