On the afternoon of April 30, at the site of the project of renovating and supplementing land in the urban village of Beishenjiaqiao in the southern suburbs of Xi'an City, Hu Chunbo, head of the project excavation of the Shaanxi Archaeological Research Institute, announced that according to the preliminary exploration and follow-up excavations, more than a thousand ancient tombs were found in this area, and the core area of the excavation area was dominated by tombs in the middle and late Western Han Dynasty, and a certain number of small and medium-sized tombs of the Tang Dynasty and Ming and Qing tombs were distributed around it. In the excavation of one of the Han Dynasty tombs, M553, grain pockets stacked side by side with bundles were found, and samples extracted from them included hemp seeds, millet and millet, while the grain found in previous Han Dynasty tombs was stored in pottery warehouse utensils.
"This tomb has lasted for more than 2,000 years and can also preserve a large number of kinds of organic matter, which is rare in archaeological discoveries in the Guanzhong area over the years." Hu Chunbo said.
The excavated M553 tomb is located on the land to be built on the land to be built between the north section of Qujiang Denggao Road and The South Park Road in Xi'an. About 4 km to the south is the "Du Ling" where the Han Xuan Emperor was buried, and about 1.5 km to the northern boundary of Du Ling Yi. The M553 tomb is located in the west-central part of the entire excavation area, at a higher point throughout the terrace.
The tomb is in the shape of a "carpeau" in the shape of a brick chamber tomb with a long sloped tomb passage. The whole tomb is composed of a tomb passage, an ear chamber and a burial chamber, the length of the tomb is 16.8 meters; the length of the tomb chamber is 5.3 meters, the width is 4.1 meters, and the depth is 9.2 meters, which is the largest area among the Han Dynasty tombs in the current excavation area. The top of the burial chamber collapsed in the early years, the bottom remains of the wooden rafters, the preliminary identification of tree species is cypress, and the wood sampling and sealing and protection treatment have been completed.
The Hu Chunbo introduced that the terrain of the area where the tomb is located is high-pitched, which is an ideal cemetery for people at that time, equivalent to a modern cemetery. Combined with historical records and excavated data, it is preliminarily speculated that the Han Dynasty tombs in this area should be closely related to the "DuLing" in the Western Han Dynasty, and the owner of the tomb is likely to be a nobleman or official who lived in Dulingyi before his death. In the past, there were tombs of the Han and Tang dynasties excavated around the area, and not far to the northwest is the Lujiazhai Han Tomb Group, and the Western Han Mural Tomb of Xi'an Jiaotong University and the Han Dynasty Mural Tomb of Xi'an University of Technology are also located in the northwest direction of the tomb.
According to Hu Chunbo, the burial chamber of the tomb was seriously stolen, and dental cylindrical ornaments, jade eye barriers, jade pig grips and other utensils were cleared out of the soil filled in the holes. On the east and west walls at the north end of the cemetery, two well-preserved brick ear chambers were found, which luckily escaped theft. The ear chamber on the west side has not yet been opened, and the east ear chamber vault that is being cleaned uses wedge-shaped bricks, 1.1 meters wide, 3.5 meters deep and 1.2 meters high.
The innermost side of the ear chamber, found more than 20 pieces of pottery and original porcelain jar utensils, some of the utensils still have woven lids, of which the painted pottery neck can be seen in the Zhushu chronological text, the whole above the utensils covered with well-preserved reed mats; the middle of the ear chamber side by side stacked cylindrical grain pockets, the samples currently extracted by experts identified as hemp seeds, millet, millet three kinds, the upper part of the pocket is placed in the straw mat wrapping, its outer red ribbon fabric bundled in the shape of "feng"; the outermost side of the ear chamber is a multi-row open round pocket, the bag mouth is folded, Some brown residues can be seen on the inside, and the properties need to be further detected and analyzed.
For the ear chamber on the west side, the archaeological team is ready to adopt the technical means of environmental monitoring, on-site cultural relics protection and three-dimensional data collection in parallel, and extract cultural relics information from multiple angles and in all directions.
According to another introduction, this area where archaeological excavations are underway is one of the key projects of the Shaanxi Archaeological Research Institute in cooperation with the infrastructure construction of Xi'an City this year, and has been excavated since August 2020.
Wen: Wen Wei Po reporter in Shaanxi Han Hong
Photo: Shaanxi Archaeological Research Institute
Editor: Zhao Zhengnan