Source: People's Daily - People's Daily
In 1973, the ruins of Yuyao Hemudu in Zhejiang Province were discovered by accident, opening a window back to the picture of life in the ancestral clan villages on the southeast coast about 7,000 years ago. Since then, the ancient history of the Yangtze River Basin and even the entire southern Region of China is no longer unknown to future generations. But this also brings people a question that has been difficult to crack for many years: where is the origin and source of the Hemudu culture, which has always been the source of ancient culture in Ningbo?
Scholars have four views on this issue: directly from the late Shangshan culture in the interior of Zhejiang; from the cross-lake bridge culture; from the current coastal continental shelf area; and from the direct inheritance of the local area.
So, is it possible for archaeology at this stage to find an earlier cultural source in the coastal area of Ningbo on the basis of the Hemudu culture? The discovery of the Jingtou Mountain site has, in a sense, solved this question.
With the support of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, the Zhejiang Provincial Bureau of Cultural Heritage and Yuyao City, the archaeological excavations at the Jingtou Mountain site have been greatly promoted and implemented. At the beginning of 2017, the Zhejiang Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology decided to build a steel structure enclosure foundation pit before the implementation of formal archaeological excavations based on multi-party understanding, investigation and demonstration. In May 2018, the construction of the foundation pit began, and finally in August 2019, this key excavation foundation condition was achieved, and the foundation pit with a total area of 750 square meters was completed. As a site in the marine sedimentary environment of large burial depth in the coastal area of China, the Jingtoushan site pioneered the use of excavation methods and technical routes of steel structure to protect the excavation area before excavation, which also accumulated valuable experience for future archaeological work in similar environments.
Since mid-September 2019, the Zhejiang Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, together with the Ningbo Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology and the Hemudu Site Museum, have officially launched the first archaeological excavations. In accordance with the specifications of 5×10 square meters, the silt of more than 6 meters has been excavated mechanically in the construction of the foundation pit, and the silt and cultural accumulation below 6 meters are excavated one by one in accordance with the field operation procedures. In the first two months of excavation, the marine silt accumulation below 6 meters above the surface and above the cultural layer was mainly excavated, because the silt was very sticky and soft, coupled with the limited speed of the conveyor belt to send soil outward, and there were often some soil delivery failures, and the workload and excavation cycle of the soil transporting out were much more time-consuming than originally expected.
By the end of November 2019, we revealed the surface of nearly 300 square meters of cultural layers within the 750-square-meter excavation, showing the appearance of a typical shell mound site characterized by a large number of marine shells discarded after artificial consumption. Due to the large water content and dense shells in the accumulation, after trying, it is impossible to directly excavate with large tools such as shovels, and can only be excavated after loosening iron rakes or pickaxes.
By the end of May 2020, we have completed most of the excavation work of the main exploration parties in the foundation pit, and unearthed more than 30 living relics of the settlement such as open fire pits, food storage and treatment pits, and living utensils processing and production areas, of which there are more than 20 food storage and treatment pits, and a small number of them also preserve the shelled wild fruits such as hemp oak fruits and acorns in the pit. Hundreds of relics of various kinds have also been unearthed in the pit, as well as a huge amount of shell remains and other animal and plant remains discarded after eating.
The site of Jingtou Mountain has greatly advanced the historical and cultural source of Yuyao and even Ningbo on the basis of the Hemudu culture to between 7800 and 8300 years ago. In this way, the "ceiling" of the history and culture of Ningbo has finally been "broken" more than 40 years after the advent of the Hemudu site. More importantly, the source of Ningbo's history and culture was originally the Hemudu culture, which used rice farming as the main way of life, and now this record has been completely rewritten.
From the perspective of the depth of the cultural layer buried 6-10 meters from the current surface, the JingtouShan site is the only prehistoric shell hill site found in Zhejiang and the entire Yangtze River Delta region so far, and it is also the earliest and deepest buried prehistoric shell hill site discovered in China's coastal areas so far, which breaks through the understanding of the distribution law of the original prehistoric sites in the coastal areas, and places it in the broad background of China's coastal history, determining that Yuyao, Ningbo and even the coastal areas of Zhejiang are the main source areas of China's marine culture. Among them, the symbiosis between a small number of rice crop agricultural remains and marine economic relics shows that China's coastal areas have moved from the early marine fishing and hunting economy to the historical development path dominated by agricultural economy, which has had a profound impact on the long-term development of early Chinese civilization represented by Liangzhu civilization in the late Neolithic period in the Yangtze River Delta region.
(The author is a researcher at the Zhejiang Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, and wang Jue, a reporter of this newspaper, interviewed and sorted out)
People's Daily ( 07/10/2021)