A few days ago, Shanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology
Released archaeological excavation reports
Local archaeologists
The remains of wells from the Warring States period were found in Yangquan City
Proof of 2400-year-old well-building technology
Come and watch! The remains of the Warring States Well were found in Shanxi
In 2019, during the construction of the shantytown renovation and resettlement housing project in Dongpingtanyi Village, Hongcheng North Road, Yangquan City, the staff found a well, which was approved by the State Administration of Cultural Heritage of China, and the Shanxi Institute of Archaeology and the Yangquan Cultural Relics Management Center jointly carried out rescue excavations of the well
Figure 1: Location diagram
The well is located in the west of Pingtanyuan Village, Yangquan High-tech Industrial Development Zone, Shanxi Province, and during the excavation, the archaeological team conducted archaeological investigation on the area around the well, and found no other remains, and a large number of pottery, bone, iron, wood and other relics were unearthed in the well
Archaeological excavations
The well is divided into three parts: wellhead, well circle and bottom well
The wellhead plane is slightly circular (Figure 2)
5 rice in diameter, 5 rice in bottom diameter, 9 rice in remaining depth
Figure 2: Flat wellhead
The well circle is made of supporting timber stacked on top of each other, and the well circle and the well wall are closely fitted (Fig. 3), the plane of the well circle is nine-gonal, and there are 38 layers from top to bottom, each layer is connected with nine supporting timber mortise and tenon to become a closed well circle (Fig. 4);
Figure 3: Internal structure of a flat water well (taken from the bottom of the well to the wellhead)
△Figure 4: Flat water well well circle support wood mortise and tenon joint
From the perspective of wellhead cleaning, a semi-circular (or semi-oval) wall is dug on the corresponding well wall on the outer side of the middle of each supportwood (Figure 5), of which the supporting wood is mostly cypress, basically keeping the wood in its original state, and some of the supporting trees even retain the bark as a whole
In the contact position of the two supporting logs stacked on top and bottom, part of the layer is artificially trimmed and processed, which not only expands the contact position area, but also ensures the smoothness and stability of the contact position, at the same time, in order to ensure the compact connection between the well circles and the overall horizontal wooden columns of each layer of the well circle, iron axes, wooden boards, and sticks are also used to level and squeeze in some places (Figure 6), and the bottom of the well is a sand layer containing pebbles
△Figure 5: Outer middle wall pit of the well circle support of the flat water well
△Figure 6: Flat padding between the well circle support trees
After analysis and research, archaeologists believe that the date of the relics unearthed in the well is about the late Spring and Autumn Period, from the early Western Han Dynasty, that is, as early as the early Western Han Dynasty, and the well should have been completely buried
After analyzing the carbon 14 dating of the five wooden well circles, archaeologists deduced that the excavation and use age of the well was roughly between the late Spring and Autumn period and the early Western Han Dynasty, and according to the well, the carbon 14 dating data was mainly in the Warring States period, so the main body of the flat water well was most likely to be in the Warring States period
Source: CCTV News Client