A faience pottery bowl excavated from the bottom ditch of the Sanmenxia Temple
Faience pots excavated from the bottom ditch of the Sanmenxia Temple
Faience pottery at the site of Dahe Village
Yangshao culture faience pottery jar excavated from Linruyan Village, Henan
□ Wei Xingtao
In 1921, the excavation of the site of Yangshao Village in Henan Province named China's first archaeological culture, yangshao culture, and thus unveiled a magnificent prelude to archaeological exploration of China's prehistoric culture. After hundreds of years of hard work by several generations of archaeologists, the excavation and research of Yangshao culture has been greatly developed, so that we have a deeper understanding of the important position of Yangshao culture.
The Birth of Chinese Archaeology
From October 27 to December 1, 1921, archaeological excavations were carried out on the site of Yangshao Village. The host is the Swedish scholar Anderson, before the excavation, Anderson and others had investigated the site of Yangshao Village, but because it was difficult to have an in-depth understanding of the site, they decided to carry out a scientific excavation. The motivation for the excavations was to clarify the connotations and cultural characteristics of this Neolithic site, and was the first official archaeological excavation in China for the purpose of academic research.
The Yangshao village site was excavated by means of trenching, which is still the main method of archaeological excavation today. Yuan Fuli surveyed and mapped the terrain and site range map of Yangshao Village, the flat section map of local landforms, etc., and its accuracy is still of reference value. The excavation methods such as shovels, brushes, leather rulers, and tape measures are still the necessary tools for excavation.
Excavations at the Yangshao Village site have unearthed a large number of pottery, stone tools and other cultural relics, and for the first time, excavations have confirmed that there was a very developed Neolithic culture in Chinese history. Through the collation and research of the archaeological survey and excavation materials of Yangshao Village and related sites, Anderson pointed out that the Yangshao culture race should be the distant ancestor of the modern Han nationality or a people very close to the Han nationality, and clearly defined the Yangshao culture as "the ancient Chinese culture", which fundamentally negated the argument of the Chinese Stone Age without Stone Age and established the Chinese Stone Age, which is of great significance to Chinese history, anthropology, ethnology and cultural history.
Li Ji, an important figure in the early stage of Chinese archaeology, called the excavation of the Yangshao village site "an epoch-making scientific achievement, marking the beginning of field archaeology in China, one of the oldest countries in Eurasia", in his last important work of his life, "Anyang".
As a result, the mainstream opinion of chinese archaeology circles believes that the excavation of the Yangshao Village site marks the birth of Chinese field archaeology, prehistoric archaeology, scientific archaeology, modern archaeology or simply called Chinese archaeology.
Revealing the long-standing Chinese civilization
After a hundred years of continuous exploration, the important position of Yangshao culture has been preliminarily revealed, mainly in the following aspects:
The excavation of the Yangshao village site in 1921 marked the birth of Chinese archaeology. In 2011, the Ministry of Education upgraded archaeology from a second-level discipline to a first-level discipline, and Yangshao Village became the starting place of archaeology in the first-level discipline of history, and Yangshao culture began a glorious process of extending the historical axis, exploring the splendid ancient Chinese culture, and revealing the arduous task of the long-standing Chinese civilization mainly undertaken by archaeology.
Yangshao culture is the largest prehistoric culture in China, involving 10 provinces and regions such as Henan, Shaanxi, Shanxi, Hebei, Gansu, Qinghai, Hubei, Ningxia, Inner Mongolia and Sichuan. Moreover, the number of sites is large, as many as about 3,000 in Henan alone, and the Yangshao cultural sites in the Sanmenxia area of western Henan, especially in Lingbao City, are more densely distributed, which is rare in the country.
Yangshao culture is the longest-lasting archaeological culture in China, spanning about 7,000 to 4,700 years, up to more than 2,000 years. It represents a very important stage of development of Chinese Neolithic culture, known as the "Yangshao Era". For a long time, this culture has become a yardstick for understanding and locating other prehistoric cultural eras in the surrounding area.
Yangshao culture is the most far-reaching backbone culture in prehistoric China. Through a comprehensive and systematic analysis of China's prehistoric culture, Mr. Yan Wenming put forward the theory of "heavy petals" of pluralistic integration, pointing out that the foundation of multi-ethnic modern China with han as the main body is deeply rooted in the distant prehistoric period, which is the result of the long-term development of Chinese prehistoric culture with unity and diversity. In the prehistoric cultural pattern, "the most famous is the Central Plains Cultural Area", around the Great Central Plains area there are Ganqing Cultural Area, Shandong Cultural Area, Yanliao Cultural Area, Yangtze River Middle Reaches and Jiangsu and Zhejiang Cultural Area, and there are Fujian, Taiwan, Guangdong, Yunnan, Tibet, Heilongjiang, Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang and other cultural areas, "the entire Chinese Neolithic culture is like a huge heavy petal flower", the Central Plains is in the center of the flower, and the main body of the Central Plains Cultural Area is Yangshao Culture.
The middle Miaodigou period of Yangshao in the junction area of Yujin, Jin and Shaanxi is the most prosperous in the entire Yangshao culture, which was developed on the basis of the local early Yangshao and early culture, dating back to about 5800 years, and the phenomenon of social complexity appeared, which was the earliest civilized prehistoric culture in China. Yangshao culture is an important culture that lays the foundation for the excellent genes of Chinese civilization with the same region, consistent natural conditions and cultural traditions in the Same Region as the Longshan Culture and the Xia Shang Zhou Culture in the Central Plains.
Yangshao cultural faience pottery is developed, especially the faience pottery of the Miaodigou period as its typical representative, and the colorful pottery patterns with rich characteristics and soft and smooth lines spread widely in many surrounding cultures, reaching the peak of prehistoric art.
Yangshao culture is the Longest History of Academic Research in China's Neolithic Culture, and the development and progress of Chinese archaeology are mostly closely related to the excavation and research of Yangshao Culture.
The research results of Yangshao culture are extremely rich. Mr. Yan Wenming once pointed out that as the main culture of the Neolithic Era, Yangshao culture has the most investigation and excavation work, "often can enlighten or promote the research of the rest of the Neolithic culture", and has long been an experimental field, main stage and research achievement enrichment area for scientific and technological archaeology.
The Junction area of Jin-Shaanxi-Yu in the center of Yangshao Cultural Distribution Area and the Weihe River Basin are just at the northern foothills of the Qinling Mountains, and the Xiaoqinling Mountains in the eastern part of the Qinling Mountains are also known as the Huashan Mountains, and there are rich place names and ancient historical legends about the Yellow Emperor and the Yan Emperor. Yangshao culture, especially in the middle period, is closely related to the formation of the Yellow Emperor, the ancestor of Chinese humanities, and the "Hua" ethnic group of the Chinese nation.
In the past hundred years, Yangshao cultural research has made great achievements that have attracted worldwide attention, and has gone through a bumpy and difficult road of exploration, at the same time, we should also be soberly aware that due to the long time, wide distribution and rich connotation of Yangshao culture, it is a huge cultural system, and there are still many aspects of Yangshao cultural research that need to be deepened.
(The author is vice president and researcher of Henan Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology)