During excavations at the Tao Temple site in Xiangfen County, Shanxi during excavations between 1978 and 1985, a "hairpin-shaped" bone artifact was unearthed from Shuijing J401, located in the IV excavation area, number J401:29. The bone is brownish yellow, extremely thin bone pieces, narrow rectangular, 8.3 cm long, 1.3 cm wide, and 0.1 cm thick (Fig. 1)[1]. There are convex ends at both ends of the bone, a round hole is pierced in the middle of one end, a tongue-like strip with a width of 0.2-0.3 cm is removed from the middle of the body, the wider part is connected to the end of the hole, and the narrow head part is separated from the other end and can be moved up and down. At present, only one such bone artifact has been found at the site of the Tao Temple, which is very rare. 21 artifacts of the same kind were found at the Shi'an site in Shaanxi during the excavation of the Imperial City Terrace in 2017-2018, and it was recognized that it was an important musical instrument "spring" mentioned in the literature.[2]
Fig. 1 Tao Temple J401: 29 Bone Spring
The "Explanation of Words" says: "Spring, shengzhong spring also." Sound from bamboo yellow. The ancient nüwa made a spring"[3], believing that the spring was only a reed in the sheng. The Book of Poetry and Xiao Ya says: "Blowing a drum spring, the basket is the general." [4] Obviously, the reed and the sheng are juxtaposed and are not the same instrument. "Ritual Book of The Moon Order": "It is the moon also, the life musician repairs the mole, the mole, the drum, the qin, the ser, the pipe, the ,...... Tune the pipe, sheng, 竾, reed, bell, chime, 柷, 敔"[5], the same spring is different from the sheng. Spring is not a sheng spring, which has been discerned by scholars in ancient and modern times, and today people mostly call it mouth strings, harmonic strings, ringing pipes, or mouth springs [6]. Ancient springs are mostly made of bone and bamboo as materials, pulled by threading ropes, transverse in the mouth, breathing into a sound, the upper round hole is used to pierce the rope, and the middle tongue-like strip is a reed or reed tongue.
For the excavated bone springs, Mr. Fang Jianjun earlier recognized a bone artifact belonging to the lower culture of Xiajiadian excavated from the Jianping Shuiquan site in Liaoning Province as a bone spring, and believed that it was the earliest "spring" found in China [7], but it did not attract everyone's attention. The discovery and preliminary understanding of the bone spring in Shiya has promoted the study of related problems, and such artifacts in other sites in the past have been continuously identified[8], such as the tomb M14:6 of the Xiajiadian site belonging to its upper culture, which was originally called "bone shuttle", which should be a bone spring. However, it is worth noting that there is indeed a reed-like shuttle tongue in the middle of the bone shuttle of the net, and it cannot be generally assumed that the previously discovered person known as the "bone shuttle" is a bone spring. The biggest difference between the bone shuttle and the bone spring is that one end of the bone shuttle body is sharp and pointed for easy puncture, and the other end is porous. The bone shuttle excavated from the F116 pillar cave of the Yinjiacheng site belonging to the Yueshi culture in Surabaya, Shandong Province,[9] but bone springs have been excavated from the Huantai Lizhai site in the Haidai area.
There is only 1 bone spring in the Tao Temple, and the excavators have not specifically discussed it. However, with the increasing amount of relevant information, we can still try to further explore it under the limited information, and promote further research by throwing bricks and stones. In archaeological research, especially the study of excavated artifacts, dating is key. Mr. Sun Zhouyong believes that the absolute date of the Tao Temple bone spring is about 1900 BC, while the age of the Shi'an bone spring is around 2000 BC, and the Tao Temple mouth spring is a relic of the Shi'an people or the "Shi'e culture" going south.[11] Recently, Mr. Tian Jianwen also discussed the stone reed in a special article, and came to a different view, precisely believing that the actual date of the stone reed should be after 1900 BC. In addition, although Mr. Tian did not specify the absolute age of the Tao Temple mouth spring, he put forward the view that the Tao Temple mouth spring predates the Shi Jia mouth spring.[12]
How to understand the age of the mouth spring excavated from the Tao Temple, the author feels that it is necessary to pay attention to the following two points: First, the Tao Temple mouth spring itself does not have dating data, but the relic unit J401 of the excavated mouth spring just has dating data. Although the age of well J401 is not exactly equal to the age of the excavated reed, this data can be referenced, and Mr. Sun Zhouyong ignores this. There are 20 carbon-fourteen dating data for the residential sites excavated at the Tao Temple site between 1978 and 1985, and in addition to 6 clearly deviated data, 14 other data are credible. Among them, the charcoal excavated from J401 (ZK1087) is measured as BC2140-BC1946. The animal bones excavated at the same level as the Shi'an site and its mouth spring were analyzed by Oxford University dating from BC2135 to BC 1941, and the tao temple and the Shi'an dating data were so consistent. However, almost the same dating data, taking the Shi'a mouth spring age is around BC2000, and taking the Tao Temple mouth spring age is BC1900, which seems inappropriate. Second, the remains units of the same period as J401 also have some dating data, such as bc2199~BC1972 for charcoal excavated in layer T312B; BC2183~BC1959 for charcoal excavated in H1101; BC2290~BC1880 for charcoal excavated in H318. Several sets of data are relatively close, in any case, and their age is appropriate around BC2000, or even earlier. Considering that according to the typological analysis of the artifacts excavated by J401, most of these artifacts were excavated in the accumulation after the abandonment of J401, and J401 broke the H443 and mid-term ash pit H441 belonging to the late group, the excavation and use period of J401 is likely to be the early stage of the late Taosi culture, and even the possibility of the late stage of the taosi culture is not ruled out. Therefore, in terms of absolute age alone, it is difficult to determine who is earlier and who is later, and it is also not excluded that the Tao Temple spring is earlier, and as Mr. Tian Jianwen said on the basis of the staging of the entire Shi'an site, the Shi'a mouth spring is an instrument after BC1900.
More importantly, we analyze the exploration that the Tao Temple Kou Spring cannot be separated from the context of the well J401 where it is located and the area where J401 is located. The J401 mouth is oval in shape, with a longest diameter of 4 meters, a narrowest diameter of 3.58 meters, and a well depth of 14.7 meters. The well was found to have a wooden parapet, and it is a relatively advanced log wall-piercing fixation method (Fig. 2), and there is already a well J402 belonging to the early Taosi culture in the same location before the excavation of J401. Therefore, all this shows that J401 is a well that is very careful and deliberately built, rather than a general random digging temporary well. J401 is divided into 28 layers, 27 layers above 11 meters, a large number of relics have been excavated, and more than 130 pieces of pottery can be restored. Below 11 meters to the bottom of the well is a remnant of the period of use. Limited to the data, we cannot know the specific location or depth of the bone spring excavation, and we cannot judge whether it belongs to the abandoned or the well when it is used. J401 In addition to unearthing a large number of common pottery, there are some special pottery that deserves deep consideration.
Among the many pottery manes unearthed at the temple is a specially shaped vessel known as the "collarless flat-lipped mane" [14] (Fig. 3). There are two main views on such "manes", one is that it is considered to be the inner mold of the mane, or the mane mold; the other is the part of the bristle, which is not a complete device. We conducted a simulated experiment archaeology of such a mane (Figure 4), and the preliminary conclusion is that the "collarless flat-lip mane" from the Tao Temple site was once used as a mane mold in the early stage of the tao temple culture from the middle to late stages, but due to the complexity of the process and the inconvenience of operation, after a short period of use, it was eliminated like a short flower and was annihilated in the historical torrent. However, the "collarless flat lip bristle" is also a reflection of the pottery temple crowd's attempt to innovate pottery technology. At the same time, we noticed that a total of 5 such manes have been excavated from the Tao Temple site, and even 3 of them were excavated in J401. Such an "intensive" occurrence is likely to reflect that J401 and its area are closely related to handicraft workshops, and the other 2 mane molds were also excavated from the ash pit H401 in area IV where J401 is located and in the probe T405 formation.
Fig. 2: J401 flat section and remains of wooden structures of the parapet
Figure 3: Excavation of the Tao Temple Site "Collarless Flat Lip Mane"
1.J401:109 2. J401:124 3. H401:28 4. T405A：11
Fig. 4: H401:28 simulation experiment of collarless flat-lipped bristle
J401 unearthed two "dagger shapers", namely J401:26 and J401:57. This type of pottery is small, only 7 cm long, and has a flattened end [15] at both ends [15] (Fig. 5), which seems to be unsuitable as a feeding utensil, but should be a pottery tool.
Fig. 5: Tao "dagger shaper" (1. J401:26 2.J401：57）
The area where J401 is located is the excavation of Area IV from 1978 to 1985, and from the excavation situation, Area IV has the following special features. First, the remains excavated in Area IV include nine housing sites, six pottery kilns, three wells, and a relatively large number of ash pits, but there are rare tombs, and there is basically no real vertical pit tomb (Fig. 6). This combination of pottery kilns, houses, wells and related ash pits is clearly a common connotation of handicraft workshops, and the phenomenon of few tombs is also reflected in this aspect. Moreover, unlike the excavation area of Area III, which is more than 1570 square meters, only 372 square meters has been excavated, but in such a small excavation area, there are more house sites, pottery kilns and wells than Area III. Area III. In addition, the pottery kilns are early and late, and at the same time, the sites and wells also have different periods of the early, middle and late pottery temple culture. In other words, from the early to late Tao Temple culture, it was used as a handicraft workshop and seemed to be an excellent handicraft production point for a long time. Second, the pottery mat is a pottery tool used to pad the inner wall of the pottery before the pottery tire enters the kiln to preserve the shape. From 1978 to 1985, a total of 33 complete or restorable vessels were excavated from the Tao Temple residential site[17], while 20 pottery mats were excavated in this small area of Area IV. Area, accounting for 61%, including J401, J402, J403, H421, H401, H425, and the strata of T403, T404, T406, T421, T423, T431, etc., which were found and were more commonly distributed. The large number of pottery mats unearthed in area IV reflects the nature or function of the pottery area. Third, excavations in 1978-1985 unearthed one piece of T401C:3 and one piece of "T" shaper T432D:13 were excavated only in Area IV.[18] (Figure 7). This kind of ceramic "gyroscope" that resembles the docking of two cones above and below, and the "T" shaped pottery with a square cylindrical square like a square pier should be pottery tools. Fourth, among the stone tools excavated in area IV. there are few large-scale production tools such as stone shovels, stone hoes, and stone axes, but there are many handicraft tools such as stone chisels. In addition, J401 and its IV. area have also unearthed a large number of bone hammers. Fifth, at present, a total of 7 pieces of relatively complete pottery bells have been found at the site of tao temple, and 3 of these very important and rare pottery have been excavated in the IV. area, namely IV.C:06, T403C:48, H419:5. At present, although a large number of stone hammers have been excavated from the Tao Temple site, there are only 3 pieces of stone hammers with holes, of which 2 are excavated in area IV( Figure 8), that is, T404:9 and J401:93, of which 1 is excavated in J401. Such rare perforated stone hammers are likely to be the arrows of the "archery" that are often referred to in the literature or in the literature.[19] Therefore, Zone IV may also double as some special products, such as bells, cranks, including mouth springs. It can be seen that the area where the J401 of the mouth spring was excavated was a handicraft workshop point at that time, which not only fired pottery, but also a testing ground for the "mane mold" pottery technology; at the same time, it is likely to make bone ware and even produce some special valuable utensils.
Figure 6: Distribution map of the ruins of the excavation of area IV. from 1978 to 1985
Figure 7: "T" shaped pottery and ceramic gyro
Fig. 8: Shooting hammer (1. T404:9、J401：93）
In short, the Tao Temple 1 bone spring reflects a series of important problems. The Taosi mouth spring is about 4,000 years old, which is similar to the age of the Shi'an mouth spring, and it is difficult to determine which is early or late, although the "discarded pile" age of the Imperial City Terrace where most of the mouth springs have been excavated may be later, but the discarded age is not equivalent to the age of use and production of the mouth spring. The excavation area of the Taosi mouth spring is a special and long-used handicraft workshop site, and this piece of mouth spring is most likely made locally by the handicraft workshop point, and cannot be easily determined to be a relic or "imported product" of the Shi'an crowd or the "Shi'e culture" going south. Further, the Hetao area where Shi Jia is located is not necessarily the "only" source of mouth springs in China and even the world, in addition to "one source", there is also the possibility of "multiple sources".
exegesis
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[1] Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Linfen Municipal Bureau of Cultural Relics, Shanxi Province, Xiangfen Tao Temple: Report on Archaeological Excavations from 1978 to 1985, p. 363, Cultural Relics Publishing House, 2015
[2] Sun Zhouyong, "Research on the Mouth Spring Excavated from the Shenmu Stone Cave Site in Shaanxi Province", Cultural Relics, No. 1, 2020.
[3] [Han] Xu Shen wrote [Qing] Duan Yu's Commentary: Notes on the Interpretation of Shuowen, p. 197, Zhejiang Ancient Books Publishing House, 2006.
[4] Cheng Junying: Notes on the Translation of the Book of Poetry, no. 286, Shanghai Ancient Books Publishing House, 1985.
[5] Yang Tianyu, Notes on the Translation of the Book of Rites, p. 189, Shanghai Ancient Books Publishing House, 2004.
[6] See Fang Jianjun, "The Historical Significance of the Bone Spring of Shi'e", Music Research, No. 1, 2020; Sun Zhouyong, "Study on the Mouth Spring Excavated from the Site of Shenmu Shi'an in Shaanxi", Cultural Relics, No. 1, 2020; Fan Ziye: "'Nuwa Making a Spring': An Ancient Historical Legend and Its Ritual Significance in the Perspective of FourFold Evidence", Art Studies, No. 3, 2020.
[7] Fang Jianjun, "Qin Moshu Bamboo Barrel and Musical Instrument "Spring"", Symphony (Journal of Xi'an Conservatory of Music), No. 1, 2008.
[8] See Sun Zhouyong, "Study on the Mouth Spring Excavated from the Shenmu Shi'an Site in Shaanxi Province", Cultural Relics, No. 1, 2020.
[9] Department of Archaeology, Department of History, Shandong University: Yin Jiacheng, Surabaya, p. 193, Cultural Relics Publishing House, 1990.
[10] The Huantai County Museum exhibits a bone spring, which is displayed as the site of Lizhai and belongs to the Dawenkou culture, which is of great significance, but the excavation information is unknown and the age is doubtful. The Lizhai site is mainly piled up in Dawenkou, and there are also relics of longshan culture, so the bone spring basically belongs to the Neolithic bone spring.
[11] Sun Zhouyong, "Research on The Mouth Spring Excavated from the Shenmu Stone Cave Site in Shaanxi Province", Cultural Relics, No. 1, 2020.
[12] Tian Jianwen, "The Chronology of the Mouth Spring Excavated from the Shi'an Site: A Discussion on the Staging of the Shi'an Site", Wenbo, No. 4, 2020.
[13] Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Linfen Municipal Bureau of Cultural Relics, Shanxi Province, Xiangfen Tao Temple: Report on Archaeological Excavations from 1978 to 1985, pp. 389-390, Cultural Relics Publishing House, 2015.
[14] Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Linfen Municipal Bureau of Cultural Relics, Shanxi Province, Xiangfen Tao Temple: Archaeological Excavation Reports from 1978 to 1985, pp. 210-211, Cultural Relics Publishing House, 2015.
[15] Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Linfen Municipal Bureau of Cultural Relics, Shanxi Province, Xiangfen Tao Temple: Archaeological Excavation Report from 1978 to 1985, pp. 298-299, Cultural Relics Publishing House, 2015.
[16] Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Linfen Municipal Bureau of Cultural Relics, Shanxi Province: Xiangfen Tao Temple: Archaeological Excavation Report from 1978 to 1985, p. 123, Cultural Relics Publishing House, 2015.
[17] Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Linfen Municipal Bureau of Cultural Relics, Shanxi Province, Xiangfen Tao Temple: Archaeological Excavation Report from 1978 to 1985, pp. 286-294, Cultural Relics Publishing House, 2015.
[18] Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Linfen Municipal Bureau of Cultural Relics, Shanxi Province, Xiangfen Tao Temple: Archaeological Excavation Report from 1978 to 1985, pp. 300-301, Cultural Relics Publishing House, 2015.
[19] About the Tao Temple with hole stone pendant, a separate article is discussed.
(Author: Gao Jiangtao Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences; originally published in: "Three Generations of Archaeology" (IX), edited by the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the Archaeological Research Office of Xia Shang zhou, Science Press, 2021)