Cover news reporter Liu Kexin Image courtesy of the interviewee
From silence to hustle and bustle, back to calm. From December 2021 to the present, from the announcement that the Jiangcun Tomb in Xi'an, Shaanxi Province, was identified as the tomb of the Han Dynasty Emperor, correcting the erroneous cognition of nearly a thousand years, to being selected as one of the "Top Ten New Archaeological Discoveries in China in 2021", people's attention has flocked to and then dispersed, and the excavation and research work of this millennium imperial tomb has been gradually carried out at its own pace.
Aerial panorama of Baling Mausoleum Area (Mausoleum of Empress Dou, Excavation Site of Gangchon Tomb, Nanling Tomb)
What is the latest trend of this Western Han Emperor's mausoleum that was finally identified? On June 12, the cover reporter contacted Cao Long, a research librarian of the Shaanxi Archaeological Research Institute and an archaeologist of the Jiangcun Tomb, who told reporters that at present, the main work of the Baling Site Archaeological Project is to sort out various cultural relics excavated from the Jiangcun Tomb and the Outer Hidden Pit of empress Dowager Bo. Including the alignment and restoration of excavated pottery utensils; Descaling and protecting metal utensils, while carrying out composition detection and analysis; Bone reinforcement and species identification of animal bones excavated from small pits. All of these works help us to have a deeper understanding of the connotation of the elements of the Western Han Dynasty's imperial mausoleum system and the funerary customs of the Western Han Dynasty. Cao Long revealed that in the next step, the identification results of animal bones excavated in the Jiangcun Tomb and the Outer Hidden Pit of Empress Bo's Southern Tomb will be uniformly released.
Animal skeletons were unearthed from Baling and 3 nearby pits
Excavation of K32 horse bones from Gangchon Tomb
With the confirmation of the Jiangcun Tomb as the tomb of emperor Wen of Han, the names of the eleven imperial tombs of the Western Han Dynasty were all determined. People have a newer and more comprehensive understanding of Emperor Wen of Han, the benevolent, filial, and frugal emperor in Chinese history; At the same time, it also fills in the key link in the development of the Western Han Dynasty imperial mausoleum system, and makes up for the revision of the relevant research on the development and evolution of the Western Han Imperial Mausoleum system.
In the design of the mausoleum, the literature clearly records that Emperor Wen of Han "ruled the tombs with tiles, not gold, silver, copper and tin as ornaments, did not rule the tomb, wanted to be a province, and did not bother the people... The Baling Mountains and Rivers have not changed for this reason. However, as an imperial mausoleum, the baling tomb is still a funeral specification of "reducing etiquette without reducing the system". The excavation of animal bones from the small outer pit in the southwest of the Gangmura Tomb also illustrates this point. Cao Long introduced that in the field archaeological work of the Baling site, there are three main pits for the outer pits of animal bones unearthed.
A group of painted plastic figurines excavated from nanling
First, there is a square outer pit numbered No. 2 excavation site in the southwest corner of the Jiangcun Tomb, and in each pit, in addition to a horse bone, there is also a clay pot and a plastic clothing type clay figurine. According to the strata of field archaeological excavations, such pits are earlier than other outer pits, and should have been prepared at the beginning of the construction of the cemetery, and it is speculated that the horses that accompanied the burial may have been used for sacrifice.
Second, it is a small outer pit about 800 meters southwest of the Jiangcun Tomb. In July 1966, 37 small outer pits were discovered and excavated during the construction of farmland water conservancy infrastructure, with 8 rows arranged from east to west, ranging from 1 to 11 in each row. At that time, it was believed to be a funerary pit for Empress Dou's mausoleum. The burials cleared from them have pottery coffins or brick bars, and the bones have been preliminarily identified as sheep, horses, pigs, dogs, chickens, geese, cranes, etc., and the excavated clay pots contain grain. "After the discovery of the Jiangcun Tomb, these small outer pits were found to be closer to Baling, which should be the outer hiding pits of Baling. We are currently excavating and cleaning more than 20 of them, of which the identification of bones is still underway. This information is of great help to us in understanding the nature of such pits. Cao Long introduced.
The third is a small outer pit in the northwest corner of the Nanling Cemetery, which is 2,000 meters away from the Baling Tomb and is the mother of Emperor Wen of Han, Empress Bo. Since 2017, the Hailing Archaeological Team has carried out detailed archaeological exploration work in the area, and a total of about 380 outer reservoir pits have been found, and 39 have been excavated this time. The animals identified in the preliminary identification mainly include elk, golden snub-nosed monkeys, red-crowned cranes, tortoises and so on.
The Tomb of Empress Bo has unearthed bones such as giant pandas and red-crowned cranes
The tomb of Empress Bo of the Western Han Dynasty, Nanling, is located on the eastern outskirts of Xi'an City, above the White Deer Plain. Because Lü Hou and Liu Bang, the ancestor of Han Gao, were buried in Changling, Empress Bo was buried in a place close to the tomb of Emperor Wen of Han. In June 1975, when local villagers were building a reservoir, several small rectangular pits were discovered near Nanling, and the Shaanxi Provincial Archaeological Research Institute excavated and cleaned the area.
Animal skeletons were unearthed from the small outer pit of Nanling
During this excavation, brick bars, terracotta coffins, wooden fences (wooden rafters) and animal bones were found. The skeletons of small animals have decayed and have long been indistinguishable. After the identification of the bones of large animals that were still distinguishable, rhinos and giant pandas were found. The pit where the giant panda skull was unearthed is numbered K3 because the pit has experienced disturbances and the torso part of the giant panda has ceased to exist. After identification, the panda belongs to the adult individual, from the skull, it is not much different from the current species.
In the "Explanation of Words and Characters", it is said that "the tapir is like a bear, yellow and black, out of Shuzhong." "So did the panda pay tribute from Shudi to Shaanxi?" Cao Long said that in fact, it is not necessarily: "In Guanzhong in the Qin and Han Dynasties, it was mild and rainy, and there were dense shrubs and bamboo bushes along the banks of the gangfu hills and rivers. The southeast area of present-day Baoji City is 'densely packed with thick forest barriers'. 'Hubei and Du bamboo forest' 'Weichuan thousand acres of bamboo'. This geographical environment provides the necessary conditions for the survival of giant pandas. As a funerary object of Empress Han Bo, it is also entirely possible that the giant panda was taken from the local area. ”
According to the giant panda skull unearthed in Nanling, some people imagined that Empress Bo loved pandas, and deduced that there was a boom in raising giant pandas at that time. But Cao Long told reporters that these are not recorded in the relevant literature. In addition, the giant panda skull unearthed from the Nanling Tomb does not mean that Empress Bo herself is very fond of giant pandas.
"Judging from the current number of such pits and the animal species that have been identified, it is still the nature of the royal garden, and it is not because of personal preferences to bury giant pandas alone." In addition, some of these rare animals and beasts should have been enshrined from the south or even farther abroad. ”
The Han Dynasty people "died as if they were alive" or could glimpse the royal court
In the Han Dynasty, people died like life, and there was a custom of creating an underground world for the deceased ancestors according to the living habits and living habits of their lives. Huan Kuan once said in the "Treatise on Salt and Iron": "Nowadays, there are many rich and hidden, and the instruments are used like living people." "The burial artifacts excavated by archaeology, grain, poultry and livestock, etc., all reflect this. Cao Long introduced, "As an imperial-level mausoleum, the outer pit of this kind of buried animals should symbolize the royal garden, which is the animal reserve that the emperor enjoys or uses in another world." In addition, in ancient times, animal skeleton burial was also a manifestation of wealth and power. Therefore, although Emperor Wen of Han left a history of frugality, from the animal bones excavated, his mausoleum still adopted the specifications of "reducing etiquette without reducing the system".
"This practice of burying rare birds and animals to symbolize the royal garden has a long history, but with the development of the planning and form of the cemetery, it only shows different forms." Cao Long added that the Shenheyuan Tomb in the late Warring States period, which is considered by scholars to be the mausoleum of Empress Xia, the grandmother of Qin Shi Huang, has a large number of rare birds and animals buried in the outer pit on its periphery. At the same time, there is also a waterfowl pit in the outer pit of the Mausoleum of the First Emperor of Qin. All this illustrates the custom of using animals for burial in royal tombs.
And what animal bones have been excavated from the Gangchon Tomb? What kind of "Imperial Garden" was the emperor who created the first prosperous "rule of Wenjing" in the history of the mainland? Perhaps with the release of the results of the archaeological research work of the Gangchon Tomb, we will be able to know.
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