A relay that spans a hundred years
Three generations of archaeologists tell the story of Sanxingdui excavation
The light of "Samsung" shines in the southwestern part of the Chinese civilization.
Major archaeological discoveries of 6 new sacrificial pits at the Sanxingdui site in Guanghan, Sichuan Province are eye-catching.
In the archaeological shed in the sacrificial area of the Sanxingdui site, about 2 kilometers away from the museum, many new artifacts were unearthed, which surprises archaeologists constantly.
"Sleeping for three thousand years, I woke up and shocked the world." In 1986, the sacrificial pits No. 1 and No. 2 of the Sanxingdui site shocked the world, and now the six new pits have shocked the world again.
In fact, the "coming out" of Sanxingdui dates back to nearly a hundred years ago; its excavation and protection are a relay race that has condensed the painstaking efforts of generations of archaeologists.
Recently, the reporter interviewed Chen De'an, the former stationmaster of the Sanxingdui Site Workstation of the Sichuan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, Lei Yu, the current stationmaster, Ran Honglin, the director of the Sanxingdui Archaeological Institute, and young archaeologists at the excavation site at the sacrificial area of the Sanxingdui site in Guanghan, Sichuan. Three generations of archaeologists tell the story of Sanxingdui.
1 Sanxingdui was born in the spring of 1929, showing traces of the exchanges between ancient Shu and the Central Plains civilization
Chen Dean, 68 years old this year, has been engaged in Sanxingdui archaeology for 26 years. He was the first stationmaster of the Sanxingdui site and the main excavator of Sanxingdui No. 1 and No. 2 sacrificial pits in 1986.
The reporter hasn't asked any questions yet, and Chen De'an first raised the topic: "I will tell you about the ins and outs of Sanxingdui archaeology first, and if I figure out the whole process, many questions will be easy to talk about."
How was Sanxingdui discovered?
"There are three kinds of statements about the time of discovery, namely, 1927, 1929, and 1931. I think Yan's statement of 1929 is more accurate."
The "Yan family" mentioned by Chen De'an is the father and son of Yan Daocheng and Yan Qingbao, villagers of Yueliangwan, Zhenwu Village, Guanghan, Sichuan.
In the spring of 1929, they discovered more than 400 jade tools at the bottom of the ditch when they were digging a pond in their field.
Subsequently, these "Guanghan jade wares" that flowed into the market became famous for a while.
The Sanxingdui civilization was "born out of nowhere."
In March 1934, the Antiquities Museum of West China Union University (the predecessor of Sichuan University Museum) launched the first scientific excavation in Sanxingdui. The then curator Ge Weihan was the first excavator. He organized an archaeological team to find the original pit where the jade was found in the Yan’s courtyard. And put forward the concept of "Guanghan Culture".
Interestingly, there was a discussion about the history of Sanxingdui civilization at that time.
Guo Moruo believes that the jade bi and jade zhang found in Guanghan are similar to those found in North China and Central China, which proves that the ancient Shu had cultural contact with the Central Plains.
After the outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War, the Sanxingdui excavation was temporarily shelved, and new actions were taken after the founding of New China.
In September 1963, the Sichuan Provincial Cultural Administration and the Archaeology Teaching and Research Section of the History Department of Sichuan University jointly formed an archaeological team, under the guidance of archaeologist Feng Hanji, to conduct the first excavation of the Moon Bay site after the founding of New China.
The excavation work lasted from September 23 to December 3, and the excavation area was 150 square meters.
Feng Hanji digs with the students. The only tools are flat-head shovel and pointed shovel. The former scrapes the soil layer and the latter picks up the soil.
Regrettably, Feng Hanji fell ill soon after the excavation. Later, his health remained ill, and the results could not be sorted out.
It was not until 30 years later that Ma Jixian, who participated in the excavation work that year, wrote the "Excavations of the Guanghan Moon Bay Site".
"The real breakthrough will have to wait until the 1980s," Chen Dean said.
2 Restarted excavations in Sanxingdui in 1980
Ran Honglin is 34 years old this year and is the executive leader of the archaeological excavation team at the Sanxingdui site.
Before the interview, he had just emerged from the archaeological excavation cabin, and he was still wearing protective clothing.
In 2013, Ran Honglin entered the Sanxingdui site workstation after graduating from the School of Archaeology, Arts and Sciences, Peking University.
This is his ideal place, "I am from Chongqing, and my major is Xia, Shang and Zhou archaeology, and Sanxingdui is one of the most important sites in the Bashu culture in the pre-Qin period. I came to Sanxingdui because of the right time and place."
At Peking University, Ran Honglin participated in the oral history interviews and collation of old archaeology alumni, which inspired him.
"Since the discovery of the Sanxingdui site, more than 90 years have passed and many people and things have been experienced, but many things cannot be written in excavation briefs and research articles, and can only be left in memory." Ran Honglin said that many archaeologists are already old. Doing nothing will leave forever regrets.
Beginning in 2019, Ran Honglin began to collect the oral history of Sanxingdui archaeology.
He first visited Mr. Ao Tianzhao.
In the 1950s, Ao Tianzhao entered the Guanghan Cultural Center to work. Since then, he has been present at every archaeological excavation in Sanxingdui.
In 1973, he studied archaeology in the archaeology class of the Yangtze River Basin in Hubei, including archaeological drawing and archaeological survey.
During the training, Yan Wenming, a professor at the School of Archaeology, Arts and Sciences of Peking University, told him, "Lao Ao, you must pay attention to Sanxingdui when you go back. That site is very important."
In the late 1970s, almost all major towns and villages in Guanghan set up brick and tile factories, and the Zhongxing Commune where Sanxingdui was located also borrowed soil and burned bricks there.
After returning, Ao Tianzhao ran to the Sanxingdui site and was very anxious to see a lot of broken pottery shards in the soil excavated by the brick and tile factory.
Later, he reported to the Sichuan Provincial Museum's archaeological team and promoted the excavation and protection of Sanxingdui.
In the spring of 1980.
Leaded by Wang Youpeng, who participated in the 1963 Moon Bay excavation, the first excavation of the Sanxingdui site started after the reform and opening up.
After that, the archaeological work of the Sanxingdui site never stopped.
In the summer of the same year, Chen Dean, who had just graduated from the Department of Archaeology of Sichuan University, came to the Sanxingdui excavation site. From then on until 2005, he was in Sanxingdui. He experienced 15 archaeological excavations after the reform and opening up, and he hosted several large-scale excavations.
The major archaeological discovery that truly made Sanxingdui "woke up the world" was in 1986.
3 In 1986, the two pits “woke up and shocked the world”, laying an important position for the Sanxingdui site
For field archaeology, weather is an important variable.
The "body bones" of cultural relics sleeping underground for hundreds of thousands of years are fragile and cannot withstand rain, snow and wind.
"I'm not afraid now. There is an archaeological greenhouse, and four archaeological excavation cabins with constant temperature and humidity have been built in the greenhouse." Chen De'an said.
In the summer of 1986, there were no archaeological sheds, only fence sheds.
On the afternoon of July 18, Chen De'an and another person in charge of the excavation of sacrifice pits No. 1 and No. 2 Chen Xiandan were collating information. The brick factory workers rode into the work station on bicycles and said, "Here is the jade knife digging out the bricks."
They quickly put down their work and hurried to the exit point.
The splicing found that the "knives" mentioned by the workers were jade artifacts such as Yu Ge and Yu Zhang, and the land was found in Pit No. 1, which became famous in the world. On August 16, it was about 30 meters northwest of Pit No. 1 in Sanxingdui, also because of the brick factory. The workers collected soil, and the archaeological team discovered Pit 2 again.
Field archaeology is a "physical work."
Chen Dean remembered that the weather was boring, thunder was frequent, and the rain never came, so he was worried every day.
Once it rains, the water in the fields will turn over and destroy the cultural relics. However, it is hard to control because of the dry and hard soil without rain.
"The soil was slightly wet at night, and we kept spinning all night. During the critical period of fetching cultural relics, we did not close our eyes for almost three days and three nights, and we rushed to clean up the sacrificial pit before the thunderstorm."
"The filling is very hard, and the cleaning process with a hand shovel is slow. Everyone has blisters. The excavation work at night is even harder. The two 200-watt bulbs attracted countless mosquitoes." Chen Xiandan recalled.
More than 1,700 pieces of gold, jade, bronze, and pottery were unearthed in Pit No. 1 and No. 2, as well as a large number of bone (tooth) carver fragments, about 4,600 pieces of tiger teeth and sea shells.
The national treasure-level cultural relics displayed in the Sanxingdui Museum, such as the bronze giant man, the bronze sacred tree, the golden mask, and the golden rod, are basically from these two pits, which also established the Sanxingdui site's important position in the history of Chinese civilization and world civilization. .
4 34 years of persistent excavation, Sanxingdui "shocks the world again"
Thunderstorm walked quickly across the wooden plank road beside the archeological excavation cabin. After sitting down, he put down his backpack and the SLR camera hung around his neck.
Since the first photo taken with Sanxingdui more than ten years ago, Leiyu has taken countless pictures of Sanxingdui.
"The unearthed artifacts are photographed by professional photographers. I mainly photograph archeologists and record their working status."
In 1984, after graduating from Leiyu University, he went to Sanxingdui.
He was not able to participate in the excavation in 1986 because of illness, which annoyed him for a long time.
"To be honest, I never thought that there would be Pit 3 before. Most archaeologists may not encounter a large-scale excavation in their lives. I have good luck."
Someone once asked why the two excavations were so long apart?
"Archaeological excavations at the Sanxingdui site have been going on, but the excavations are not the sacrificial pit, but the city walls, palaces and other functional areas within the site." Chen Xiandan explained.
Archeology is full of chance, and it is common to return to no avail, but the discovery of sacrificial pits No. 3 to No. 8 has its inevitability.
In August 2019, the Sichuan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology compiled the "Three-year Action Plan for Archaeological Work at Sanxingdui Site (2019-2022)", taking settlement archeology and social archaeology as the main work and research directions in the next few years, directly promoting the excavation work Unfold.
"Everyone carried out exploration with this research purpose, and the discovery of Pit 3 is not all accidental." Ran Honglin said.
From October 22, 2019 to August 8, 2020, the Sichuan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology and the Guanghan Sanxingdui Museum carried out systematic and comprehensive archaeological exploration and excavation around the sacrifice pits 1 and 2, and basically figured out the scope of the sacrifice area , As well as the chronological sequence and spatial pattern of various relics.
During this period, six new pits were found one after another. They were located within 30 meters of the No. 1 and No. 2 pits, ranging in size from 3.5 square meters to 20 square meters.
On November 26, 2019, in the southeastern part of the ditch next to the west side of the No. 2 sacrificial pit, Ran Honglin keenly discovered the "exception"-a right-angled edge.
"I scraped it carefully with a hand shovel and straightened out the lines. I found that there was a right-angle turn, which is basically a relatively regular pit." Ran Honglin said that human activities will leave clues, digging pits, backfilling soil and surrounding areas. There are differences in the tightness and color of the soil.
"I wondered if it would be the No. 3 pit we had been looking for."
Follow the clues and continue digging. On December 2, a piece of 6 to 7 cm long bronze was exposed on the edge of the mouth.
When everyone at the workstation was not sure what the specific artifact was, they invited Chen De'an, an "old expert" who was in a meeting nearby.
Chen Dean likes to feel the archaeological specimens with his hands, and is familiar with the different styles of bronze wares from various places and periods.
He touched almost every bronze ware unearthed in 1986 dozens or hundreds of times, and he remembered every part clearly.
"I followed the ladder down the pit, touched the edge of the mouth of the bronze vessel, and said six words:'Dakou Zun, no problem.'"
After 34 years, six new pits in Sanxingdui "woke up again and shocked the world."
Leiyu has been working at the Sanxingdui site for 37 years, and now his deepest feeling is that he must persist.
"Persistence will be rewarded."
5 Archaeology is a never-ending "relay race"
In the thunderstorm's camera, there are more and more photos of young people.
"Some young archaeological team members saw me taking pictures of them, and they asked me to help send them." Lei Yu said, in the past two years, many young "post-90s" team members have come to the station to inject vitality into the ancient Sanxingdui.
He lay his body on the suspended excavation lifting platform, peeled off the soil around the cultural relics with a bamboo stick, and then carefully put it into a small bag marked with a number... When the reporter saw Xu Danyang in the excavation cabin of Pit 4, he A piece of pottery is being unearthed.
Xu Danyang is a "post-95". After graduating from graduate school last year, he entered the Sichuan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology. He joined the new round of archaeological team in the Sanxingdui Sacrifice Area as soon as he started working.
"These young people are very dedicated and enter the state immediately after entering the cabin, working in the pit for at least 7 hours a day." Lei Yu said.
In Chen Dean's eyes, the younger generation has more knowledge of natural sciences, will use high-tech equipment, and are also exposed to the most cutting-edge archeological theory and methods. These are very different from the older generation.
"I am also learning from these young people and trying to absorb new research methods and research results."
The spirit of the older generation of Sanxingdui archaeologists has infected the "new generation" of archaeology and passed on from generation to generation.
"I went to visit Ao Tianzhao in 2019. He lives in an old dormitory building. The house is not big or new, but it is unconventionally cleaned and filled with books. He talked about the Sanxingdui matter, and the details can be explained clearly. , You can feel the enthusiasm, love and perseverance of these predecessors for the archaeology of Sanxingdui site, and they are completely immersed in the world of archaeology." Ran Honglin said.
The great archaeological discovery in Sanxingdui is inseparable from the half-life of several generations of archaeologists; the nearly 100-year-old Sanxingdui archaeological relay is the transmission of cultural beliefs of generations.
Why use Sanxingdui archaeology as a career in life?
Some people made mistakes: when Thunderstorm studied archaeology, his father's advice played a big role; Chen De'an was "transferred" to the archaeology major, and originally wanted to be a doctor or teacher.
Some people are interested: Ran Honglin reported to the Department of Archaeology because he likes history and yearns for freedom in the field; Xu Danyang is also his chosen major, and interest is the main factor.
Different routes lead to the same goal.
After retiring, Chen De'an did not stop researching and sorting out Sanxingdui.
"I studied archaeology by accident, but I never thought about giving up after I was engaged in this work. I took Sanxingdui as my life's career, and it seems to have been cut off from me, and all I thought about was it. I didn't retired. It is my job, now retired, it is my pleasure."
In another two years, Thunderstorm will retire, "I have been in Sanxingdui for more than 30 years. It may be a long time to outsiders, but I think it is very short, because the ancient Shu civilization is too charming and there is too much to be solved. Lei Yu said, if there is another chance to choose, he is willing to stay here and continue to crack Sanxingdui's "Wordless Book of Heaven".
What everyone mentioned is a sense of responsibility and mission.
"Archaeology not only explores where we come from, but also inspires us where we are going. This is essential and basic work for us to understand Chinese civilization and strengthen cultural confidence. This is the mission of Chinese archaeologists." Chen De'an Say.
Among the voluminous literature and historical materials, there are only a handful of ancient Shu, and archaeology seems to be the only way to “reunite” with the ancient Shu civilization across a long river of time.
This is not something that can be accomplished in one or several generations. The mystery of the ancient Shu Kingdom has only been unveiled, and the exploration of it by archaeologists is far from over.
When will the excavation work of national concern end?
Ran Honglin said that they hope to complete the excavation of cultural relics in six pits before the end of the year, and then go to the laboratory for related protection and analysis. However, there are too many unknowns in archaeology, and they never know how many "secrets are buried under the layers of soil" before the excavation. ", so there is no strict deadline.
The subsequent cultural preservation and restoration work will take longer.
This is a never-ending "relay race."
(Our reporter Chai Yaxin reports from Guanghan, Sichuan)