Recently, the results of the 2021 National Top Ten Archaeological New Discoveries Selection were announced in Beijing, and the Site of Fengyang Mingzhongdu in Anhui was selected, which is also the archaeological project selected in Anhui in the past 12 years after the 2009 GuzhenXia Dawenkou Site.
Since 2015, the Anhui Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, together with the Palace Museum, Shandong University and other units, has carried out meticulous and continuous archaeological excavations on the Ming zhongdu site. After the collective judgment of domestic authoritative experts, Mingzhongdu is an ideal model for studying the inheritance and development of the mainland capital city system, and in the case that the Yuan Capital, Ming Nanjing and Ming and Qing Beijing Cities cannot carry out large-scale archaeological excavations, the excavation results of Ming zhongdu have supplemented the key archaeological new materials for the transformation of the ancient capital city system of the mainland from song and Yuan to Ming and Qing dynasties.
The capital city that was never opened
"Speaking of Fengyang, Dao Fengyang, Fengyang is a good place..." A well-known Fengyang flower drum play in the north and south of the great river sings a history that makes Fengyang people proud: this is the hometown of Zhu Yuanzhang, the legendary founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty, and here stands a capital city that has never been used - the capital of Mingzhong.
The ruins of Ming Zhongdu are located in Fengyang County, Anhui Province, close to the south bank of the Huai River. In the second year of Hongwu's reign, Emperor Ming's grandfather Zhu Yuanzhang issued an edict to build zhongdu in his hometown of Linhao. In the eighth year of Hongwu, when the "merit will be completed", he also used the excuse of "labor fee" to strike the construction of Zhongdu, and then carried out a large-scale transformation of Nanjing, and in the eleventh year of Hongwu, nanjing was determined as the "beijing division".
Although the Ming Dynasty capital did not become a real capital, the outline of the city was already formed when it was built, and most of the ruins such as the city walls, palaces, altar temples, bell and drum towers, military guardhouses, and princely residences have survived to this day to form a huge group of Ming Zhongdu ruins.
Due to its unique historical value, Miyagi, the capital of the Ming Dynasty, was announced as a national key cultural relics protection unit in 1982, and in 2017, it was announced as the third batch of national archaeological site parks.
"In the archaeological research work of Ming and Zhongdu, Mr. Wang Jianying, an expert in the history of the Ming and Qing dynasties, is a well-deserved pioneer." Wang Zhi, deputy research librarian of the Anhui Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology and head of the Mingzhongdu Archaeological Project, told reporters that the investigation and examination done by Wang Jianying in Fengyang Mingzhongdu in the 1970s laid a good foundation for the follow-up archaeological research work of Mingzhongdu.
Since 2013, taking the construction of the Mingzhong Imperial Ancient City National Archaeological Site Park as an opportunity, the Anhui Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology has formulated the "Archaeological Work Plan for the Mingzhongdu Ruins", and cooperated with the Palace Museum, Shandong University and other units to carry out continuous archaeological work. "Counting from Mr. Wang Jianying, ming and zhong have continued more than half a century of archaeological and research work, which has laid a very solid foundation for our current archaeological discoveries." Wang Zhi said: "It can be said that our achievements today were achieved by 'standing on the shoulders of our predecessors'. ”
The Imperial Giant City reveals its true face
After careful investigation, exploration and excavation, archaeologists have basically grasped the distribution of underground remains in most areas of the Ming Zhongdu ruins of Miyagi and the Forbidden Wall. It is understood that there are three castle walls in the Ming Dynasty, the inner is Miyagi Castle, with an area of about 840,000 square meters; the second is the Forbidden Wall, with an area of about 3.8 square kilometers; and the outer is Guocheng, with an area of about 50 square kilometers. Archaeologists have advanced their understanding of the central axis of the Ming Dynasty through the excavation of the Chengtian Gate, the Waijinshui Bridge, the palace base site, and the cleaning of the Noon gate hole.
Wang Zhi introduced that as the only city gate on the western wall of GuoCheng, the outer part of the Ming Dynasty, Tushan Gate is also the best-preserved and the most recognizable gate site in the Outer GuoCheng of the Ming Dynasty. Archaeological excavations have shown that Tushan Gate is a single-door ticket cave type city gate, Tushan Gate city platform is rectangular, and the door opening is centered. By exposing the above-ground and underground structures of the Tushanmen City Platform, The Horse Road and the adjacent wall, archaeologists dissected the key parts and found that the two piers of the city platform were both rammed earth outer brick structures, and the rammed earth core was a layer of brick tiles and a layer of soil rammed earth.
Since 2015, archaeologists have continued to excavate the palace base site in the former dynasty area and found that the palace base site is located on a rammed earth platform, and the mound supporting the pillar foundation in the platform is rammed by the "sandwich stone" method of one layer of stone pieces and one layer of soil, and the rest of the parts are rammed with plain soil. According to the distribution of the piers, archaeologists basically defined that the palace in the former dynasty area was generally in the shape of a "worker", consisting of a front hall, an apse and a piercing hall, with a total length of about 108 meters. The front and rear naves are nine rooms wide and four deep, and the piercing hall is three wide and seven deep, and there are also hugging houses behind the front hall.
In particular, in recent excavations, archaeologists have found a loess platform in the middle and back of the front hall, which is at the geometric center point of Miyagi Castle, and the soil of the loess is extremely pure, and it has been confirmed from the section and exploration that it was built earlier than the surrounding rammed earth. According to the analysis, this location should be the location where the dragon chair throne is placed in the temple site, which has a strong symbolic significance and is closely related to the planning and site selection concept of the capital city.
In addition, the stone, brick, tile and other building materials excavated from the Mingzhongdu site all show their royal style. For example, exquisite stone carvings include the head of the mantis along the platform, the railing plate, the drum stone, the stone pillar, etc., and the giant raspberry-type stone foundation found in the excavation, the stone side length is nearly 2.8 meters, the raspberry diameter is 1.8 meters, and its volume is the largest of the ancient Chinese palace building stone foundations seen so far; the large number of glazed tiles excavated from the excavation include glass components such as dragon pattern tiles, dragons, phoenix pattern dripping water and ridge beasts. The excavated glazed tiles are partially marked with stamps or Zhushu and ink books, which are divided into two categories: Swastika and Shouzi, and according to archaeologists, the origin is mainly from Raozhoufu and Dangtu.
The archaeology of the capital city proves that the civilization is constant
After archaeological exploration and excavation, combined with historical documents, archaeologists believe that Ming and Zhong were the first capital cities in the Ming and Qing dynasties that truly embodied the system of the Beijing division. Its planning was influenced by the "New Palace of King Wu" (the predecessor of the Ming Palace in Nanjing) built in the early Ming Dynasty, but in turn more deeply influenced the transformation of Nanjing Palace and the construction of the capital city of Beijing.
"The planning of the Ming capital clearly reflects the elements of the Song and Yuan capital cities. For example, Miyagi City in the capital city as a whole south, T-shaped square setting, Waijinshui River route, etc. are similar to the planning of the Yuan Capital, the triple city wall ring set, the central axis five-door system, the I-shaped palace, etc. directly or indirectly inherit the planning concept of Kaifeng City in the Northern Song Dynasty. Wang Zhi said, "The excavation of the relevant sites of Ming and Zhongdu has revealed that the Song Kaifeng, Jin Zhongdu, Yuan Dadu, Ming Nanjing and Ming Beijing City are connected, and this connection is the continuous embodiment of Chinese cultural genes and Chinese civilization." ”
It is worth pointing out that the archaeological excavation work of Mingzhongdu has always received widespread attention from all walks of life, and at the "Anhui Fengyang Mingzhongdu Site 2021 Archaeological New Discovery Expert Seminar" held in mid-March this year, the participating experts generally believed that because Mingzhongdu was not put into use after it was basically completed, its one-time layout highly reflected the original design and planning concept of the builders at that time, and was a valuable "ideal city" in the archaeology of the capital.
Wang Wei, a member and researcher of the Faculty of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, believes that Mingzhong is a collection of the development of the ancient Chinese capital city, especially the loess terrace found in the middle and back of the front hall reflects the continuation and inheritance of the concept of "choosing the capital in the middle of the city", and he suggested that the follow-up archaeological work should focus on exploring the development and originality of the concept of "choosing the capital in the middle of the city".
Liu Qingzhu, a member and researcher of the Faculty of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that the archaeology of the capital city is an important way to explore the inheritance and stereotyping of national cultural genes, among which the discussion of key academic issues such as the "central axis" and "the main gate of Miyagi" is a major topic to explain the reasons for the continuous rupture of China's 5,000-year civilization. The central axis regulation of the Ming Dynasty capital was inherited from the capital of the Song Dynasty, and profoundly influenced the ming and qing dynasties of Beijing, and the Ming and Zhongdu have very important academic value for the study of Chinese history after entering the Middle Ages.
"The Ming dynasty and the Central China Are the end of the 'Gong' character hall system in the former Chinese dynasty." He Yunxiang, a professor at the School of History of Nanjing University, believes that the "Gong" shaped palace in the former dynasty area of the Ming And Zhongdu was inherited from the Song and Yuan Dynasties, while the Nanjing Ming Palace and the Beijing Imperial Palace were the three halls of the former dynasty. The transformation from the "Gong" character hall to the three halls had a profound impact on the mainland Miyagi system and even the national ceremonial system.
"In the next step, we will continue to coordinate with the construction of the Mingzhongdu Imperial Ancient City National Archaeological Site Park, coordinate and promote the archaeological excavation, protection, planning and display of the site, and further explore important academic issues through anatomical analysis of key parts including the Loess Terrace in the Qiandian District, and strive to make the archaeological excavation of the Ming and Zhongdu ruins a benchmark project for the archaeology of the Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties on the mainland." Wang Zhi said in an interview.
(Guangming Daily all-media reporter Ma Rongrui)
Source: Guangming Daily all-media reporter Ma Rongrui
Editor-in-charge: Wang Zimo
Editor: Wu Yaqi Wang Yuanfang