Turquoise dragon shaper.
Pottery was excavated from the site of Zhao Haitao and Erlitou.
Zhao Haitao at work.
Archaeological excavation site west of the sacrifice area of Erlitou Site, Luoyang City, Henan Province. All images in this article are provided by interviewees
I am the fourth generation captain of the archaeological work of the Erlitou site, this is my third year as a captain and my twentieth year of work in Erlitou. 20 years is not a short time for a person, but in front of Erlitou, I, like my predecessors, am very young.
We did a statistic in 2019, and in the 60 years of Erlitou archaeology, nearly 50,000 square meters of excavated sites have been excavated. At the current rate, it will take more than 3,000 years for the archaeological work in Erlitou to be completed, and the progress bar has only just reached 2%.
The ruins of the capital city such as Erlitou have great data value, rich types of remains, and very complex accumulation, and the excavation process requires us to strive for excellence, as many angles, all-round, multi-level, multi-means, and maximum access to data and information as possible, so it will inevitably take time.
I am a curious person who is full of life and always expects that there will be some unexpected gains ahead. It's the influence of archaeology, it's a constant process of new discoveries, and you never know what legend will be born in the next second.
The latest discovery of the "four-lane" road
In September, we announced some of the most significant recent archaeological gains from the Erlitou site. Since the fall of 2020, we have newly discovered the road extending more than 200 meters north of Miyanishi Road, as well as the doorway on Miyakita Road and the southeast corner of the wall west of Miyagi.
The newly discovered road of more than 200 meters is about 16 meters wide, which is roughly equivalent to our current 4 lanes. This is not the widest, the road on the periphery of the palace area can reach about 20 meters wide. In the 80s of the last century, when cars became more popular, the width of China's urban roads was only about 10 meters. More than 50,000 square meters have been excavated at the Erlitou site, and only two ruts 1 meter wide have been found, indicating that the number of two-wheeled vehicles was very small at that time. Therefore, paving such a wide road, traffic is certainly not the most important function.
Combined with more than 60 years of archaeological research, we believe that the capital city of Erlitou is mainly divided into regular functional areas through main roads, and two vertical and two horizontal roads are used to build a "well" shaped frame. In this "nine-square grid" layout, the sacrificial area, the palace area and the official workshop area, these three most important areas are in the middle road, and the palace area is in the center, which is completely in line with the capital planning characteristics of "choosing the world to build the country, choosing the country to build a palace, and choosing a palace to build a temple in the middle of the palace", representing the capital city of the earliest wide-area royal power in China and even East Asia.
Based on new findings in recent years, we believe that the capital of Erlitou is most likely divided by crisscrossing roads and walls to form multiple grids. Each grid belongs to a different family, and it is very likely that there has been a family-style layout of zoning, walls outside the area, and living and burial.
These four roads appeared at the beginning of the establishment of the capital in Erlitou, and these road systems were not destroyed until the regime was overthrown. Such a strict, clear, and regular planning and layout shows that the social structure at that time was obviously hierarchical, hierarchical, and the ruling pattern was orderly, suggesting the existence of mature and developed ruling systems and models. This is the most important sign of entering a dynastic state, and probably the source of the idioms "in order" and "in order".
A little knowledge is popularized here, the artifacts are relatively easy to identify, how is the road excavated? It relies on one of the basic skills of archaeologists: recognizing soil.
Most of China's archaeological sites are earthen sites, which we divide into two categories - naturally formed soil and soil that has been used by people. The color, texture and substances contained in these two types of soil are different. For example, the process of digging a grave pit penetrates many layers of soil, which is equivalent to unconsciously stirring these different layers, colors and textures of soil, which are dug up and backfilled after being buried. Therefore, the burial soil is also called "five-flower soil", which provides a basis for archaeologists to identify.
It is also the soil after human activity, and there are subtle differences. For example, the soil of the palace and the soil of the road are hard and dense, how to distinguish it specifically?
To build a palace is the same as building a house now, you must first dig a foundation pit, lay a layer of soil about 10 cm thick in the pit, ram it hard with tools, lay another layer, and then ram ... There is a demarcation between the two layers of soil, and we can see the characteristics of the palace soil during the excavation: the longitudinal section is layered, and the cross-section is rectangular.
The soil of the road is also layered, but because of long-term driving, the cover on the road surface is crushed and trampled on, and the characteristics of the soil are different. The weight of the car and the person is limited, and it cannot be stepped on much deep. The soil layers accumulate and form a longitudinal profile like a mille-feuille, with each layer no more than millimeters apart. Except for a section of the road excavated this year that was paved with broken pottery pieces, the roads in the Erlitou period were basically dirt roads.
I don't love weapons and I love wine vessels
We found the earliest bronze casting workshop in China at the Erlitou site, but people at that time did not use the precious raw material and complex copper casting technology on a large scale in warfare (only about 30 copper weapons were excavated, and mainly copper arrowheads only a few centimeters long), but used to produce a large number of wine vessels, and more than 20 pieces have been found.
We excavated hundreds of wine vessels (mainly pottery), including wine-making, wine-serving, and warm wine, and the composition of the wine was detected on the inner walls of these utensils. At that time, I mainly drank rice wine, which was low in strength and cooler in winter, so it would warm the wine, and the wine was stronger after heating. Only when the social productive forces develop to a certain level and there is a surplus of food, people will make wine. Therefore, drinking alcohol was the prerogative of the aristocracy at that time.
Mr. Bai Yang wrote the story of the prohibition of alcohol in the Xia people in the "Outline of Chinese History", saying that Dayu tasted the fine wine offered by someone, drunk so drunk, woke up and said that the wine was too good, and someone in the future would definitely break down and die for his family, so he ordered a ban on alcohol. But it seems difficult to abstain, at least archaeologically, and we have not seen evidence of prohibition. Drinking was a very important social activity at that time, in addition to pleasure, it also had an important function of adjusting social relations and reflecting social hierarchy.
The handicraft activities at the Erlitou site are relatively rich. Generally speaking, in a village of hundreds of people, one well is enough for life, but we found 9 wells in an excavation area of about 1,000 square meters, and the distance between many wells is only one or two meters, which is far beyond the general domestic water demand. We speculate that this may be needed to meet the needs of handicraft production with high water consumption.
Archaeology is sometimes about first imagining and then looking for clues, step by step to verify the hypothesis. The excavation is not over, and there is no way to know what is going on below, which is the charm of archaeology - there is always more not to know than to know, although more and more are known, but there is still more not known.
In recent years, we have also found pottery remains for the first time. In the northwest of the site, more than 800 pieces of pottery with red paint on the outside were excavated, nearly 20 times the total number of lacquered pottery pieces excavated in previous years, indicating that there may be lacquer-making workshops in the surrounding area. In addition, nearly 100 square meters of bone and horn processing workshops were found in the southwest corner of Miyagi.
In addition to unearthing important phenomena, it is also interesting to draw more reliable conclusions through comprehensive research. In the past five or six years, I have comprehensively combed through the materials of the late stage of the Erlitou culture and found that large-scale ceremonial and political projects were destroyed at the same stage, such as the road system, the palace castle wall, and the palace complex. These destruction came from the predecessor of the so-called Shang regime and the ancestors of the Dongyi people, indicating that the regime of Erlitou at that time was likely to be overthrown and it was no longer a capital.
At the same time, however, handicraft workshops such as copper casting, lacquer-making, and bone horn processing in Erlitou continued to be used, and large-scale rammed earth projects such as palace buildings were newly built, indicating that Erlitou was still an important settlement in the new regime. These "high-tech" processes at that time required professional technicians and equipment and facilities, and were generally reused for a period of time.
This was true in Erlitou, as well as during the change of regime in the Shang and Zhou dynasties. Zhou's bronze casting level was much worse than that of the end of the Shang Dynasty. At the beginning of the Zhou dynasty, he first left all the craftsmen in the local area to continue casting bronzes, and then moved to the capital of the new dynasty. Archaeological excavations and research are like detectives solving crimes – finding clues, finding logical relationships, establishing chains of evidence, and reaching convincing conclusions – which is also the charm and joy of archaeological research.
Since the archaeological work of Erlitou was carried out 63 years ago, a series of fruitful results have been achieved, and one of the important reasons is that it has formulated a scientific plan, grasped the major issues that embody the value of Erlitou, and continued to work. The third-generation captain, Xu Hong, once said in "The Earliest China" that Erlitou Miyagi was "conceived" and verified through academic design. In fact, many important gains of the Erlitou site are like this, which are gradually achieved through careful academic design and scientific planning arrangements.
For example, the recently announced multi-screen layout of the central area of the Erlitou site is also based on in-depth research and analysis of previous data, speculating that the perimeter of the grid divided by the "well" shaped road should be surrounded by walls, and then excavated and verified from key locations, and gradually expanded the scope of exploration.
More than 60 years of "relay" of four generations of captains
The site of Erlitou was discovered by the famous historian Mr. Xu Xusheng in 1959, when he was looking for the "Xia Ruin" in western Yuxi, and saw pottery shards everywhere in the wheat field of Yanshi Erlitou Village. I am from Henan, born in 1976 in Tanghe County, Nanyang City, and was admitted to the Department of History of Shandong University in 1995 and assigned to the Department of Archaeology in 1996. Mr. Xu and I are fellow villagers in the same county, and it was only until my sophomore year that I studied Xia Shang archaeology that I learned about his outstanding achievements.
In the autumn of 1959, Mr. Zhao Zhiquan, the first generation leader of the Erlitou Task Force, and his colleagues moved in to carry out archaeological work, successively completed the excavation of the foundation site of the No. 1 Palace and the No. 2 Palace of Erlitou, and discovered the tombs of nobles, copper and jade ceremonial vessels, and some handicraft workshops outside the palace area, allowing people to have a general understanding of the overall layout of the Erlitou site.
In 1979, Mr. Zheng Guang became the second generation captain, and he and his colleagues further refined the cultural periodization of Erlitou, focusing on excavating the remains represented by copper casting workshops, sacrificial remains, and aristocratic tombs, and found a large number of artifacts. They also built a workstation here, and in 1987, Erlitou Village allocated 5 acres of land to the team, so that the archaeological team members had a permanent residence, and this workstation has been used to this day. However, at that time, there was no special heating equipment, coal had to be burned in the room, and I heard that one year a strong wind poured into the chimney, and Mr. Zheng Guang was poisoned by gas.
Since 1999, Mr. Xu Hong has been the third generation captain. The next 20 years were the most fruitful period of archaeology in Erlitou, when a large turquoise dragon-shaped vessel of "super national treasure" was discovered, and a Miyagi was discovered. The four "well" shaped avenues explored and excavated divide palace complexes, workshops, sacrifice areas, etc. into different areas, which can be regarded as the "crossroads" on China's first main road; The earliest two-wheeled ruts in China, the earliest palace complexes with a central axis layout, the earliest turquoise workshops... These archaeological discoveries were rated as "China's Top Ten New Archaeological Discoveries" in 2004.
In 1999, I entered the Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences to pursue a master's degree, and in 2001, I began to prepare my master's thesis "The Relationship between Yueshi Culture and the Surrounding Contemporaneous Cultures". In order to collect materials, I visited and studied the ruins of Erlitou, and at the supplementary excavation site of Palace No. 1 at that time, I saw the hard rammed earth under the main hall and the layers of pebbles and deep wells laid in it, which was very shocking. Because it involved more of the Erlitou site, Professor Xu Hong was also one of my dissertation defense committee members and gave me a lot of important guidance.
After graduation, I entered the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. At that time, the archaeological research institute did not have many personnel, but there were many archaeological teams all over the country, and a large archaeological project such as Anyang Yin Hui might have four or five researchers, and most of the other teams had only one or two researchers. At that time, another member of the Erlitou task force happened to be admitted to graduate school, and only Professor Xu Hong was left. So, after defending my master's thesis in 2002, I was invited by him to work in the team.
Since 2003, I have been assisting Mr. Xu Hong to lead the site excavation; By 2010, I was basically in charge of everything on the construction site. I was also one of the editors of the archaeological report Erlitou: 1999-2006, and undertook nearly half of the writing tasks, as well as a lot of planning and coordination. This 4 million-word report was later named a major achievement of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Innovation Project in 2014 and one of the top ten books of national cultural heritage in 2014, and Xu Hong considered me to have made a "great contribution".
The first two generations of captains in Erlitou have worked in their posts for 20 years. Therefore, my previous generation captain Xu Hong has publicly stated many times that he will not exceed 20 years. In March 2019, he voluntarily resigned and recommended me to be the captain, and he felt that it was time for me to lead the team.
It was a very stressful year, with multiple important tasks at the same time. In October 2019, the Erlitou Xiadu Site Museum opened, and the 60th anniversary of the scientific excavation of the Erlitou site was held at the same time, and I couldn't hold back my tears at the end of my speech. I said that I am very grateful to the governments at all levels, people from all walks of life, especially the local villagers, for their strong support, they have paid and sacrificed a lot for Erlitou... At that time, various emotions were entangled, and suddenly my eyes were hot.
The next 20 years of Erlitou archaeology
When I first arrived, the social attention of the Erlitou site was still relatively low, and we mainly did our own work of excavation and research. I also deal with local farmers, including contacting archaeological excavations. In the more than 20 years that I have worked, I have occupied the arable land of at least 100 farmers. Archaeology occupies agricultural land for a quarter or two, and the farming work is delayed, so they will be compensated according to a certain standard according to the length of occupation and area.
Some archaeological excavations occupy agricultural land, and the other side may make a lot of requests. But the people around Luoyang are very simple, very supportive and trust us, because they know that "the archaeological team will not let us suffer."
Archaeology is a discipline that keeps pace with the times, with the accumulation of data, the application of scientific and technological means and multidisciplinary participation, the concept and method of archaeology continue to progress, and more and more data and information obtained from archaeological excavations will increase. The archaeological work at the Erlitou site has changed greatly compared to the previous 60 years.
At present, we scientifically formulate exploration, excavation and research plans, give priority to the core issues that can best reflect the value and significance of Erlitou, continue to explore the layout framework of the central area of the Erlitou site, the accurate scope of the site, peripheral defense facilities, sacrificial relics, grid differences, etc., and explore major issues such as in-depth relationship with settlements at all levels in the Erlitou cultural distribution area, control network, and ruling civilization.
In addition, we continue to increase cooperation with other disciplines and scholars to allow science and technology to explore the depth and breadth of excavation research at the Erlitou site. We hope to solve important issues such as the natural background, economic foundation, scientific and technological level, resource sources, transportation network, social relations, etiquette system, governance model, and ruling civilization of the Erlitou era.
We should also speed up the collation of archaeological excavation materials and the compilation and publication of archaeological reports, and strengthen the research and interpretation of excavation materials, and the publication and transformation and utilization of excavation materials. The process of collating data and preparing reports is the process of studying the results of archaeological excavations, and also provides basic materials for the academic community, which in turn can improve the quality and level of excavations and collations.
In addition, we still need to do a lot of publicity and dissemination work, publicize the connotation and value of Erlitou, and provide the people with rich historical, cultural and spiritual nourishment.
Working at such an important site as Erlitou, I am fortunate to have to take on greater responsibility. We must have the confidence, sense of mission and sense of responsibility of "success must have me", and strive to do a good job in the current excavation and research work; It is also necessary to have the mentality of "success does not have to be in me", plan scientifically, step by step, and promote the work in a down-to-earth manner.
(Du Jiabing, trainee reporter of China Youth Daily and China Youth Net, based on Zhao Haitao's oral statement)
Zhao Haitao (Leader of the Erlitou Task Force of the Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences) Source: China Youth Daily
Source: China Youth Daily