A large number of cultural relics, exquisite production, strange modeling
The archaeological excavation of Sanxingdui site has abundant results
On September 9th, the major project of "Archaeological China"-the press conference on the staged results of the archaeological excavations of the Sanxingdui site was held at the Sanxingdui Museum, and the important staged archaeological achievements of the sacrificial area of the Sanxingdui site were announced to the public.
In March of this year, the six "sacrifice pits" newly discovered in Sanxingdui were unveiled and aroused widespread concern.
After more than five months, the archaeological excavation of six "sacrifice pits" has made important progress.
In Pit No. 4 that has been excavated, Pit No. 3 that has basically been cleaned up, and Pit No. 7 and No. 8 where buried cultural relics have been exposed, huge bronze altars, sacred beasts, complete golden masks, and carved sacred tree patterns have been found. Cultural relics such as jade cong and jade knife shaped like a table knife, and a bronze portrait of Ultraman "hit the face".
The abundance of newly discovered cultural relics, the exquisite craftsmanship, and the strange modeling make people breathtaking.
Bronze statues and other artifacts have never been seen before
According to reports, a total of 729 pieces of various artifacts and specimens were unearthed in Pit 3, of which 478 are relatively complete relics (groups), mainly bronze, jade, ivory, gold, seashells, etc.
The kneeling statue of the bronze statue unearthed in Pit 3 is composed of the upper part of the bronze statue and the lower part of the portrait.
The bronze statues on the top altar, the jade cong with the god tree pattern and other artifacts have unique themes and rich details, which have never been seen before, and provide important materials for related research.
All the relics of Pit 4 have been extracted. A total of 79 complete artifacts and 1073 fragments have been unearthed.
Complete objects include jade, bronze, ivory, pottery, etc.
Three bronze figures sitting on knees and turning their heads unearthed in Pit 4, all of the same size and shape, seem to belong to the same piece of bronze.
The portrait is sitting on a kneeling posture, the body is slightly tilted to the front left, the head is slightly chin and twisted to the right side of the body, the hands are held flat in the front left of the body in a half-neck shape, the knees are on the ground, the forefoot of the feet are on the ground, and the back of the feet are raised. .
The body's center of gravity of the portrait is at the position of the slot between the left shoulder and the palms of both hands, showing a clear sense of weight-bearing.
Tang Fei, president of the Sichuan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, said that these three figures are new discoveries in Sanxingdui archaeology in terms of shape and decoration. They are used to study Sanxingdui bronze casting technology and art, religious beliefs and social systems, Sanxingdui and surrounding areas. Provides new materials for cultural exchanges.
After the research of the carbon fourteen period, it can be judged that the buried age of Pit No. 4 is about 3148-2966 years ago, which belongs to the late Shang Dynasty.
Pit No. 3 and Pit No. 2 belong to the same group, and the date is very close to Pit No. 2, roughly in the late Shang period (Phase II of the Jordan Yin Ruins).
While archaeological excavations, multidisciplinary research and cultural relic protection have been steadily carried out.
Archaeologists found textile residues on artifacts such as the large bronze mask in Pit 3.
An orderly arrangement of twine was found beside a piece of bronze in the ashes of Pit 4, but this twine does not have a warp and weft structure.
Archaeologists then made further microscopic observations of other soil samples and discovered textiles with obvious warp and weft structure.
Combined with the results of enzyme-linked immunoassay, it was determined that it was a silk residue with a plain weave structure.
This is the first time that silk residues have been discovered in a new round of archaeological excavations in Sanxingdui.
Discover the largest complete golden mask
Following the discovery of a huge golden mask at Sanxingdui Pit 5, a golden mask was found again at Pit 3.
According to Xu Feihong, head of Pit 3 and Shanghai University, this golden mask was discovered during the Dragon Boat Festival this year.
“At that time, after we extracted a piece of bronze lizard fragment, we found a hidden color underneath, which means that there should be gold objects underneath.” As the cleaning work continued, the crumpled golden mask exposed mud.
After being unfolded and restored, the golden mask is about 40 cm wide and about 27 cm high. It is the largest piece of intact golden mask found in Sanxingdui.
As early as 1986, cultural relics such as golden rods and heads of people wearing golden masks unearthed in Sanxingdui reflected the unique customs of using gold.
Since the start of a new round of archaeological excavations in the sacrificial area, gold artifacts have appeared frequently.
More than a dozen gold objects were unearthed in Pit 3, gold masks and gold leaf pieces scattered all over the ground were found in Pit 5, and more than 360 gold leaf objects were also found in Pit 8.
They are made into fish shapes and other different shapes, with perforations on them, which can be hung on sacred trees as decorations; some can be pasted on the surface of containers or religious artifacts; some are also engraved with exquisite cloud patterns or hook cloud patterns.
A broken golden mask was also found in Pit 8.
"Combined with the heads of people wearing golden masks unearthed in Sanxingdui, these golden masks should also be covered on bronze heads for decoration." Xu Feihong said.
The 8 pits can be divided into two categories
Ran Honglin, director of the Sanxingdui Institute of Archaeology and the executive leader of the archaeological excavation at the Sanxingdui site, believes that according to the current excavations, the 8 pits can be roughly divided into two types, and the two types of pits show obvious differences in several aspects.
"Firstly, the relationship between age and horizon is different. There is an obvious breaking relationship between Pit No. 6 and Pit No. 7-Pit No. 6 broke Pit No. 7, indicating that Pit No. 6 appeared later than Pit No. 7. The second is the shape and characteristics. The size of the pits No. 5 and No. 6 are relatively small, no more than 5 square meters, and the depth is about 1 meter; the remaining 6 pits are more than 8 square meters, and the depth is about 1.6 meters, and some can even reach 2 meters. ."
There are also some differences in the cultural relics unearthed from the 8 pits.
Ran Honglin said that in addition to the big golden mask, Pit 5 is mainly finely divided gold, jade, bronze, ivory carvings, etc. In Pit 6, there are no more artifacts except for a few cultural relics such as wooden boxes and jade knives. discover.
"The remaining six pits fully demonstrate the prosperous and prosperous state of ancient Shu: complete ivory, large-scale bronze wares, gold and jade wares are layered and densely packed..."
The burial methods of cultural relics in these two types of pits are also different.
One type seems to be placed consciously and religiously, such as the wooden box in Pit No. 6 that is the same length as the pit, which is placed very neatly; but the other type of utensils in the pit are more like thrown directly or dumped in. of.
Ran Honglin said that the 5th and 6th pits as a whole seem to be relatively late, and the other 6 pits may have been formed at the same time.
"We have found different parts of the same artifact many times in different pits." The bronze beast neck in Pit 8 is wrapped with copper wire, and the peculiar bronze top altar statue in Pit 3 is also on the base. Wrapped with a similar copper wire, such copper wire is only seen on these two artifacts in the artifacts unearthed in Sanxingdui.
In addition, a newly extracted bronze sacred tree from Pit 3 has the same shape and length as the branch of the sacred tree of No. 2 discovered in 1986.
Wang Mingfeng