China News Service, Ningbo, May 6th Title: Archaeologists in Holidays: Dialogue with ancestors 8,000 years ago at the Jingtou Mountain site
Author Tong Xiaoyu
After getting off the Yuyao North High-speed Railway Station, which spans 21 kilometers, there are two bus trips.
This is the "go to work" route of Sun Guoping, the excavator leader of the Jingtou Mountain site.
He spent this "May 1st" holiday at the construction site of the Jingtou Mountain site in Yuyao, Ningbo, Zhejiang.
2021 is an important commemorative year for the 100th anniversary of the birth of Chinese archaeology.
During the "May 1st" holiday, the reporter came to the Jingtou Mountain site to visit the different "Labor Day" for archaeologists.
Shellfish sorted into categories.
Photo by Tong Xiaoyu
The Jingtou Mountain site is more than 8,000 years old. It is the deepest and oldest coastal shell mound site in the southeast coast of China. It is the earliest example of Chinese ancestors adapting to the ocean and using the ocean.
When I followed the map to the archaeological site of Jingtou Mountain Site, it was already past 9 o'clock in the morning.
This is an unremarkable site:
Pottery restored after being unearthed.
Photo by Tong Xiaoyu
The gate faces the national highway, and the "neighbors" are all enterprises, and few people walk on the road.
Looking inside, the wild grass grew half a person tall, and there were many mounds wrapped in plastic film.
If you don't look at the words "Jingtou Mountain Site Archaeological Site" at the entrance, no one will know that 8000 years of history are buried here.
Sun Guoping was talking with the staff of Jingtou Mountain site.
Photo by Tong Xiaoyu
Because it was the "May Day" holiday, only a few archaeological team members stayed at the construction site.
Since the excavation of the Jingtou Mountain site began in 2019, Sun Guoping has spent at least 9 months here every year.
This holiday is no exception.
His work is complicated: sorting out the unearthed remains, preparing for the second phase of excavation, and receiving visitors... When he saw Sun Guoping, he was instructing migrant workers to simply clean up the unearthed remains.
Sun Guoping displayed the unearthed wooden utensils.
Photo by Tong Xiaoyu
The Jingtou Mountain site has an "other name": the prehistoric seafood market.
A large number of shells such as cockles, oysters, conch, clams, razor clams have been unearthed here.
In addition, there are piles of fish bones, scattered sea fish vertebrae, wooden utensils and so on.
Sun Guoping said that the first phase of the excavation has ended, but more complicated finishing work is yet to come.
It can be seen at the scene that empty shells of different types and sizes are neatly stacked in baskets, and these have been simply panned.
Sieve for panning.
Photo by Tong Xiaoyu
The panning equipment is self-made. It is a large square sieve that hangs down one by one and soaks in the water.
The sieve is divided into two layers.
"The sifted ones will not be discarded, mainly for classification research." Sun Guoping pointed to the plastic baskets stacked on the wall and said, except for the visible remains of shells and bones, the plant seeds originally wrapped in the soil layer. Small relics such as slag, bone scraps, etc. will fall on the screen with small holes in the lower layer.
"Through seeds, we can understand what the ancestors ate 8,000 years ago, and when they began to domesticate the plants to which these seeds belonged."
Shells arranged on the spot.
Photo by Tong Xiaoyu
The panned remains will be stored in two simple warehouses on the construction site.
One stores shells, and the other stores woodware, pottery, bones, etc.
As long as he is on the construction site, Sun Guoping will hold a small kettle and add water to the organic cultural relics soaked in the water.
For example, the well-preserved wooden bowl, and the hemp chestnut fruit that is covered with plastic film and "packed" with the soil layer.
He laughed and said that he was like a gardener.
Packed with "soil layer" Ma Li fruit.
Photo by Tong Xiaoyu
He said that the purpose of watering the cultural relics is to maintain their shape when they were unearthed.
"For example, if wood is not placed in water, or if it is accidentally exposed to the air for a long time, the wood will quickly crack, deform and break."
These pieces of wood are the "babies" that Sun Guoping cares for.
He said that in the eyes of ordinary people, they are "worthless", but in the eyes of archaeologists, they are the key to deciphering the living conditions of the ancestors 8,000 years ago.
In fact, there is a third "warehouse" at the archaeological site of the Jingtou Mountain site.
This "warehouse" is a bit random, it is a block of wooden boards placed in front of the archeological team's room.
On the wooden boards, there are large and small broken pottery pieces.
During the holidays, the work of Huang Weijin, a researcher at the Hemudu Site Museum, was to number the pottery pieces according to the unearthed strata.
This also belongs to the classification and sorting of unearthed cultural relics.
When the reporter saw Huang Weijin, there were already baskets of pottery pieces in front of him.
This job is very boring, sometimes sitting for a whole day, and no one can chat, but Huang Weijin is still tidying up.
He said that there are too many pottery pieces unearthed at the Jingtou Mountain site, and if the stratigraphic classification is not done, it will affect the later research.
"The early excavation of archaeology is very difficult, and the later period of cultural relics must be lonely." Sometimes he can't sit still, he and Sun Guoping will find "lost brothers and sisters" for the broken pottery on the wooden board , See if it can be put together into a complete pottery.
The search process is like a "continuous look".
The color, texture, and texture of the inner tube layer of the pottery are all indicators of discrimination.
During the May 1st holiday, the two archaeologists were accompanied by Wu Endong, a post-90s generation.
He is a marine archaeology student at the Australian National University, and is mainly responsible for the research on shellfish and fish unearthed from the Jingtou Mountain site.
"Fish bone identification is the most difficult. You don't know which part of the fish comes from this piece in your hand. Especially for some key parts, you need to check various specimens and look for it slowly."
In Wu Endong's room, there are baskets of shells and fish bones.
He said that archaeologists are different from office workers. There is no specific commuting time during the tidying period, and they usually work consciously.
Sometimes because of a study, it is common to work until midnight.
The unearthed wooden bowl is usually placed in water.
Photo by Tong Xiaoyu
In Sun Guoping's words, "I can't wait to use one person as three people."
He said that archaeology is a business that "work slowly and do meticulous work", but now there are too few practitioners, so you can do more if you can.
"
Now, he is preparing for the second phase excavation of the Jingtou Mountain site.
"The entire site is more than 20,000 square meters, and the first-stage excavation area is only more than 700 square meters."
The area that Sun Guoping pointed out to be excavated in the second phase is still covered by grass.
He hopes that the second phase of work can be carried out as soon as possible, and he can find out how the villages were laid out more than 8,000 years ago, and what the houses of the ancestors lived.
"My greatest wish is to reveal the Jingtou Mountain site, the earliest coastal village in China, more clearly before retirement." (End)