The archaeological excavation of the Jingtou Mountain site in Yuyao, Zhejiang Province, achieved breakthrough results. This prehistoric Beiqiu site predates Hemudu Culture 1000 years-
A Jingtou Mountain spans eight thousand years
How did the ancestors of the southeast coast live 8000 years ago? How did the Ningshao Plain exist before the Hemudu culture? Today, people have found clues 8 meters deep underground in the southern foot of Jingtou Mountain in Yuyao, Ningbo.
On May 30, a press conference on the archaeological achievements of the Jingtou Mountain site was held in Yuyao, Ningbo. It was announced at the meeting that the first-stage archaeological excavation of the Jingtou Mountain site has achieved a breakthrough harvest, which not only advanced the human history of Ningbo area on the basis of Hemudu culture for more than 1,000 years, but also adapted the ocean for the early humans and developed the marine business model. Research and research on the evolution of the natural environment provide an important basis and are of great academic value to the study of prehistoric culture in China's coastal areas.
The Jingtou Mountain site is located in Sanqi Town, Yuyao. After carbon 14 dating, it is determined to be more than 8,000 years ago. It is by far the deepest buried and the oldest coastal shell mound site in the southeastern coastal area of China. It is also the first shell mound site in Zhejiang. . The archaeological site has sorted out more than 10 living remains, hundreds of relics that can be registered, massive shell remains, and other animal and plant remains such as antlers and rice.
A Jingtou Mountain spans 8000 years of history.
Vivid scenes of coastal ancestor fishing, hunting and farming
The site to be built is located at the southern foot of Jingtou Mountain in Yuyao, where the site of Jingtou Mountain is buried. At the end of 2013, during the civil construction survey, workers found marine shells, animal bones and pottery pieces, and bone remnants in the drilling mud core.
Professionals from the Zhejiang Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology and the Hemudu Site Museum began exploration here. In the end, the site with a depth of 5 to 10 meters, 80 to 100 meters long from north to south, 60 to 80 meters wide from east to west, and a total area of 8,000 square meters was unveiled.
"After confirmation, the Jingtou Mountain site is known as the site with the largest buried depth in the coastal area of China, breaking through the academic circles' previous understanding of the distribution of the prehistoric sites in the southeastern coastal area and its laws. The accumulation of marine shells and the pottery The characteristics show that this is the only prehistoric Beiqiu site discovered so far in Zhejiang Province." Liu Bin, director of the Zhejiang Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, introduced.
In September 2019, the Zhejiang Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, together with the Ningbo Municipal Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology and the Hemudu Site Museum, jointly carried out the first phase of 800 square meters of archaeological excavation at the Jingtou Mountain site.
So far, more than 10 living remains have been found in the Jingtou Mountain site, including ash pits, food storage pits, earthen mounds, earthen pits, utensil processing and food processing points, which can be more clearly recovered from the coastal areas of southeast China more than 8,000 years ago. The characteristics of the people's production, living conditions and natural environment.
In the temporary warehouse built near the site, archaeologists classified the unearthed remains. Among the animal remains, there are sika deer antlers, dog skulls, and pig mandible horns. The most striking is the remains of hundreds of baskets of various shells, including cockles, snails, oysters, razor clams, clams, oysters, etc. This shows that the ancestors of Ningbo 8000 years ago have begun to enjoy a rich seafood meal.
The remains of early rice cultivation were also found in the site. From the unearthed small amount of carbonized rice, rice hulls, and rice cobs, it can be speculated that the ancestors at that time had already begun to plant and eat rice.
This group of ancestors not only eat, but also know how to turn waste into treasure. They polished some leftover shells into shells and used them as living utensils and production tools. In addition to a large number of shells, there are a small amount of pottery, stone, wood and bone prostheses in the unearthed remains. Archaeologists have discovered that some tools have some advancement in the manufacturing process, such as a kitchen knife-shaped wooden handle for installing stone axe, and a "7"-shaped wooden handle for installing stone adze.
Various relics indicate that the way of life of the ancestors of Jingtou Mountain was mainly based on marine fishing, which also included collection, hunting and early rice farming.
Repositioning the spatiotemporal coordinates of Ningbo's humanistic origin
According to Peking University Carbon 14 Laboratory and other scientific research institutions at home and abroad, the age of the Jingtou Mountain site was finally confirmed between 7800 and 8300 years ago, which was earlier than 1000 years of Hemudu Culture.
The Hemudu culture has an extremely important position in the Yangtze River Basin and even the entire South China region. It is the origin of the wetland rice farming civilization in the south of China, and the source of the compound life model of wetland rice farming and traditional gathering and hunting. In 1973, the Hemudu site was first discovered in Hemudu Town, Yuyao, which established a new historical concept of the Yangtze River Basin and the Yellow River Basin as the cradle of Chinese civilization. Later, in the core area of Hemudu culture, important ruins such as Mulu Mountain and Tianluo Mountain were excavated successively.
"The discovery and excavation of the Jingtou Mountain site is a major breakthrough in the prehistoric archeology of the Ningshao Plain, and it has also advanced the history of the humanities in Ningbo area on the basis of Hemudu culture for more than 1,000 years." Peking University Zhao Hui, a professor at the School of Archaeology and Cultural Sciences, said.
Not only that, at the expert demonstration meeting on the archaeological achievements of the Jingtou Mountain site, Zhao Hui and other participating experts agreed that the site is also a person of environmental changes since the Holocene, the time and process of transgression, and human cultural interactions in the Neolithic era of China’s coastal areas. Researches such as ground relations provide a new perspective and rare cases, and establish precise space-time coordinates for the coastal environment and sea level rise during the early and middle Holocene.
"This site is the most direct evidence of sea level height 8,000 years ago. Archaeology is more direct than marine environmental research and geological drilling research. Through archaeological excavations, we can know when seawater reaches which level." Liu Bin said, although now The site is more than 30 kilometers away from the sea, but evidence shows that there are traces of seawater here 8000 years ago. "The woods unearthed from the Jingtou Mountain site are very well preserved, and this organic matter can only be perfectly preserved in sites that are saturated with water. "
It is worth mentioning that due to the deep burial and special geology of the Jingtou Mountain site, this excavation has adopted more advanced archaeological techniques to ensure the safety of people and cultural relics. Before excavation, the staff pre-built the excavation foundation pit enclosed by steel structure in the site. The foundation pit is 50 meters long from east to west and 15 meters wide from north to south. The internal layout is 750 square meters according to the specifications of 5×10 square meters. Silt above 6 meters shall be removed by mechanical excavation during foundation pit construction. Silt below 6 meters and cultural accumulation shall be dug down and cleaned layer by layer according to field operation regulations.
Liu Bin said that the successful use of the steel structure to protect the foundation pit is an active and effective exploration of the archaeological excavation of deep buried sites, and it has the first significance in the archaeology of prehistoric sites in coastal areas.
Provide important materials for exploring the source of Hemudu culture
The site of Jingtou Mountain excavated this time is only 1.5 kilometers away from Tianluoshan site, the core area of Hemudu culture.
The team of archaeologists believes that the cultural features of the two adjacent sites have similarities and obvious differences. For example, the pottery unearthed from Jingtou Mountain mainly consists of kettles, pots, and bottoms. This is similar to the basic decoration of Hemudu culture pottery and the details of small ears, cockscomb ear wrenches and other details, but the difference is even greater. The decoration of Jingtoushan pottery is generally rope pattern, checkered pattern, with a certain amount of red color (clothing) and black clothing. The production process is made of mud strips stacked and beaten, and the slow wheel production marks are not obvious, with distinctive Own cultural characteristics.
"The cultural relics of the Jingtou Mountain site show the living conditions and production skills of the ancestors living in Yuyao area before 1000 years of Hemudu culture. It can be said that they are the'ancestors' of the Hemudu people." Researcher Sun Guoping believes that the Hemudu site has always been the most real and comprehensive window reflecting the interaction between humans and the natural environment in China's southeastern coastal areas six to seven thousand years ago. Today, the Jingtou Mountain site has opened an earlier window for people.
The cultural pedigree of southeast Zhejiang before Hemudu has not been understood because of limited clues. The excavation of the Jingtou Mountain site fills this cultural gap. Liu Bin said: "We have a new understanding of the origin of Hemudu culture and the distribution of sites earlier than Hemudu culture, and provide us with a new research direction."
(Reporter Zeng Yi correspondent Gan Shanshan)