2021 marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of modern Chinese archaeology, and a year later, Wang Wei, a member of the Faculty of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and chairman of the Chinese Archaeological Society, ushered in his 40th year in the archaeological industry.
Wang Wei, member of the Faculty of chinese Academy of Social Sciences and chairman of the Chinese Archaeological Society. Courtesy of respondents
Continental archaeology was a period of rapid development from 1979 to 2000, and entered a period of vigorous development since 2001. According to Wang Wei's words, his 40-year archaeological career is equivalent to personally experiencing the development and changes of Chinese archaeology since the reform and opening up.
Early archaeology, as a cultural undertaking, has always been regarded as the discipline furthest from reality. To this day, the distance between archaeology and ordinary people is still far away, and most people are still just looking forward to what kind of eye-catching "treasures" have been unearthed behind a shocking discovery.
Chinese archaeologists are working to break the situation. They tried to guide people to pay attention to the cultural significance behind cultural relics through the words "archaeological discoveries, knowable", and established cultural self-confidence in the field of archaeology or Chinese civilization.
Wang Wei sees the archaeological excavations at the Sanxingdui site last year as a model for Chinese archaeology in the new era. He once lay on a mobile trolley, in the 6 sacrificial pits of "Shangxin", and watched the hundreds of "feasts" unearthed from the pits at a distance of only 40 centimeters, and was amazed.
2000 square meters of greenhouses, 4 constant temperature and humidity of the archaeological excavation tanks, which was unimaginable before. This scene made him realize that Modern Chinese Archaeology is in a golden age. "From a big country of archaeological resources to a big country of archaeological discovery, we are now moving towards an archaeological power." Wang Wei told the Beijing News reporter.
The excavation of chema pits is a masterpiece of continental archaeology
After the founding of New China, Chinese archaeology, which entered the initial development period, began to recover, and a number of archaeological discoveries such as Yangshao cultural settlement sites, ancient capitals, and important cemeteries gradually came out, which gave an outline to the appearance of the prehistoric cultural development sequence in the mainland region.
In 1950, the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the first state-level archaeological research institution in New China, was officially established. Since then, many provinces have begun to establish cultural relics task forces, and a small number of colleges and universities have also created archaeology majors. But even after half a century, the scale of the new Chinese archaeological system is still difficult to match this "resource-rich" land.
"There were very few archaeological projects in that era, and some provinces only had two or three a year." Wang Wei said. In the era of economic recovery, he felt that some "good things" were considered "old things", and the idea of cultural heritage protection had not yet entered the hearts of the public, or even been ignored.
Wang Wei was one of the first college students to enroll after the resumption of the college entrance examination, and the first thing he volunteered to fill in at that time was archaeology. Archaeological discoveries introduced in a documentary, such as the Terracotta Warriors and Horses of Qin Shi Huang, the Tomb of Mancheng Han, and the Tomb of Mawangdui Han, made him deeply interested in archaeology.
In 1979, Wang Wei, when he was a student, accompanied his teacher to Zhangjiakou Wei County as an intern to conduct field excavations. When I bought protective equipment at a local labor protection store and asked the store to issue invoices, the boss did not know what archaeology was, and wrote "bone" as "ancient" on the invoice. At that time, in the slightly marginalized countryside, archaeology and tomb robbery became a pair of synonymous substitution concepts, and more people understood archaeology as digging graves.
In early 1982, he graduated from university and entered the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Here, he was involved in his first archaeological excavation project: the Liulihe Site in Fangshan District, Beijing. The excavation of the capital and cemetery of the Western Zhou Yan Kingdom lasted five years.
According to the literature, in the early years of the Western Zhou Dynasty, the duke (shì) was enfeoffed with Yan. There is great controversy about the founding fiefdom of the Western Zhou Yan State, and there are different theories such as Tianjin Jixian county and Hebei Laishui. Later, Wang Wei and other archaeologists excavated the existing rammed earth walls, the tomb area of nobles outside the city and the residential area inside the city in Fangshan Liulihe Town, and concluded that it was the capital and the first fief of the Yan State in the Western Zhou Dynasty, thus tracing the history of Beijing's founding to 3,000 years ago.
For archaeologists, the unique charm of archaeology to rewrite history naturally gives them a strong sense of mission.
"The task given to me at that time was to excavate the carriage and horse pits of the Western Zhou Dynasty. During the Western Zhou Dynasty, noble tombs often had funerary carriages, and the number of burial carriages also varied according to the status of the tomb owner before his death. Because the carriage buried 3,000 years ago has decayed into soil, excavation is very difficult. "Before their excavation team entered the Liulihe excavation, the local car and horse pit had been cleaned up, and no trace of the car was found, but only the shaft heads with copper ornaments at both ends were found at the bottom of the pit, so some people speculated that at that time, the popular burial did not use a real carriage, but used a axle symbolizing the carriage for burial.
In fact, a carriage has been excavated in the previous Yin Ruins site, and there has never been a case of using axles instead of a carriage to be buried, so Wang Wei also wants to verify whether this statement is valid. The carriages buried with the Yin Ruins site are all buried in the whole car, and the models are complete, while in the Liulihe ruins, all the carriages are dismantled and buried in the pit, and the carriage structure is scattered and not easy to distinguish.
Wang Wei said that the carriage buried more than 3,000 years ago, after the wooden car decayed, the soil is softer, different from the hard soil around the pit that has been rammed, and when excavating, it can only rely on the softness and color of the soil to identify the traces of the car.
After careful cleaning, Wang Wei excavated a complete carriage, proving that the Western Zhou Yan kingdom was also buried with the whole carriage, rather than only using the axle to replace the car. The number of carriages in the pits and the number of ceremonial vessels also reflect the etiquette system of the Western Zhou Dynasty with funeral cars. From 1981 to 1985, Wang Wei and other archaeologists excavated 21 carriage and horse pits at the Liulihe site, found 14 burial horses and 5 cars in the "No. 1100" carriage and horse pit that Wang Wei was responsible for cleaning, and also cleaned the umbrella cover inserted in the car for the first time.
In 1983, the mainland undertook the world archaeological conference for the first time , the "Asian Region (China) Archaeological Seminar". Dozens of foreign archaeologists came to Beijing for a meeting, and the organizers of the conference arranged for the delegates to visit the archaeological excavation site of Liulihe in Fangshan. Foreign archaeologists were shocked to see the excavated carriage and horse pits and asked us how we could tell the difference. "The excavation of chema pit has been recognized by international peers, and Wang Wei also has a sense of accomplishment.
He said that from the first time the horse-drawn carriage was cleared out of the Yin Ruins site in the 1930s, to the excavation of the Warring States period carriage in Liulige, Hui County, Henan In the early 1950s. In this field, generations of archaeologists have summed up excavation methods through continuous practice, making the excavation of chema pits a stunt of archaeological excavations in our country.
Wang Wei (first from the left) photographs a bronze vessel with the inscription of Yan Hou unearthed from the tomb of the nobles of the Yan State in Liulihe. Courtesy of respondents
Cultural relics excavated from the Liulihe site in Beijing
Confirming the "feudal statehood and nation-building" in the early years of the Western Zhou Dynasty
In the field excavations, the "tingling sensation" experienced by archaeologists comes from the theft of the tomb in front of them. Wang Wei recalled that during the excavation of the noble tombs at the Liulihe site, it was found that the bronzes buried with most of the tombs were stolen.
In 1986, in Liulihe Town, Fangshan, Beijing, near a southwest corner of the threshing ground in Loess Slope Village on the east side of the Beijing-Guangzhou Railway, archaeologists excavated "Tomb No. 1193".
The burial chamber is rectangular, and unlike the general tomb shape system, there is also a tomb passage in each of the four corners of the tomb, and the four tomb passages are sloped to the burial chamber. According to the burial custom, the head of the chamber faces north, and some valuable bronze ceremonial vessels and containers are placed on the second-floor platform at the north end.
"After excavation, we found that the bronzes on the second floor of the tomb owner's head had been stolen, which was particularly disappointing." However, to Wang Wei's slight relief, there were still rich bronze weapons and lacquered shields on both sides of the coffin, and two bronze vessels containing wine were unearthed in the direction of the feet of the owner of the tomb inside the coffin.
The bigger surprise came from the same long inscription on both bronzes. The inscription on the bronze vessel records the content of the Zhou King's canonization of the Duke of Yan, and through archaeological and physical historical materials, it is the first time that the literature records the "feudal state founding" in the early years of the Central and Western Zhou Dynasties.
In addition, due to the influence of climate, the lacquerware unearthed in the south is well preserved in a water-saturated state, and the northern weather is dry, and the patent leather is easy to fall off. Wang Wei and other archaeologists through creative methods to put the lacquerware together with the surrounding soil box, from the bottom of the board, the whole transported to the room, with a brush dipped in water brush, and then cleaned layer by layer, to get a lot of complete lacquerware.
Some of these excavated valuable historical materials are now placed in the Beijing Capital Museum and displayed in front of the public. From 1982 to 1987, it was the first stage of Wang Wei's archaeological work. Lighting oil lamps at night, withstanding the scorching sun in summer, and tired and thin body, these are all exchanged for his increasingly sophisticated field excavation ability.
In the autumn of 1987, Wang Wei was dispatched by the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences to study East Asian archaeology at the Nara Prefectural Kashihara Archaeological Research Institute in Japan, and began to do archaeological research on sino-Japanese ancient cultural exchanges.
During this period, he discovered that the formation process of ancient Japanese monarchy and state was similar to that of the formation of kings and states in the Xia, Shang, and Zhou dynasties of the mainland, so he wrote a monograph on the comparative study of the formation process of ancient chinese and Japanese kings, and obtained a doctorate from Kyushu University, a well-known university in Japan. After that, he went to Waseda University in Japan for a year as a visiting scholar.
From the autumn of 1987 to the spring of 1996, for nearly a decade, Wang Wei concentrated on studying the royal power and state in ancient China and the ancient cultural exchanges in East Asia, published two books, and obtained doctorates from China and Japan. In 1996, after he received his second doctorate, the National University of Japan invited him to become an associate professor, and he was very well received. He began to be faced with a choice: whether to continue to do Sino-Japanese cultural exchanges in Japan or to return to China for archaeological excavations.
Mr. Zhang Zhongpei, Wang Wei's mentor and director of the Palace Museum at the time, gave him five words: "Return to the main battlefield." "When I consulted the old gentleman, he told me that only when I returned to China could I discover first-hand information." In the summer of 1996, Wang Wei was appointed director of the Xia Shang Zhou Archaeological Research Laboratory at the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
At this time, the national "Ninth Five-Year Plan" key scientific and technological research project - The Xia-Shang-Zhou Dynasty Project was officially launched, which focused on solving the chronological problems of the three historical periods of Xia, Shang and Wednesday in China's history. "Although the chronology produced by engineers at that time was controversial in the academic community, this project also had a significant significance, it created a precedent for multidisciplinary interdisciplinary joint research. Because before that, at the national level, there was not so much support for major issues in the humanities. Wang Wei said.
From 1996 to 1998, led by him, several scholars from the institute went to Yanshi Shangcheng in Henan to excavate the ruins of Miyagi in the early capital of the Shang Dynasty, providing a boundary marker for the Xia-Shang Dynasty and its cultural boundaries. Then, starting in 1999, he led a team to the western Zhou capital of The Zhou Dynasty in Shaanxi Province, and found a group of Western Zhou Zong temple buildings for the first time, providing new information for the study of the history and culture of the Western Zhou period.
Liaoning Chaoyang Banla Mountain Hongshan Cultural Tomb for the first time unearthed a large stone carved human head dating back 5300 years. Courtesy of respondents
Explore the origins of Chinese civilization
Propose a sign of judging civilization
The origin of mankind, the origin of agriculture, and the origin of civilization are the three major issues of world archaeology. The study of the source of Chinese civilization is also an important issue that Wang Wei is concerned about.
In 2002, the "Chinese Civilization Source Exploration Project" was officially launched. Wang Wei was appointed as the project leader (chief expert). More than 70 units from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and a number of universities, archaeology, anthropology, sociology, molecular biology, remote sensing, astronomy, geology, metallurgy, computer science and other nearly 20 first-level disciplines of more than 400 experts and scholars participated, is by far the world's largest scale, the largest number of disciplines involved, the highest scientific and technological content of the study of ancient civilization of large-scale comprehensive research projects.
Archaeologists carried out large-scale archaeological surveys and key excavations around several Duyi sites from 3500 BC to 1500 BC and other central sites in the Yellow River Basin, Yangtze River Basin and Liao River Basin and their surrounding settlement groups, and conducted multidisciplinary comprehensive research on the formation process, mode and mechanism, road and characteristics of the civilization process, environmental background, life form, mutual exchange, and the formation process, mode and mechanism, road and characteristics of the pluralistic integration pattern of Chinese civilization centered on the Central Plains.
During his study in Japan, Wang Wei read a lot of books on ancient history, and some foreign books detailed more than 5,000 years of ancient Egyptian civilization and 4,600 years of ancient Indian Harappan civilization when introducing world civilization, but only 3300 years of Chinese civilization were mentioned. It touched his nerves.
"At that time, the three elements of judging civilization were: metallurgy, writing, and the city, because the late Shang Dynasty had these three elements, so others said that we had a civilization history of more than 3,000 years." Wang Wei realized that this problem could only be solved through evidence obtained from archaeological excavations.
According to the three elements of international judgment of civilization, the earliest mature Chinese characters we have seen so far are oracle bones, so they can only be traced back to the late Shang Dynasty. Is the history of civilization over 5,000 years historically true, legendary, or claimed? This was a problem that Wang Wei could not avoid.
"We carefully sorted out the world civilization and later found that these three elements were summarized from the ancient Egyptian and Two River Basin civilizations. Like the Mayan civilization in Central America without metallurgy, the Inca civilization in South America without writing, and even the Indus Valley civilization does not fully meet these three elements. Wang Wei said that it can be seen that these three elements are not universal. In fact, in recent years, the international community has no longer been restrictive to using these three elements to judge civilization.
So what exactly is the mark of judging civilization? Wang Wei and archaeologists borrowed the phrase "the state is a generalization of civilized society" in Marxist state theory and put forward the signs of our own judgment of the formation of civilization.
The Chinese program of judging the entry into civilization has emerged, which specifically refers to the improvement of productive forces, the development of agriculture, the increase and concentration of population, leading to the emergence of political central settlements - cities. There has been a division of labor in society, some people have separated from labor, some people have specialized in handicrafts, there has been a significant class differentiation in society, a ceremonial system for maintaining the noble status of the elite has been formed, and a royal power that holds the right of military command and religious sacrifice and the institution of social management based on violence and norms - the state - has emerged.
According to this standard, around 5,000 years ago, in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River and the Xiliao River Basin, they have successively entered the early civilized society, and the five thousand years of Chinese civilization are not false words, but historical truths.
The ruins of Liangzhu Ancient City, which was successfully applied for in July 2019, are the most important discoveries in the study of the formation of Chinese civilization, irrefutably confirming the history of Chinese civilization for more than 5,000 years and have been recognized by the international community. In the summer of 2019, Wang Wei was invited by the Ministry of Education to participate in the revision of junior high school history textbooks, adding many important archaeological discoveries, and finally writing the expression of Liangzhu entering civilized society into the textbook.
The source exploration project also has a general understanding of the formation of a diversified and integrated pattern of Chinese civilization, which mentions that since 5500 years ago, between the upper social strata of the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River, the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River and the LiaoHe River Basin, an early Chinese cultural circle has been formed, the concept of worship of dragons and the use of jade as precious has emerged, and there has been a ceremonial system that shows the noble status of the holder with certain types of precious objects (mostly exquisite jade) with local characteristics.
In 2000, Wang Wei teamed up to participate in archaeological excavations in Germany. This is also the first time that the mainland archaeological institutions have organized a team to participate in archaeological work abroad. Courtesy of respondents
Chinese archaeology should move towards scientific, internationalization and popularization
Over the past two decades, the number of archaeological institutions and professionals on the mainland has been growing. Under the leadership of a professional team that combines the old, middle and young, a mature discipline system and academic system of concepts and methods have been formed.
For example, various provinces have established institutes (institutes) of cultural relics and archaeology, and more than a dozen provincial capitals and some non-provincial capitals and prefecture-level cities with relatively developed economies have also established archaeological research institutes or research institutes. In addition, a number of companies specializing in archaeological drilling have emerged, and the number of practitioners engaged in archaeological drilling, excavation and cultural relics protection has increased compared with the previous stage.
To celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of modern Chinese archaeology, at the end of last year, the "Centennial History of Chinese Archaeology (1921-2021)" was officially published and distributed, and the whole set was divided into twelve volumes, with a total of 9.17 million words. As the editor-in-chief of the book, Wang Wei organized more than 200 well-known scholars to write, and the whole book divides The Chinese archaeology in the past hundred years into four parts: Stone Age Archaeology, Xia, Shang, and Zhou Dynasty Archaeology, Archaeology from the Qin and Han Dynasties to the Song, Liao, Jin, Yuan, Ming, and Qing Dynasties, Science and Technology Archaeology, and Various Archaeological Special Studies, introducing the archaeological discoveries and important research results of great significance in various fields.
For more than a decade, Wang Wei has also devoted himself to the dissemination of archaeological results. He participated in the planning of programs such as "Archaeology in Progress" and "Archaeology Open Class", and also participated in the planning of the eye-catching "Chinese Archaeology Conference" as the general consultant, and personally participated in several of them as a guest.
These programs, together with several archaeological variety shows such as "If National Treasures Could Talk" and "National Treasures" in recent years, have brought the public closer to archaeology in the inspiration of a new audiovisual model. In Wang Wei's view, this means that archaeology has entered the "homes of ordinary people" and made him deeply happy. As a deputy to the National People's Congress, at this year's two sessions of the National People's Congress, he also suggested that some central cities with a long history be selected on the mainland to build a theme park for Chinese civilization.
"We have a long history of cultural materials, why not build a theme park similar to Disney and Universal Studios, and leave our own traditional culture behind and pass it on?" Wang Wei feels that digital technologies such as VR (virtual reality) can be fully utilized so that people in the whole country and the world who are full of yearning for Chinese civilization can immerse themselves in the Chinese civilization with a long history, rich and colorful, and profound chinese civilization.
Talking about the future development and trend of Chinese archaeology, Wang Wei said that it is necessary to aim at scientific, internationalization and popularization.
In the 100 years of modern Chinese archaeology, one of the most important signs is the wide application of various natural scientific and technological means. Archaeological dating, analysis of material structure and chemical composition, research on the origin and production technology of raw materials and production technology of ancient animals and plants, metals, jade and ceramics, ancient environment, ancient bone research, and the relationship between ancient environment and people's lives are all based on adhering to field archaeology, strengthening the integration with natural sciences and deepening other humanities and social sciences, and carrying out joint research.
In terms of internationalization, the mainland has also completed the transformation from the earliest "please come in" to the first decade of the new century with equal emphasis on "please come in" and "go out", and then to the "going out" since 2013. In 2000, Wang Wei organized 10 young and middle-aged archaeologists from the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences to participate in the excavations of the Eurasian Institute of Archaeology, a German archaeological research institute. Since then, under the Belt and Road Initiative, Chinese archaeologists have accelerated the pace of going out. In the past decade, Wang Wei has led teams to Uzbekistan, Honduras in Central America and Egypt to excavate ancient cities, high-grade tombs and temple ruins.
"During studying in Japan, many of Japan's top archaeologists came out to do popular science, giving lectures in the auditorium of thousands of people, 1,000 yen tickets, and each person sent a popular science booklet, which was full." Wang Wei said that in terms of popularization, we must now show and disseminate Chinese archaeology in a more vivid and diverse form, and promote the popularization of archaeology through the combination of culture and tourism in a modern concept and high-tech way, including the use of 4D, 5D, augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR) and other technologies.
Some of the bottlenecks that limit the development of Chinese archaeology are being solved. On October 17 last year, at the conference held in Sanmenxia City, Henan Province to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the birth of modern Chinese archaeology, General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out: "Over the past 100 years, generations of archaeologists have made unremitting efforts to make a series of major archaeological discoveries, showing the origin and development of Chinese civilization, brilliant achievements and major contributions to world civilization. It has played an important role in better understanding the long-standing, profound and profound Chinese civilization. ”
Wang Wei told reporters that at present, after the reform and opening up to resume the college entrance examination, most of the post-50s scholars who have embarked on the archaeological front have retired one after another, and the post-60s have gradually retreated to the second line, and the post-70s and post-80s have become the backbone of the archaeological front, and the post-90s and post-00s are growing rapidly. Chinese archaeology will be passed down from generation to generation.
Reporter | Zhang Jianlin
Edit | Liu Xixian
Proofreading | Li Lijun