Why dig a hole?

How is the scene?

These are the Sanxingdui mysteries that archaeologists most want to crack

  Our reporter Wang Di

  Since Chinese archaeologists discovered two pits in Guanghan, Sichuan in 1986, and unearthed thousands of precious cultural relics with a history of about 3000 years, the Sanxingdui site has always been a mysterious existence.

  The exaggerated and unique bronzes and golden masks, coupled with the fact that no words and ambiguous legends have been found on the site so far, have made people suspicious.

  As the largest and best-preserved pre-Qin site in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River in China, the Sanxingdui site is an important material evidence for studying the background of the pluralistic integration of Chinese civilization and helps to reveal the origin and formation process of Chinese civilization.

  This year, China launched the largest archaeological excavation in the history of the Sanxingdui site. The six newly discovered pits are expected to further unveil this mysterious civilization.

  What are the unsolved mysteries that archaeologists are most concerned about?

What clues are expected from the ongoing archaeological excavations?

To this end, the reporter recently interviewed the academic consultant of the Sanxingdui "sacrifice pit" excavation, Professor Sun Hua of the School of Archaeology, Peking University, and Xu Jie, director of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, and academician of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and asked them to share the mysteries and mysteries they most want to solve. The "wish list" of this excavation.

Why do Sanxingdui people dig pits?

  "According to the cultural relics unearthed in the pit and the phenomenon of the relics found and the fact that no burial implements or bones were found in the pit, we named it the "sacrifice pit"." On July 31, 1986, he presided over the Sanxingdui Site No. 1 and No. 2 "Sacrifice Sacrifice". Chen Xiandan, an archaeologist who excavated the pit, wrote in his excavation diary.

Since then, "sacrifice pit" has become a term frequently mentioned in the research of Sanxingdui.

  However, archaeologists still have no consensus on why the owner of Sanxingdui dug the pit.

  The orderly burial of the artifacts reminds people of sacrifices.

"The bottom is the small piece, the middle is the bronze container and the mask, and the top is the ivory. It is not like taking out garbage, but an intentional act." Xu Jie also mentioned that people found that the Sanxingdui cultural relics had been attacked before being buried. Fighting and incineration, but it can be proved that the incineration was not carried out in the pit.

  The evidence from the six newly discovered artifact pits seems to point in other directions.

  "Now it looks less and less like a sacrifice. How can a sacrifice put a statue in and break it? How can a sacrifice bury so many things? And if it is a sacrifice, how can the house be burned, even the construction waste? Buried in?" Sun Hua told Xinhua News Agency that since sacrifices were a regular activity, the ancients generally did not bury too many things. Slaughtering a sheep or a pig is already a big sacrifice.

But the pits in Sanxingdui are very different. The precious gold objects, ivory, and jade are buried in a large number of brains.

  "If the Sanxingdui artifact pit is a sacrificial pit, Sanxingdui people will consume the bronze resources of the entire ethnic group and the country this time, so that they will no longer be able to use bronze artifacts for sacrificial activities in the future, and this possibility is very high. It's hard to be convincing." Sun Hua wrote in a previously published paper.

  Sun Hua expects that this excavation will bring key clues on this issue, mainly evidence that can be used to determine the age of the pit.

He said that if several pits belong to the same era, then they are the product of major events, such as moving the capital and turmoil; otherwise, they will support the sacrificial theory, because sacrificial worship is a continuous and repetitive process.

What does "live" look like?

  The mystery Xu Jie wanted to solve most was how the Sanxingdui bronze statue was assembled and placed.

  "Archaeological work is like solving a case. What is the most important thing for solving a case? Restoring the original appearance of the scene is the most important." He said that if the original spatial relationship of the bronzes can be restored, it will not only bring the enjoyment of beauty, but also help obtain the religion of the Sanxingdui people. And other information.

  The two archaeologists are expecting that the archaeological excavation will bring more organic objects, and they believe that this is an important step in restoring the full picture of Sanxingdui's artistic image.

  "What I pay special attention to is organic matter." Xu Jie said that there is a very important woodcarving art tradition in the Sanxingdui statues, but the wood itself is easy to decay.

There is evidence that the head of Sanxingdui should have been installed on a wooden body.

  For example, the bronze head of a man cannot be placed directly on a flat surface, and the shape of the acute-angled neck on the front and back sides is exactly the same as the collar opening of the whole body, which proves that they were all installed on the body of other materials, most likely it is Wooden body.

In addition, in Xu Jie's view, the "zong eye mask" with exaggerated eyes protruding is likely to be originally used as a component and placed on a tall building.

  Perhaps one of the great regrets of the excavation of Pit No. 1 and Pit No. 2 in 1986 was the failure to identify and preserve the organic cultural relics in time.

  "For example, we discovered the golden rod at the time, but the rod body was still there? We didn't pay attention at that time. If we could carefully excavate at that time, we might be able to find a little bit of debris." Sun Hua said that even a small amount of debris can provide valuable Information, such as the material of the wooden part of the golden rod.

  Xu Jie said that the current excavation work has greatly enriched the materials for the study of the Sanxingdui civilization, adding types that were not available before, such as wood and textiles.

  "Archaeologists should attach importance to any material remains, because it carries a lot of information behind it. The purpose of archaeology is to tell the story of the people behind the artifacts. Anything that can provide any clues is useful." He said.

Is it ancient Shu Kingdom or another civilization?

  The Sanxingdui site allowed people to see a civilization that had disappeared for thousands of years, and also changed people's understanding of the ancient Sichuan Basin being closed and backward.

  Many people believe that the Sanxingdui site is the remains of the ancient Shu Kingdom.

They pointed out that the fish, birds and exaggerated eyes on the Sanxingdui cultural relics confirmed the description of several ancient Shu kings in the legend.

  However, some scholars are cautious about this suggestion.

  "The eagerness to verify ancient historical records and legends is methodologically dangerous." Xu Jie pointed out that the reliability of later records itself is questionable.

Those records were not documents from the civilization period of Sanxingdui, but were written long after Sanxingdui.

The eagerness to match the records of later generations with archaeological discoveries is a circular argument, which is not academically rigorous enough.

  Xu Jie also said that the ancient Shu state of Sanxingdui civilization can be considered as a hypothesis, but as a conclusion, it limits the scope of reconstructing the original appearance of Sanxingdui civilization.

  "Before the discovery of the two artifact pits in 1986, no one could imagine the appearance of Sanxingdui civilization, especially the incredible bronze statues. Then why didn't other aspects of Sanxingdui civilization exceed the scope of our current knowledge?" Xu Jie said. "More important than solving puzzles is to ask really deep questions."

  In fact, almost all of the history of the Kingdom of Shu before the Warring States Period comes from "The History of Huayang", which is a work of the Sanxingdui site more than 1,000 years later in the Eastern Jin Dynasty.

No words have been found at the Sanxingdui site itself.

  Sun Hua believes that Sanxingdui is related to the ancient Shu Kingdom.

"Sanxingdui culture and the later Bashu culture have some things in common. They are different stages of ancient Shu, but more information is needed to prove it."

  Sun Hua said that if image materials, such as portraits and gods, can more echo the legends of the ancient Shu kingdom, they may be used to prove the relationship between Sanxingdui and the ancient Shu kingdom.

  Regardless of the conclusion, Sun Hua emphasized that Sanxingdui provided valuable information for understanding the southwestern region during the Shang and Zhou dynasties.

"There are only a few words and sentences in the literature. The ancient Shu here is just a symbol. The information we have obtained through archaeology is equivalent to the social and national conditions in the Chengdu Plain in the late Shang Dynasty. Far more than the literature."