▲Stone tablets found at the site of Tang Dynasty No. 1 Workshop in Jinyang Ancient City (H148:2)
▲Top view of the ruins of Jinyang Ancient City No. 1 Workshop
▲C-shaped iron armor sheet found at the site of No. 1 workshop in the Tang Dynasty (TS01W16(5)a:7)
NEWS new findings
On July 11, the Shanxi Institute of Archaeology announced the excavation data of the site of the No. 1 workshop of the Tang Dynasty in the ancient city of Jinyang. There are a large number of stove sites in the workshop site, and combined with the copper and iron residues unearthed, it can be inferred that this is a workshop site for smelting and processing metal in the Tang Dynasty, providing important materials for studying the technical history of metal smelting and manufacturing in the Tang Dynasty.
▲Schematic map of the location of the site of Jinyang Ancient City No. 1 workshop
The ruins of Jinyang Ancient City are located near Jinyuan Town, Jinyuan District, Taiyuan City, and the area of the city site has been proved to be about 20 square kilometers, and the foundation sites of No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3 buildings have been excavated successively. In 2019, in order to further clarify the cultural accumulation of the No. 2 building site and understand the early and late construction era and layout, archaeologists conducted archaeological excavations on the east side of the No. 2 building site below the late Tang dynasty cultural layer. The newly discovered site of Workshop No. 1 is located in it, which belongs to the remains of the lower cultural layer of the base site of Building No. 2.
Floor plan of the ruins of Jinyang Ancient City No. 1 Workshop
Top view of the ruins of the Jinyang ancient city workshop
A large number of relics have been unearthed in the workshop site and the nearby ash pit, with a wide variety of species, with obvious Tang Dynasty cultural characteristics. According to the use, it can be roughly divided into two categories: building components and daily necessities.
Building components include slab tiles, waddang, ridge tiles, rectangular hollow bricks, etc. Daily necessities include daily pottery, porcelain, low-temperature glazed pottery, ironware, coins, etc. Among them, the coins unearthed include Kaiyuan Tongbao, Qianyuan Zhongbao, Five Baht, and Changping Five Baht, which span from the fourth year of Tianbao (553) of Emperor Wenxuan of Northern Qi to the first year of Emperor Qianyuan of Tangsu (759), and it can be inferred that the age of the excavation site is about the middle of the Tang Dynasty
The ruins of the workshop site are scattered throughout the excavation area, and 1 house site, 3 sections of water canals, 1 reservoir, 34 stove sites, 63 ash pits and 642 coal (ash) slag pits have been cleared.
Site F1 is located in the northeast of the excavation area, is a small house with four wide faces and one depth, rectangular in plan, numbered F1-1, F1-2, F1-3, F1-4 from north to south. A large number of stove sites have been found at the site. Among them, F1-3 and F1-4 cleared a total of 20 stove sites, most of which are square or round in plan, and the distribution is regular, which is in line with the layout style of small workshops. There are two stove sites in the northeast corner of F1-2, consisting of three parts: the stove, the blower duct and the bellows placement pit. The blast duct is very long, such a design can make the stove obtain a higher temperature, should not be a living stove for cooking food, therefore, archaeological experts speculate that F1 is a house exclusively for production use.
▲F1 flat, section view
▲Top view of F1 ruins (north on right)
▲ Map of Z1 and Z2 relics in F1-2 (south → north)
▲Z1 flat and section view in F1-2
On the west side of the site, several rectangular ash pits are distributed longitudinally from north to south, and only a small number of tiles have been excavated in the pits, some with obvious traces of water stains, from the regular shape analysis, or quenched puddles.
On the outside of the site, there are more than 600 cinder pits or ash pits scattered in a mess, and there are a certain number of simple stove sites, canals and other facilities among them. The coal (ash) slag pit is mainly cinder, and some of them contain red-burned clay, iron slag, crucibles or other relic fragments, indicating that coal has become an important means of production and livelihood at that time.
▲Top view of the S2 ruins of the aqueduct (upper north)
▲Map of the remains of the reservoir (south → north)
From this, archaeological experts judged that this should be the site of a Tang Dynasty metal smelting and processing workshop, and combined with the analysis of copper and iron residues in the crucibles and ash pits found, the main purpose of the workshop is to smelt and process copper and iron. In addition, about 40 meters east of the excavation area is the site of porcelain kilns from the Sui to the early Tang dynasty, which is slightly earlier than the site of No. 1 workshop from the stratigraphy, further indicating that there was handicraft production in the area from the Sui Dynasty to the middle of the Tang Dynasty. The site of Building No. 3, about 50 meters east of the porcelain kiln site, was built in the late Northern Dynasty and abandoned around the beginning of the Tang Dynasty. They are close in distance, so the site found this time may be the site of a metal-making workshop formed after the building site was abandoned.
▲Map of the Z3 ruins of the stove site located outside the house site (south → north)
▲Map of the Z8 ruins of the stove site located outside the site (south→north)
This is the first time that a relatively concentrated handicraft workshop site has been found in the ancient city of Jinyang, and the excavation of this site is of great significance for exploring the urban layout and evolution of the ancient city of Jinyang. The No. 1 workshop site dates from the middle of the Tang Dynasty, and few sites of this type have been found during this period, which will also provide important materials for the study of the technical history of metal smelting and manufacturing in the Tang Dynasty.
Unearthed relics
Source: Wenbo Shanxi