■ Kettle, copper hammer
■ Skull of yellow croaker, large pharynx of Cantonese bream, vertebrae of giant yellow croaker
■ South Vietnamese rice paddies and grass finches imaginary map
■ The largest piece of copper oven unearthed from the tomb of the King of Nanyue
■ Copper frying oven
■ Copper oven
The back room of the tomb of King Wen of Nanyue in Guangzhou is a warehouse for cooking, grilling kitchenware, large and small containers and rare food, with an area of less than 4 square meters. The interior is stacked with hundreds of large cookware and containers, of which 18 are copper cookers. The shape of one of the iron dings is similar to that of the Yue-style pottery dings excavated from the South Vietnamese tomb group in Guangzhou's Overseas Chinese New Village and other places, so it must be cast locally. It shows that during the Nanyue Period, such a large cast iron device was able to be produced locally, which was five hundred years earlier than the record that Guangzhou was "opened and cast" until the beginning of the Jin Dynasty.
During the Period of the South Vietnamese Empire, Guangzhou was able to produce large-scale cast iron devices
The back room is a storehouse for cooking and grilling kitchenware, large and small containers, and delicacies. The back room is only 2 meters long and 1.8 meters wide, and the area is less than 4 square meters. Indoor layers are stacked with hundreds of large cookware and containers, of which copper cookers have 18 pieces, divided into Han style (that is, the Han culture of the Central Plains) and Yue style two, the largest two pieces are Yue-style Ding, body like a pot, flat bottom, vertical ears, three flat feet micro-skimming, height 55 cm, caliber 51.7 cm, side room, there is 1 piece of a broken piece of eaves stone hit, the abdomen cracked a hole, slightly concave, this Ding was smashed by a large stone weighing five or six hundred pounds at a height of 2 meters, not smashed flat, not fully broken, which shows the hardness of the copper tire. There are also two large copper ovens, 1 frying oven, 1 pair of kettles, more than 10 large and small copper hammers, all with iron tripods, as well as 56 pieces of copper utensils such as garlic pots, washing, shoveling, turning, lamps, and pickets. At the entrance of the room, there is a large iron ding, with a mouth, straight lips, a kettle-shaped body, two ears at the shoulders, a straight hoof,48 cm high, and a weight of 26.2 kg. The shape of this iron ding is similar to that of the Yue-style pottery excavated from the South Vietnamese tomb group in Guangzhou's Overseas Chinese New Village and other places, so it must be cast locally. It shows that during the Nanyue Period, such a large cast iron device was able to be produced locally, which was five hundred years earlier than the record that Guangzhou was "opened and cast" until the beginning of the Jin Dynasty.
In the pottery, copper cookers and containers in the back room, there are more than 30 pieces of utensils containing animal remains, as well as fruits and other residues, of which aquatic products are the most abundant, followed by livestock. In addition, in the east ear chamber and the east side chamber, in pottery or copper containers, some remains of seafood and livestock were also found, which should be buried as food. But the west side chamber is the most special, the excavated animal remains, are placed directly on the floor, some are also mixed with the bones of martyrs, some also have barbecue marks, mainly pigs, cattle, sheep, should be sacrificial sacrifices.
The remains of the animals unearthed are quite eye-catching
The remains of animals excavated from the tomb of the Nanyue King of Xianggang are numerous and rich in variety, and are rare in Han tombs in the country, including domestic pigs, yellow cattle, goats, domestic chickens, carps, large yellow croakers, Cantonese bream, river clams, shrimp, Chinese flower turtles, Chinese turtles, green cockles (more than 2000 bodies), turtle feet (more than 1500 bodies), wedge-shaped axe clams (more than 200 bodies), ear snails, bamboo shell snails, grass finches (more than 200 bodies) and bamboo rats. These animals have live species in Guangdong, and no animals other than those produced in the region have been found, which have distinct characteristics of the coastal fauna of the Pearl River Delta. For example, carps and turtles are typical freshwater organisms; Ear snails, bamboo shoot shell snails and river clams and other molluscs, are freshwater and brackish aquatic organisms, mainly inhabiting the estuary area of the Pearl River Delta, green cockles, wedge-shaped axe clams, turtle feet and other common species in the southern coast of China.
Among the remains of this batch of excavated animals, the grass finches are quite remarkable, and are still regarded as delicacies by the residents of the region to this day (Editor's note: the grass finches were not listed as endangered and protected animals in the 1980s), indicating that the habits and migration routes of the species seem to have not changed much in two thousand years. Grass finches are migratory birds that fly from the northeast to Fujian and Guangdong every year around the winter solstice to peck at the grouted rice. At that time, the Yue people living in Lingnan probably had mastered the habits of the grass flower finches to be afraid of people, afraid of light, afraid of shadows, and eating rice during the day and perching in the grass fields at dusk. People want to open a net to capture, the action needs to be agile, silent operation, with tacit understanding, in order to collect all the nets. There are such a large number of individual remains in the tomb, indicating that the agricultural cultivation near Guangzhou at that time was already a continuous field of rice. Among the three clay pots in the back room, we noticed a peculiar phenomenon when excavated, that is, there were many clay pottery particles mixed with charcoal grains. It is estimated that this was a baking method of eating at that time, that is, after the finches were dehaired, they were placed in a pottery container, and the red clay grains and charcoal particles were piled on it, and the finches were roasted and eaten with the help of such high temperatures; Today' Famous Dongjiang vegetable salt baked chicken in Guangdong is cooked with the help of hot coarse salt grains. At the same time, in the bones of these grass finches, there are no skulls, tarsal toes and claws, which is the same as the eating habits of Guangdong people today to go to their head and feet.
Two thousand years ago, Guangzhou (Panyu) was located at the mouth of the Pearl River, and its topography was generally a low-lying terrain, a long river, a dense water network, rocky reefs, and a tortuous coastal alluvial plain of the Pearl River Delta, with long summers and warm winters and abundant rainfall. There are many marine animals such as green cockles, turtle feet, and wedge-shaped axe clams unearthed from the Tomb of Xianggang Han, but they are almost extinct on the Pearl River in today's Guangzhou city, and they are not distributed until the present-day Pearl River estuary, that is, outside the Huangpu District about 20 kilometers east of Guangzhou, and even in the coastal area of Huiyang. It shows that after two thousand years of vicissitudes and changes, the mouth of the Pearl River has been extended by 20 kilometers. In ancient times, transportation was underdeveloped, and there was no guarantee of preservation technology, and these seafood could only be harvested nearby, rather than transported from afar.
(This article is based on the WeChat public account of the tomb of the Nanyue king of the Western Han Dynasty)