Qianjiang Evening News Hour News Liangzhu Ancient City has now become a heritage park, but its archaeological investigation, exploration and excavation are still continuing, entering a new stage of "excavation, protection, research, display, and utilization". It's a living heritage park, not a stationary vase.
After the successful application, at the end of 2019, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage officially approved the major project of "Archaeological China - From Songze to Liangzhu: Research on the Regional Civilization Model of the Lower Yangtze River (2020-2025)", and at the same time, the fifth phase of the "Chinese Civilization Source Exploration Project (2019-2022)" was also officially launched. The ruins of Liangzhu Ancient City are an important part of these two national-level projects.
Previously, the Zhejiang Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology had almost figured out the basic functional structure of Liangzhu Ancient City, but as a complex prehistoric civilization, the veil of Liangzhu civilization had just been unveiled. We want to get closer to the spiritual world of the Liangzhu people, we want to see how society developed 5,000 years ago, how the rise and fall of a kingdom evolved in these 1,000 years, through generations of kings... There are more and more unsolved mysteries, and new archaeological work is becoming more and more refined, step by step, approaching the truth.
This year, what new stories does Liangzhu have?
On this year's Heritage Day, in the archaeological excavation area of liangzhu ancient city site, Chen Minghui, director of the Liangzhu workstation, stood in the archaeological excavation party and told us what archaeology is.
Punch: Out of town
Liangzhu people popular to open hands as "studio"
In order to cooperate with the transformation of the site park, the Provincial Archaeological Institute has successively excavated the terraces inside and outside the city, and at more than a dozen points, the remains related to the production of jade tools have been found.
What do you mean?
Come and sit in my studio?
5,000 years ago, when the sun was good, on both sides of the Zhongjiagang River in the ancient city, the creative handicraft market began, and each studio sent out the head of the studio to set up a small stall to make wood, lacquerware, jade, boneware... All handmade, choose from.
A woven ring found in the Zhongjiagang River Channel. The craftsmanship of the Liangzhu people is quite advanced.
From 2016 to 2019, the secrets of this river let us find that the original east side of the city is distributed with a large number of handicraft workshops, hundreds of crafts, Liangzhu people are skillful, and master a variety of high-end handicraft skills.
In the first half of 2019, archaeologists continued to do trench-like excavations in the inner city, and found finished and semi-finished products related to the production of jade and stone tools in the abandoned accumulation layers of Liangzhu cultural life in the topsoil of Many terraces, such as Maozhu Mountain, Gaobei Mountain, shenjia village, etc., as well as grinding stones and flints as tools.
We know that the people in the city are craftsmen, so what kind of work do the Liangzhu people outside the city do?
In the second half of 2019, the archaeologists carried out trench excavations and test excavations in the terraces of Shengjia Village, Jinjiatou, Meirendi and Yingxiangtang in the outer city, and also found the remains of the same handicraft production activities. This shows that outside the core area of Liangzhu Ancient City, there are generally started industrial workshop areas, especially the "studios" of jade and stone tools, which are all over the outer city, which has not been found before.
Moreover, many "studios" specialize in only one product, such as stone hammer (arrow), stone hammer, the division of labor is very clear, to do each kind of jade, you need to get different skills, the technical division of labor at that time has been quite fine.
The workshops found so far are all in the late Liangzhu period, and it is possible that by the late Liangzhu period, handicraft production has increasingly become an important foundation of Liangzhu civilization.
Here's the problem. Where do the raw materials for these workshops come from? Production mode, organizational model, and product "logistics" are the next key research objects.
We already knew that the people in the city did not grow rice, but the city found a large granary, 24,000 jin on the eastern slope of Mojiao Mountain, and 400,000 jin in the chizhong temple. Where did such a huge reserve of rice in the city come from?
Obviously, this should be provided by the residents of the suburbs of the ancient city and the residents outside the Liangzhu ruins group. Every day, they rowed bamboo rafts and delivered food to the townspeople. The rice that the king wanted to eat had to rely on the production of outsiders.
Then, there must be a system similar to tribute. There are so many handicraft workshops inside and outside the city, and the scale of production is also very large, we can further speculate that the commodity trade and exchange of the Liangzhu people are very frequent. Economic archaeology related to agriculture, handicrafts and trade will be a new academic growth point for the study of Liangzhu Ancient City in the future.
The Department of Archaeology of Shandong University, the survey cooperation unit of the Provincial Archaeological Institute, conducted survey work at the Liangzhu site
In addition, the archaeologists found a "super square" next to the palace area.
Let's review the past --
On the Mojiao Mountain, the palace area of the king, in addition to the three palace sites, there is also a large outdoor activity square where you can dance "square dance", with more than 70,000 square meters, located in the middle of the palace area, between the three earthen platforms, we call it Sand and Soil Square.
A layer of sand, a layer of mud, the Liangzhu people use this interlaced way to ram this super square. Sand, mainly taken from river sand, is mixed with mud and stone particles from the mountain, and the rammed ground is hard. 5,000 years ago, people worshipped the god in their hearts and looked up to the king from above.
But in Gaobei Mountain, north of Damojiao Mountain, there is a rice field, and there is a pier on the other side, on which three houses are built, arranged in an east-west direction. Last year, under the terrace, archaeologists found the same super square as the south side of Da mo jiao mountain, slightly smaller in size, but the process of ramming was exactly the same.
Anatomy of the sandy square north of High North Mountain
Here, it may be an administrative center one level lower than the Mojiaoshan Palace District, similar to the Government Office and the Official Office.
The three red squares are the site of Gaobei Mountain. A sandy square is found below
Punch in: Heritage Park
The secret of the Land City Gate
Liangzhu Ancient City is a water city.
A total of 8 water gates were found on the city wall, two on each of the four walls, the inner and outer rivers were connected through the water gates, and there were city rivers inside and outside the west, north and east walls, forming a structure of "building a city by sandwiching rivers".
Most uniquely, a land gate was also found in the middle of the southern city wall.
Liangzhu paddles bamboo rafts to work every day, transportation, shopping, no morning and evening rush hours, no traffic jams, water traffic is the mainstream of their lives, water city gate is very normal. But what is this only land city gate used for? I've always thought it was weird.
We now go to Liangzhu Ruins Park to play, and the first stop of the standard route is Lucheng Gate. In order to better display the Lucheng Gate, in the second half of last year, the archaeologists did a long trench excavation on the Lucheng Gate.
Layout of the core area of Liangzhu Ancient City
In the past, archaeologists believed that since the southern city wall was a land gate, it was a city gate that could be entered and exited on land. But after excavation, it was found that no, the east-west direction of the city gate can be walked through, it is land. However, once out of the north and south, there is water inside and outside the door, which is a low wetland environment formed after artificial excavation. Although the water is relatively shallow, not as deep as the ancient river channel, if there is no trestle bridge, people will not be able to walk in at all, so they have to go into the city every day to work.
That is to say, this land city gate does not have the function of a land gate, and does not play a role in connecting the north-south land passage inside and outside the city.
Liangzhu talents will not do useless work. This door must have a deep meaning.
There are also three piers at the Gate of Lucheng, which are less than 1.5 meters high due to the destruction of the years, are not connected to each other, and are symmetrically distributed. But why three, not four, five, or six?
Recall that on the Palace Area of Mojiao Mountain, there are three big Mojiao Mountain, Small Mojiao Mountain, and Turtle Mountain. Third, in the concept of liangzhu people, is there a special meaning?
Land city gate structure
There is another strange thing.
On the edge of the southern city wall, no abandoned accumulation of life before the late Liangzhu culture was found - that is, no trace of human activity was found here.
The other 8 water gates have found relatively thick living waste piles, indicating that there have been people living here for a long time.
Only in the latest stage of the late Liangzhu culture did a little bit of abandonment appear on the edge of the southern city wall.
The ancient city was built between 5,000 and 4,900 years ago, that is to say, the Lucheng Gate was not used for nearly four or five hundred years, and there was almost no human activity.
Perhaps, this gate is not practical for everyday purposes, but is likely to be used alone for ritual purposes. For example, the emperor's big wedding, the palace trial release list, the civil and military hundred officials will be in the court.
Just like the southern gates of some capitals in historical times, they were usually used to receive foreign emissaries, or only the emperor could enter and exit. Ceremonial buildings are generally built on the south side.
For example, the Noon Gate of the Forbidden City, just south, holds a major ceremony, the emperor ascends, and the main building of the Noon Gate is both the gate of Miyagi Castle and plays the role of the main hall of the Kingdoms.
Further south of the Lucheng Gate, is the Great View Mountain, with a triangular silhouette, which is very recognizable. If the Liangzhu people stand at the Lucheng Gate and gaze directly south, the pointed triangular spire just floats on the city gate.
Such a special landscape. Will Daguan Mountain be the sacred mountain of the Liangzhu people?
Punch point: 3,000 square kilometers
A further 150 sites have been discovered in the suburbs
In addition to the bustling "Liangzhu CBD" ancient city site area (we are already familiar with the big Mac triple city: palace area, inner city, outer city), within the 100 square kilometers of Liangzhu urban system (still in Liangzhu and bottle kilns), there are also a vast suburb with an area of more than 40 square kilometers, which we call the suburbs.
In recent years, archaeologists have conducted large-scale full-coverage exploration of the suburbs, and where it was previously thought that there were no sites or very few distributions, more sites were found, far more dense than the original survey realized. For example, in the northeastern suburbs of the ancient city, 97 Terraces of the Liangzhu Period, that is, the living quarters or tombs of the Liangzhu people, have been found, while only 20 have been found in previous surveys.
Chen Minghui, director of the Liangzhu workstation, told me that the latest exploration results at present, it is speculated that the suburban settlements east of liangzhu ancient city will exceed 600, and it is speculated that there were 20,000-30,000 people living in the suburbs at that time, which is similar to the number of people living in the city.
The big issue of "Archaeology in China" is to solve these problems. Next, exploration of suburban settlements will continue, and it is largely completed by 2025. At that time, we will have a new understanding of how the Liangzhu people living in the suburbs live in the living areas, cemeteries, and rivers, urban and rural structure, economic production, and the ruling mode of the Liangzhu King.
In addition to the suburbs, there are also remote suburbs, they are far from the king, but still under the king's rule.
What is the concept of the far suburbs?
They are the hinterland of the ancient city of Liangzhu – the C-shaped basin of Hangzhou, which we used to say 1,000 square kilometers, for example, the Maoshan site, has found the largest rice field of the Liangzhu culture, possibly the state farm of the Liangzhu Kingdom. There is also the ruins of Yujia Mountain in Linping, which consists of 6 ring moats.
Now, the scope of the suburbs has expanded, including 2000-3000 square kilometers of Deqing, Lin'an, Fuyang, Xiaoshan, etc., and archaeologists have carried out large-scale systematic surveys. For example, the latest archaeological discoveries, 18 kilometers away from the ancient city, the early Ming of the Deqing Dynasty, found and confirmed 23 artificially built earthen platforms in the Liangzhu culture period, and it was clear that there was a large-scale jade-making workshop group in the Liangzhu culture period in this area.
By the end of last year, in addition to the Liangzhu ruins group, nearly 150 Liangzhu cultural sites had been newly discovered in the suburbs.
Jade cones and other semi-finished products found in the ruins of the Early Ming Jade Workshop in the Middle Deqing Dynasty
Punching: Heaven and earth
Build a remote sensing resource library, Liangzhu Zoo
In addition to continuous field archaeology, Liangzhu's high-tech archaeology has been carried out silently for many years, from animals and plants to the environment, geology, remote sensing, isotope and DNA analysis, organic matter protection, multidisciplinary intersection, Liangzhu science and technology archaeology, has become a typical case.
Our traditional archaeology pays more attention to some basic issues, such as the type of artifacts, cultural genealogy, chronological framework, etc., problems that belong to the level of material cultural history, arranging altar jars and jars, seeing how artifacts change, and expanding, to the division of cultural areas.
However, if we want to restore the lives of the ancients in more detail, we need more natural science intervention. Up to remote sensing satellites, down to molecular biology, DNA. In the words of Wang Ningyuan, a researcher at the Provincial Institute of Archaeology, almost all the natural science means of scientific and technological archaeology that can be used are now used.
The Provincial Archaeological Institute is establishing a Zhejiang region-based Yangtze River Delta remote sensing resource library. Wang Ningyuan said that at present, all the keyhole guards in Zhejiang have been collected, and the early aerial film materials of the 1940s and 1970s in Zhejiang Province have been basically collected, and some basic registration work is being done.
What to use?
The researchers made these satellite films and aerial films into stereoscopic images after special processing and placed them in mobile phones and pads. Later, the archaeologists went out to do site investigation, for example, although the place in front of them is a residential area, but a little check in the mobile phone, you can immediately know what the landform of different ages in this place looks like - you can call it a "virtual digital sand table", with red and blue glasses, you can see the three-dimensional image, and it is very convenient to find the site.
For example, what is liangzhu's zoo like? Liangzhu zooarchaeologists can answer.
Song Shu, who does animal archaeology, through the analysis of the remaining animal bones, has found 44 kinds of animals, let's take a look at -
Seafood feast: field snail, square ring snail, pear-shaped ring snail, oysters; mussels alone, there are sail mussels, dome bead mussels, Chinese pointed clams, twisted mussels, fish tail wedge mussels, spear mussels, dorsal tumor clams; river clams, clams, clams, grass clams, hair cockles;
Love to eat fish: sharks, carp, bluefish, grass carp, catfish, mullet (Hangzhou people are familiar with the Qiantang River mullet), yellow jaw fish (that is, wang thorn fish), snakehead (that is, blackfish, very delicious kind);
We are more familiar with: maculata giant turtle, Chinese grass turtle, ring-necked pheasant, geese, wild duck, crane, eagle, red-faced monkey, rat, dog, tiger, otter, wild boar, domestic pig, chamois, roe deer, sambar deer, sika deer, elk, holy buffalo, Asian elephant.
Various bones in the Liangzhu workstation
Shark teeth
Punch in: Northwest side of Liangzhu Ancient City
Look for stones, find jade mines, find DNA
For another example, we want to know the stone tools made by the Liangzhu people, where these stones come from, what kinds of types, this is geological archaeology.
Last year, researchers re-identified the stone tools of the 1,000 square kilometers of the Liangzhu site group, including the Liangzhu cultural stone tools in the Provincial Archaeological Institute, the Liangzhu Museum, and the Yuhang Museum, and then surveyed the rock resources in the surrounding 800-900 square kilometers and drew a rock distribution map.
It turned out that many of the main stones were not from the site — not native stones, but some to be collected in fixed places far away.
For example, the stone made by the Liangzhu people has to use a striped siliceous rock, which is only produced in the Nangangxi River Basin in our Zhejiang region, or in the watershed of the Watershed River further south, and this stone is only available in that place.
That is to say, the Liangzhu people go to quarry, wade through the mountains and waters, pass through the Qiantang River, all the way to Tonglu, and first go to beat the blanks made of this stone tool - he does not transport them back first, but he makes blanks on the riverbank, and then transports them back to the place of residence or the city, such as processing sites or villages, and then begins finishing. Therefore, the operation chain of Liangzhu people making stone tools is very long.
Stone hammers found at the bian jia shan site
In addition to stones, the traceability of Liangzhu jade has also made great progress.
An unsolved mystery that has plagued for a long time - Liangzhu jade is famous all over the world, but for so many years, where the jade mine is, that is, where the origin of Liangzhu jade material is, we have not known.
When the researchers did the stone source investigation, they found some clues.
Jade ore has special mineralization conditions, generally there must be a granite rock mass in the center, there is a layer similar to limestone and Dali rock on the outside, and then after the hot water on the hydrothermal liquid - magma comes up, under high temperature and high pressure, the outer circle will become jade.
In the Zhejiang region, there were previous indications that the jade mine may have come from the Tianmu Mountain system on the west side.
Archaeologists such as Wang Mingda have conducted short-term investigations in the Liangzhu site group and its western part, combined with the distribution map of geological structures, and believe that the Tianmu Mountains have the geological conditions for the formation of jade ore. But the category is not high, now there is no economic mining value, no mining jade. There are so many mountains in southern Zhejiang, but after screening this mineralization condition, it was found that there are no conditions in southern Zhejiang.
Well, it is only possible on the northwest side of our ancient city of Liangzhu.
After the researchers investigated, they did collect a sample of tremolite here - the tremolite content has not yet reached more than 90%, and we may not be able to directly call it jade, but it must be nearby.
The best jade material in Liangzhu, the first in the ranking, is tremolite nephrite. We are familiar with the King of Qi, the King of Qi, delicate, dense, is made of it, after being Qin, the color of white flowers, the standard color is called yellow white, which is what we commonly call chicken bone white. At that time, they should be blue-yellow and transparent, which is the mainstream color of high-grade cemetery burial jade, and in the burial jade in the anti-mountain and Yaoshan cemeteries, after sampling testing, most of them are such jade, which is also the best representative of Liangzhu jade.
In addition, the low-level serpentine jade also found some clues.
Next, the researchers will focus on the nearby area. Once the jade mine is found, it can help us further understand why the Liangzhu people set up the capital here.
Liangzhu culture jade three major pieces: 琮, 璧, 钺
There's also a lot of DNA that people are interested in.
The Provincial Institute of Archaeology and the PaleoDNA Laboratory of the Institute of Paleovertebrates of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have carried out sampling and research on human ancient DNA in the Songze-Liangzhu period in Zhejiang. In the past, ancient human DNA in the southern region was difficult to extract, but the latest news is that for the first time, dna from two individuals has been successfully extracted in the Liangzhu site. The researchers took samples from the human skull, near a location inside the sphenoid bone, and research is currently being advanced. In the future, we can know whether there is a "genetic" relationship between Liangzhu people and current people, including the dynamics of migration and the source flow of the population, and we can get some answers.
Finally, another spoiler.
Recently, Fu Qiaomei's team from the Ancient DNA Laboratory of the Institute of Ancient Spine researched an interesting topic, whether Liangzhu's dog is related to the Spotted Dog in Australia.