Field archaeology is the foundation of the entire archaeological edifice. Surveying relics and relics on the ground, relying on maps for survey and mapping, and using mechanical equipment to excavate antiquities, these field archaeological contents are regarded as the most basic work before carrying out archaeological research.
Zhao Hui, professor of the School of Archaeology and Museum of Peking University and chief expert of the "Chinese Civilization Source Exploration Project", has been engaged in field archaeology teaching and research for more than 30 years. "People like us, who are used to running in the field, are a little panicked after a long time, and they can't wait to run to the field to walk the fields, one foot high, one foot low, smell the grass, and feel good."
At present, the project of exploring the source of Chinese civilization has entered a new stage, and Chinese archaeologists have continuously put together the puzzle pieces of the early history of Chinese civilization step by step. "Scrape one shovel at a time, take out the data little by little, extract the content of history, and do archaeology with Chinese characteristics in a down-to-earth manner." Zhao Hui said.
Tano Archaeology:
Exploring the Chinese way of establishing fieldwork
"Archaeology is the study of history through material materials, ruins, relics. Most of these material materials are buried in the ground and must be taken out by a scientific method. With fieldwork, the discipline was established. After so many years, what has been excavated is a drop in the bucket, most of which is still buried in the ground. ”
The pit site in the field is Zhao Hui's classroom and podium, and he has been with the field for more than three decades, and he has led students to the historical site for excavation countless times.
Zhao Hui said that archaeology is a very young discipline, and at the same time, Chinese archaeology was born later than the West, but it cannot directly apply some Western experiences and methods. Therefore, Chinese archaeologists have established Chinese methods of fieldwork in constant exploration.
"The characteristics of ancient Chinese sites are very different from those in the West, Chinese sites are generally called soft sites, Western sites are called hard sites, soft sites are much more difficult to excavate, to identify which is the tomb, which is the house, what the house looks like, very laborious. No one teaches this set of things. We are still exploring how to establish a set of excavation methods and analysis methods suitable for the characteristics of Chinese sites, relics and relics. ”
In June 2022, Peking University published "Field Archaeology" compiled by Zhao Hui, Zhang Hai and Qin Ling, which systematically expounded the process of transformation of Chinese archaeology from the study of material culture history to the study of ancient social restoration, including the path of Western field archaeology, and the working methods and characteristics of Chinese field archaeology.
Carry out settlement archaeology:
From the study of the history of material culture to the restoration of ancient society
"When we have accumulated a certain amount of research on the appearance of relics and relics and sorted out their relationship with each other, we must further consider what the ancient society that created it was. This study is called the restoration of ancient societies. ”
Carrying out settlement archaeology, starting from the analysis of settlement structure, using a more macroscopic and pluralistic perspective, thinking about the social development seen on the site, opening up a new horizon for archaeologists to determine the coordinates of civilization. Shijiahe in Hubei Province is a typical settlement site, which is currently the largest prehistoric city site and settlement group in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, with the longest duration and the highest rank. The first time Zhao Hui came to Shijiahe was in 1989, "Shijiahe is a point in Peking University doing settlement archaeology. ”
"Mr. Yan Wenming paid attention to settlement archaeology relatively early." Zhao Hui recalled that Mr. Yan had found some houses with sections on the bottom of the Daheishan Island site on Shandong Long Island, which were well preserved, "He didn't want to leave at that time, but because it was winter, we came back again the next year to conduct archaeological excavations at the Beizhuang site on Shandong Long Island." Since then, Peking University has been thinking about how to carry out research on settlement morphology and how to do settlement archaeology in field work. After Beizhuang, we arrived at Shijiahe, which was also chosen by Mr. Yan. ”
Zhao Hui recalled that there was no good mapping equipment at that time, and a rudimentary compass was used, and everyone walked on the site to dig and measure, "using the compass to measure an angle, and then come back and draw it as a contour map." At first glance, this is a city. ”
Not only at that time, but in recent decades, the Shijiahe site has constantly surprised Chinese archaeologists. "For example, we found some urn coffins in Tanjialing a few years ago, and there were dozens of very beautiful jade objects inside. Another example is Sanfang Bay, where I just went last month, and found millions of pottery cups more than ten centimeters high. ”
In Shijiahe, the walls in some places are tens of meters wide, like a dam, standing on the ground, and Zhao Hui walks through there every day, "You probably never thought that it was a thing of two or three thousand years BC." Zhao Hui said that the future research on the Shijiahe site is promising.
Exploring the Source of Chinese Civilization:
Steadily do archaeology with Chinese characteristics
The Western archaeological community believes that writing, metallurgy, and cities are the three elements of civilization identification. Zhao Hui believes that these three elements alone cannot summarize the situation in China, "We have to put forward some of our own standards." The Chinese civilization source exploration project studies the emergence of the earliest countries. ”
As one of the chief scientists of the Chinese civilization source exploration project, Zhao Hui led the team to use archaeological excavations to verify the history of Chinese civilization for more than 5,000 years, and proposed a Chinese plan to determine the civilized society, making original contributions to the research on the origin of world civilization.
"One of the responsibilities of people who do Chinese historical research is to explain their own characteristics clearly. So we not only put forward the standard of such a civilization, but also proposed an ancient era. The ancient state is a basic structure of Chinese society, it does not necessarily reach the form of the state, but the ancient state further develops and enters the state at a certain stage. ”
At the end of 2020, the fifth phase of the Chinese Civilization Source Exploration Project was launched, and the source exploration project entered a new stage of in-depth research. Step by step, Chinese archaeologists continue to usher in major archaeological discoveries in the process of piecing together the puzzle of the early history of Chinese civilization, and at the same time usher in more challenges.
"A 500-square-meter construction site requires a team to take a small shovel, shovel by shovel, and pick out the information little by little, and this investment alone requires time and a large number of people, and then it is quite a difficult thing to extract a historical content and an explanation of a historical issue." Zhao Hui said frankly that everyone is a little anxious now, and the society is also a little anxious, "It's not so fast, learning must be done steadily." ”