Editor's Note
On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the discovery of Yangshao culture and the birth of modern Chinese archaeology, General Secretary Xi Jinping sent a congratulatory letter pointing out that in the past 100 years, several generations of archaeologists have made unremitting efforts to make a series of major archaeological discoveries, showing the origin, development context, brilliant achievements and major contributions to world civilization of Chinese civilization.
Among the many proud archaeological achievements, the Liangzhu site is undoubtedly one that has attracted much attention. Since the discovery of the archeological sage Shi Xingen in 1936, Liangzhu archaeology has experienced the process of exploration and cognition of ancient culture, ancient city and ancient country. In 2019, the ruins of Liangzhu Ancient City were successfully declared a World Cultural Heritage. A history of the exploration of Liangzhu civilization can be called the epitome of the development of Chinese archaeology. On this commemorative year, Professor Liu Bin, a representative scholar of Liangzhu Archaeology, told his fate with this magical site.
Tie the knot
In August 1985, I walked out of school and became a member of the Prehistoric Archaeology Department of the Zhejiang Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology. At that time, on the edge of yuhang bottle kiln town, about 30 kilometers northwest of Hangzhou, there was a workstation belonging to our research office, the Wujiabu workstation. Soon after working, the seniors of the research office took me to visit the workstation and explained in detail the characteristics of archaeological cultures such as liangzhu culture, so that I could be familiar with the accumulation of liangzhu research in the shortest period of time.
In 1986, the Liangzhu site celebrated its 50th anniversary, and the Institute planned a commemorative academic seminar. In order to give a generous gift to the commemoration meeting, the Prehistoric Archaeology Department actively invested in the excavation of anti-mountain sites that were previously judged to be Liangzhu period cemeteries.
On May 31 of that year, it is worth going down in history, and we confirmed the first Liangzhu tomb, Tomb No. 12 of Anti-Mountain. At that time, the archaeology leader Wang Mingda asked me to be responsible for the cleaning of the tomb, and when the bamboo stick in my hand was inserted into the soil and touched the jade, the curiosity and excitement triggered by the hard feeling were still unforgettable. When the soil is turned over, no one knows what kind of artifact will be revealed underneath, which is the charm and joy of archaeological work.
Tomb No. 12 of The Anti-Mountain unearthed the largest yu chun and yu qi to date. When I lifted the 13-kilogram jade piece, the heaviness seemed to remain in my hand today. Excavations of Anti-Mountain continued until October, with a total of nine large tombs excavated. This is the first time that archaeologists in Zhejiang have excavated a high-level tomb of Liangzhu culture, so I have formed a deep relationship with the study of Liangzhu culture and the study of Liangzhu jade.
The 9 tombs in Anti-Mountain reflect multiple differences and strict grades in terms of arrangement location, tomb size, number and type of burial items, which is an unprecedented discovery, and Liangzhu culture tombs can finally be understood from the perspective of the integrity of the cemetery. The abundance of unearthed jade is particularly astonishing, allowing people to explore the mystery of the "ancestral shape" of jade patterns and jade combinations, and the study of Liangzhu jade has since matured.
The following year, the institute excavated the ruins of Yao Mountain in Yuhang'anxi, and exposed the remains of an altar on the top of Yao Mountain, unveiling the altar of Liangzhu culture, and the world's exploration of the world of the belief of the ancestors of Liangzhu began to have clues.
In the following 10 years, the archaeological work in the Liangzhu area has hardly been interrupted, and our understanding of the Liangzhu civilization has become more and more substantial and three-dimensional.
Cultural relics excavated from the Liangzhu site: (upper row from left) black pottery, jade qun, wooden sandals; (lower row from left) lacquerware, pottery pieces, jade Bi Weng Xinyang photo
Discover the ancient city
In 1987, the widening of the old 104 National Highway allowed us to discover that the Orchard Heights of Daguanshan were artificially built. In 1993, we found a large area of sediment rammed layers on the south side of Damojiao Mountain, so as to realize that this large earthen platform with an area of more than 300,000 square meters and a relative height of about 10 meters is the foundation site of a large palace built by Liangzhu culture. The scale of the site is so grand and so closely related to the surrounding ruins, everyone unanimously judged that this should be the palace area of the Liangzhu culture, and the nobles of anti-mountain and Yaoshan may have lived here.
If you find the ruins of the palace, there is reason to guess that Liangzhu is a city, can you find the walls of the ancient city?
A model of the Liangzhu Ancient City Palace displayed in the Liangzhu National Archaeological Site Park photographed by Huang Zongzhi
Fast forward to 2006, when we excavated on the west side of the highlands of the bottle kiln grape kiln site, we found a north-south trench of the Liangzhu culture period, about 45 meters wide and more than 1 meter deep, and there was a thick late Liangzhu accumulation in the trench. I tried to do a local dissection, and when I dug to a depth of about 3 meters from the surface, I found a layer of stones, scattered and uneven, and I judged that this should be the foundation of the embankment. At the end of the year, everyone wants to finish work early, and I didn't want to get entangled with these stones for too long at first, but they always drilled into my mind - so angular, obviously artificially mined stones, so where did they come from and why did they get here? I couldn't help but look closely at the mounds excavated in the trenches, and I could see that they had been built in one go in a short period of time. I've been told that this yellow clay is still used by locals today to build river embankments. So, will what is buried under the trench be a large embankment built by the ancestors of Liangzhu? The total length of the grapes is more than one kilometer, the width is about 100 meters, if it is a levee of the Liangzhu people, how grand the project is! Could it be the city wall on the west side of the Mojiao Mountain ruins?
In March 2007, we began an extended drilling survey based on the site of the grapeface. In the first half of the year, it was quickly confirmed that the continuous distribution of ruins from Fengshan in the south to The Qianxi River was about 60 meters wide and more than 1,000 meters long, with trenches distributed on both sides and inside, and the edges were generally stacked with Liangzhu culture, and the city walls were about to come out.
On June 9, 2007, a stone remain was finally drilled under a high ground, and the walls of Liangzhu Ancient City seemed to be beckoning to us. It took 3 months to find it, and it wasn't until September 28 that we finally drilled and confirmed the 800-meter-long wall from the Amaranth Creek Embankment to the Pheasant Mountain. The northern city walls seem to have been found. But is this really a city wall? We still face such questions. After all, the city wall can not be found when it reaches the Pheasant Mountain, and it is always parallel to the Amaranth Creek Levee, perhaps it is still a road embankment?
From October onwards, we explored almost the 1,000-meter-long boundary between north and south near The Pheasant Mountain, until October 17, when we finally drilled into a field of farmland and found the stones below. Take advantage of the chase! From there, we continued to drill north and south, stone, stone or stone... I rightly announced to the archaeologists: "This time it must be the city wall and not the Amaranth Levee!" "The eastern wall of Liangzhu Ancient City, seeing the light of day again. By 5 November, the distribution of the southern city wall was confirmed.
Surrounded by four walls, liangzhu ancient city soon became the "first city in China" written by the media, which shook the archaeological community and aroused great concern from all walks of life. On April 8, 2008, the archaeological discoveries of Liangzhu Ancient City were rated as the top ten new archaeological discoveries in China in 2007.
Liangzhu Ancient City peripheral water conservancy project - Tiger Ridge Dam Site Weng Xinyang photo
Protecting heritage
With the continuous deepening of Liangzhu archaeology, site protection has also received more and more attention from all walks of life.
In 1996, the State Council approved the Liangzhu Ruins (Group) as a national key cultural relics protection unit, delineating a 33.8 square kilometer protection area from Liangzhu Town in the east, to Bottle Kiln Town in the west, to the side of Tianmu Mountain in the north, and to Liangzhu Port in the south.
However, the contradiction between site protection and economic development has also emerged. Since the 1990s, the area around the Liangzhu site has become an important source of stone for construction, and there are more than 30 large and small stone mines, and Liangzhu is a beautiful place surrounded by mountains and rivers, which is shrouded in rumbling cannons and diffuse dust every day.
In 2000, the Zhejiang provincial government finally decided to close all stone mines around Liangzhu, and in December of the following year, the Regulations on the Protection and Management of Liangzhu Ruins in Hangzhou were passed, and the Liangzhu Ruins Protection had special regulations.
As new sites continue to be discovered, the overall scope of site conservation needs to be updated. In 2002, we suggested to the relevant departments that the scope of protection of the Liangzhu site should be extended southward to the foot of Daguan Mountain with Mojiao Mountain as the center, so as to completely include a natural geographical unit bounded by the north and south mountains, which is more in line with the reality of the ancestors choosing to live. Based on this proposal, the Liangzhu Site Conservation Master Plan was formulated, and the scope of the protected area was expanded to more than 40 square kilometers.
After the efforts of several generations of archaeologists, with the care and support of leaders at all levels and all sectors of society, the ruins of Liangzhu Ancient City were officially listed as world cultural heritage in 2019 and became a holy place that empirically proves the history of Chinese civilization for 5,000 years. After more than 30 years of friendship with Liangzhu, Liangzhu Archaeology has more fascinating puzzles waiting for us to patiently solve. (The author is director of the Museum of Art and Archaeology of Zhejiang University and dean of the Institute of Cultural Heritage of Zhejiang University)
Source: "Half Moon Talk", No. 20, 2021 Original title: "The Story of Me and Liangzhu Archaeology"
Author: Liu Bin | Editor: Fan Zhongxiu