#中国式浪漫#
2020 is destined to be an extraordinary year in the history of Chinese archaeology. After the birth of Chinese archaeology, field archaeology was interrupted for the first time due to public health events. After the concerted efforts of the whole country to fight the epidemic and achieve phased results, archaeologists actively resumed work and production, returned to the front line of field archaeological work, entered the working state in a relatively short period of time, and regained the lost time.
In this year, although the archaeology of Xia Shang Zhou was a small year, many discoveries became a hot spot for the public. Academic research and public attention form a good interaction, which is fully displayed in the archaeological work of Xia Shang Zhou.
In 2020, there were many achievements in archaeology in the Xia Shang period, which boiled down to three points that are most commendable: first, around the research of Xia culture, many famous sites have restarted work, reshaped and looked back at academic issues left over from history, and started a new journey; Second, the new work carried out around the layout of the core Duyi site of Xia Shang has been fruitful, and many discoveries have subverted the previous understanding; Third, there are amazing new discoveries in the bronze remains in the surrounding areas during the late Shang period, and a new round of scientific excavations in Sanxingdui shows that Xia Shang archaeology has entered a new stage of excavation technology, excavation mode and research cognition.
Work on the Taoji site in fiscal 2020 continued around the rammed earth building site in Miyagi Ward. This year's focus is on continuing to uncover IFJT3, the largest building in Miyagi. This excavation basically clarified the western edge of the main hall of the building, and clarified the scale of the main hall. The building is about 27 meters long from east to west and 20 meters wide from north to south, and from the remnant column network, it may be a house site with a width of 7 rooms and a depth of 2 rooms. If the information is confirmed, it is currently the largest known single rammed earth building in the Neolithic period of China. There are also outbuildings to the east and south of the building, and the layout is complex. With the deepening of the work, it is not difficult to imagine that the study of the origin and evolution of the mainland palace system will play a key role.
The exploration area of the Yuzhou Wadian site was nearly 300,000 square meters in 2020, and a number of crisscrossing ditches were found in the site; On the northern side of the site, on the side of the Ying River, pit pond remains were found. The unexcavated part of the previously discovered base site (WD2F1) was re-revealed in 2020, and remains that may be related to sacrifices, such as late Yongsan movable surfaces, barbecue noodles, human bone burials, and snail shell accumulation.
In 2020, the work of Dengfeng Wangchenggang site was resumed. The site has always attracted much attention because of the legend of "Yudu Yangcheng". This year's fieldwork focused on both drilling and excavation. Drilling found that there is still a large range of rammed earth groups in the outer periphery of known rammed earth in the northern part of Ayutthaya, which is one of the largest rammed earth foundation sites in the Central Plains discovered in the late Longshan to Erlitou culture phase II. At the same time, a nearly closed ring moat was found in the big city and the west side of the small city, the main body of which is the remains of the Erligang culture and the Eastern Zhou period. During the excavation, the eastern, western and southern boundaries of the target rammed earth were cleared, and it was found that the rammed earth was about 1 meter thick, divided into three large rammed layers, and there were architectural remains, no later than the second phase of the Erlitou culture.
Work on the Xinyan site in 2020 focused on the Gaogang Terrace northeast of Liangjiatai. Excavations revealed relatively dilapidated rammed body sites and more than 50 caves. In a sacrificial pit containing human bones, there are at least 4 human bones. In another ash pit, underage women were found buried wearing bone hairpins and had deep abdominal jars placed on their heads. This kind of ash pit burial of human bones and deliberately burial artifacts has been found many times in important sites of the Wangwan III culture, but it is the first time it has been found in the Xinyan site. How to understand this phenomenon has also been understood differently over the years. Some of the more important relics such as stone rocks were found during this excavation, once again demonstrating the importance of the new stone site.
The work of the Erlitou site in 2020 has made a great breakthrough. Based on the clues prompted by drilling in 2019, the archaeological team focused on exploring whether there are peripheral roads and other enclosures on the west side of the "nine-square grid" formed by the "well" shaped road in the past. Fieldwork for most of the year showed that there was a new rammed earth wall west of the road on the west side of the palace area wall, with corners, and roads on the south and east sides, the strike and width of the palace wall, and the direction was about 262 degrees. A road has also been found west of the southwest corner of the Miyagi Wall, with two sections of rammed earth walls, which is likely the same road as the road on the south side of Miyagi. To the south of this road, another rammed earth wall was found, which coincided with the direction and width of the northern wall of the walled workshop area. The same road and rammed earth wall were found west of the northwest corner of the palace area, and the direction coincided with the road north of Miyagi and the north wall of Miyagi District. The road and rammed earth wall stretch intermittently to the west, and are still found more than 400 meters away, and the rammed earth wall found in the north and south of the road suggests that there may be at least two rammed earth fences west of Miyagi. This discovery shows that the east-west road on the north and south sides of the palace area extends eastward and westward, extending more than 400 meters from the west of the eastern castle, and walls in a straight line or parallel to the north and south walls of Miyagi were found on both sides of the road, and new north-south roads parallel to the east and west roads outside Miyagi were found to the west of Miyagi. This shows that there should be multiple square, uniformly planned grid enclosure areas in Erlitou, and there are roads outside the wall, reflecting a strict sense of zoning. It can even be said that this discovery subverts the previous imagination of the layout of Erlitou. This is of great significance to the exploration of the management mode and mechanism of the Erlitou site and the early national capital!
▲New layout of Erlitou
In 2020, the focus of Shang Dynasty archaeology is still in the Tuyi and local center settlements. Most of the ongoing sites have seen new discoveries. Some of the new findings are eye-popping, showing that there is still great academic potential after a long period of work. And some new discoveries due to infrastructure also highlight that there are still many shortcomings in our understanding of Shang Dynasty society.
The excavation of the Zhengzhou Mall can only be carried out in the process of urban construction. This has extremely high requirements for the person in charge of the work, not only to have sufficient academic preparation before cooperating with the capital construction archaeological work, but also to capture new academic discoveries at any time during the project development, condense their meaning, and make correct judgments. In 2020, during the archaeological work of the Chuangxin Street Primary School North Campus Project on Zhengzhou East Street, remains such as large ash pits in the Shang Dynasty, ash pits with multiple human bones, and more copper slag blocks were found. Although the new discovery is vague and less information in the online media, it is exciting enough, because the excavation area is north of Bauhinia Mountain, and not far north of the site is the famous chemical plant area, where new copper slag blocks have been found, suggesting that the area of the Bauhinia Mountain copper casting site may be larger than expected. The emergence of the rammed earth foundation site in the Errigang stage suggests that there are high-grade buildings in the distribution of the remains represented by H1 of the third chemical plant. In this way, when Zhengzhou Mall was built, rammed earth buildings appeared in the northwest and south of the inner city, which put forward the need to rethink the earliest layout of the mall, the distribution of people, handicraft production and other issues.
After the work of Yanshi Mall resumed in the spring, it continued to carry out supplementary excavations near the storage area found in the northern part of the small city in the winter of 2019, and found the remains of the suspected "north gate" of the small city and the outer moat of the north wall of the small city. The mouth of the trench outside the north wall of the small city has a large bottom and a small bottom, and the cross-section is roughly in the shape of a "V". During supplementary excavations, it was found that some of the rammed earth in the trough on the north side of the north wall of the small city exceeded the northern edge of the other troughs, and the excavators suspected that this was the wall of the north gate and the "pier platform" of the east and west protruding walls. The appearance of piers on the city wall, especially near the city gate, in the early Shang period, is not the first time it has been found, and similar discoveries have been made in the new Zhengwangjing Tower. However, since there is no doorway, no road soil and fork pit or gatepost related to it in the current news reports, whether it is the north gate of the town remains to be published. In the archaeological work of Yanshi Mall in 2020, the most interesting discovery was the east-west waterway found near the western wall of the central and southern parts of Xiaonan. The waterway is similar to the previously discovered water system, and is a combination of stone nullah and culvert, and the construction is exquisite, and the age seems to belong to the earlier phase of the second phase of Yanshi Mall. Whether the waterway is related to the big city of Yanshi Mall, or the auxiliary facilities of the small city, where it can extend to the east and west, and whether there is a door to the city wall - these will all pose new challenges to the restoration of the layout of Yanshi Mall.
The 2020 excavations at the Xiaoshuangqiao site, traditionally known as the "Tomb of Zhou Bo". The location was previously considered to be a Han tomb sealed soil or late remains, but the network report shows that the site turned out to be a Shang Dynasty rammed earth foundation, according to the public information reported by Henan Province in 2020, the relic has at least a high Shang Dynasty rammed earth, if the information is correct, the relic is likely to be the highest single rammed earth foundation site known to the Shang Dynasty, because the "Zhou Bo Tomb" is located in the core position of the Xiaoshuangqiao site, the nature of the relic will be directly related to the qualitative problem of the Xiaoshuangqiao site. Whatever the conclusion of the new discovery, it cannot help but make the Shang Dynasty archaeologists think.
▲Small double bridge rammed earth foundation site
Archaeological work at the Baizhai site in the western suburbs of Zhengzhou in 2020 revealed another city site from the Erligang period of the Shang Dynasty. The newly discovered city site covers an area of nearly 200,000 square meters, with walls and moats, gaps on all sides, and trampled pavements preserved in the gaps, which may be related to the remains of the city gates. In addition to the regular Errigang period pottery, a Shang Dynasty bronze jue was also found. The site of the Baizhai Shang Dynasty is another city site in western Zhengzhou after Master Gu, Wangjing Tower and Xiaoshuangqiao. In the west of Zhengzhou Mall, such a city site with overlapping ages and dense distribution appeared, and the arch guard was prominent. Compared with Yanshi Mall, there are more satellite cities or military castles around Zhengzhou Mall, which adds clues to the problem of the dispute between Zheng and Xibao. The discovery of the Baizhai City site undoubtedly provides new materials for the study of the Bodu of Zhengzhou Mall, the Xia process of the Shang Dynasty, and the relationship between Zhengzhou Mall and Yanshi Mall.
After seven consecutive years of investigation, drilling and excavation, Huanbei Mall has revealed the appearance of the "industrial park" in the Chinese business period. Excavations for many years have shown that the handicraft production area covers an area of not less than 80,000 square meters, and a large number of relics and relics related to copper casting, bone making and pottery have been found, which fully shows that the handicraft production in Huanbei Mall is concentrated and the scale of production is huge. In 2020, in addition to the dense aggregate pits, new clues of fired pottery and kiln walls were discovered, indicating that pottery workshops were close to copper casting workshops and bone workshops. The discovery and confirmation of a large number of craftsmen's tombs fully indicate that the workshop in the middle of the Shang Dynasty may have adopted the model of "living and burial". This discovery provides valuable information for the study of the organization and management of handicraft production, as well as the identity and status of handicraftsmen.
In the palace Zongmiao area south of the Huan River, the Anyang team of the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences discovered two island-like ruins in the northern part of the palace Zongmiao area in 2019 to continue exploration and test excavation. Key explorations were made to explore the newly discovered North and South Islands and the age of rammed earth foundation sites on them. In the shantytown renovation project of the second phase of Wenyuan (Shaojiapeng), the Anyang Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology discovered at least three new courtyard combinations from the late Shang era. The foundations found were mostly covered by a layer of burnt wall skin or broken by ash pits containing wall skin and large amounts of burnt earth, and it is clear that the houses were abandoned after being burned by fire. Judging from the pottery pieces unearthed from the ash pits and burnt earth pits that broke the foundation of the house, and the inscription features on the copper cover unearthed in H243, it cannot be ruled out that the age of the abandoned house has entered the Western Zhou Dynasty.
▲ The copper mound found in the Yin Wu shed reform area
▲ The copper inscription found in the Yin Wu shed reform area
In addition to the Yin Market, the biggest discoveries of late Shang archaeology in 2020 were the discovery of the Zhoujiazhuang Shang Tomb in Luancheng, the eastern foothills of the Taihang Mountains, and the Xichen site in Qufu, Dongfang.
Among the 22 tombs rescued and excavated by Zhoujiazhuang in Luancheng, 17 are Shang Dynasty tombs. Among them, two zigzag tombs are included. The larger tomb has a chamber 4.5 meters long from north to south and 4.2 meters wide from east to west, and the southern side of the tomb is stepped and has eight steps, but the tomb path is shorter, only 3.2 meters long and 1.1 meters wide. Another zigzag tomb has a chamber 4.2 meters long from north to south, 2.8 meters wide from east to west, and a burial path 5.3 meters long and 1.6 meters wide, divided into nine steps. Both tombs have a two-story platform, a chamber and a waist pit, and the dog is martyred, and the other is martyred. Due to serious theft, not many bronzes were obtained. The Zhoujiazhuang cemetery adds a new site to the group of late merchant ruins on the south bank of the Tuotuo River in central Hebei in the eastern foothills of the Taihang Mountains. The cemetery is also the highest-grade cemetery found in the Jinan region of central Hebei.
▲Aerial photograph of Zhoujiazhuang cemetery in Luancheng
▲ Copper guise was unearthed in the Zhoujiazhuang cemetery in Luancheng
In order to cooperate with the construction of the project, the Shandong Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology conducted archaeological excavations at the Xichen site in Qufu. The sacrificial area found in the excavation is located at the highest point in the central and western part of the site, separated from the site area by a boundary ditch, and distributed in a north-south direction. At present, 25 sacrificial pits have been discovered, and the types of martyrdom include horses, cattle, sheep, pigs, dogs and people, etc., with cattle and sheep being the most common. This is the largest number and largest concentration of Shang dynasty martyrdom relics found in Shandong. The excavation results show that the Xichen site continued to develop during the late Shang period, especially the third and fourth phases of Yinxu. Some scholars believe that the Xichen site has a large number of types and numbers, and a high-level sacrificial area has appeared, indicating that the site is of a higher rank or related to Shangxiang. However, the most prosperous remains of the third and fourth periods of Yin Wu are slightly different from the era of Nangeng Qian, and no related remains of the early Western Zhou Dynasty have been found, so it seems that more evidence is needed to deny the qualification as Shang Xiang. But in any case, the discovery provides an important clue for the study of the political situation in the eastern region during the Shang period, and is of great academic significance.
▲Qufu West Chen Site
In the Yangtze River Basin, there are also some new breakthroughs in the remains of the Xia Shang period, among which the new discovery of Panlong City and the excavation of Guo Yuanzui are closely related to each other and have considerable academic value.
From 2019 to 2020, the joint archaeological team conducted extensive excavations on the north slope of Yangjiawan in Panlong City, and found that some areas were neatly paved, reflecting signs of artificial repair. Among them, the well-preserved third platform is neatly built from stones into a nearly square platform, 2.4 meters long and 2 meters wide, and a circle of burnt earth can be seen around it. At the same time, archaeology has found that there are many deep ash pits around the base building, and the soil is filled with pure black soil, loess and laterite multi-layered superposition, reflecting the intensive activities of the ancients here. In addition, the stone foundation building echoes the high-grade buildings on the southern slope of Yangjiawan in position, showing that the paving remains have a high grade. How to understand that there is artificial rocking on the uphill slope behind the site, and there is burned earth? Is it a human settlement, a place of worship or a storage facility? At present, there is no consensus between the excavators and researchers. But in any case, this relic phenomenon is very special, and it is also rare in the Yangtze River Basin, which deserves close attention in the follow-up.
The Hubei Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology continued to excavate at the Guo Yuanzui site in Huangpi District in 2020. The site is actually next to the famous Lutaishan cemetery in the last century. The site has a long history, of which the discovery of copper remains cast in the Shang Dynasty is the most important. The bronze cast remains are independently distributed on an artificially piled terrace at the site, bordered by a river to the north, a large boundary ditch to the south, and a residential area to the east. A total of 2 casting pits, more than 20 residual furnace bottoms, 4 Taofan pits, 3 sand pits and 16 burning earth pits were found in the copper casting heritage area of the terrace. There are many ruins such as black ash surface and burnt soil surface formed by smelting and casting activities on the site, which basically cover the main links of melting and casting production activities. Among the relics found were pottery, copper and stone tools. In addition, a large number of pottery was found. The preliminary conclusions of metallurgical archaeology show that the copper production of Guo Yuanzui at least included the activities of refining crude copper, smelting alloys, and casting large copper objects including bangs and rods. Combined with carbon dating data and pottery, the absolute age of Guo Yuanzui's smelting and casting activities is concentrated between 1300 BC and 1200 BC, which is equivalent to the early stage from Huanbei to Yinxu. This time stage is crucial, and it coincides with the period of the decline of Panlong City. From the perspective of pottery combination, the pottery group at the Guo Yuanzui site has more local indigenous cultural colors than Panlong City. Guo Yuanzui's discovery provides new enlightenment for the central settlement changes in the Jianghan Plain area after Panlong City, and the interaction between the Central Plains and indigenous cultures.
▲ Guo Yuen Tsui ruins
▲The bottom of the residual furnace found by Guo Yuanzui and the surrounding slag, charcoal, and sand layers
▲Some pottery found at the site of Guo Yuen Tsui
In 2020, the most concerned about the archaeology of the Shang Dynasty is undoubtedly the six newly discovered artifact pits in Sanxingdui in Guanghan. Although the new discovery has not yet been excavated to the artifact layer, the magnificent excavation cabin with prominent scientific and technological content highlights the improvement of China's comprehensive national strength and the reform of the concept of archaeological work. The newly discovered artifact pits seem to be distributed in pairs. We will wait and see what kind of academic problems can be solved in the new artifact pit, and what kind of novel bronze and jade remains are buried!
▲The newly discovered Sanxingdui artifact pit
▲Sanxingdui excavation greenhouse
Author: Chang Huaiying Unit: Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences