China News Service, Jinan, February 19 (Li Mingrui) Shandong Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism held a press conference in Jinan on the 19th to announce the five new archaeological discoveries in 2021, Yishui Bashan Site, Laizhou Lv Village Site, Zoucheng Site The ruins of the ancient city of Zhu State, the cemetery of the Guo family in the Yuan Dynasty in Jinan, and the archaeological survey of the Haiphong site in the Ming and Qing Dynasties were selected. Among them, the Bashan site in Yishui filled the blank of Paleolithic archaeology in Shandong Province and northern China.
According to Wang Tingqi, a member of the party group and deputy director of the Shandong Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism, the Yishui Bashan site is located in Linyi, Shandong and was discovered in July 2020.
From April to June 2021, archaeologists from Shandong will conduct the first stage of archaeological excavation, and the unearthed cultural relics include stone products, animal fossils and a certain number of bone products.
The preliminary dating data is 60,000-100,000 years ago, and the cultural era belongs to the middle Paleolithic period.
In 2021, more than 5,000 stone products and animal fossils will be unearthed and collected from the site.
The location of the Yishui Bashan site.
Photo courtesy of Shandong Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism
"The Bashan site in Yishui provides extremely important archaeological materials for the restoration and study of the use of the site and the way of livelihood by ancient humans in the middle and late Pleistocene." Sun Bo, president of the Shandong Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, said at the meeting. The site has thick strata and a large span of cultural eras, indicating that the site has been repeatedly used and occupied for a long time. The number of unearthed stone products and animal fossils is rich and diverse, and there are bone products made of animal bones, horns, teeth, etc., and the cultural accumulation is very high. There may be multiple facets of hominin activity, including human behavior of using fire and dismembering animals.
On the same day, in addition to the announcement of the list of new archaeological discoveries in Shandong Province in 2021, the list of outstanding field archaeological sites in Shandong Province for 2020-2021 was also released at the press conference.
According to Wang Tingqi, the economic construction of archaeological service projects in Shandong Province in 2021 has achieved remarkable results. Throughout the year, 944 archaeological investigation and exploration projects for engineering construction were organized, about 217 cultural relic sites were newly discovered, and 112 archaeological excavation projects were implemented. A large number of cultural relics have been completed, and more than 20 projects have been completed involving the protection of cultural relics protection units at the provincial level and above.
The plan of the ruins of Lv Village in Laizhou.
Photo courtesy of Shandong Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism
Wang Tingqi said that in the next step, Shandong will promote the research on the process of ancient civilization in the Haidai area and the research on the archaeology of Xia, Shang and Western Zhou cultures and other "archaeological China" topics, and orderly carry out major archaeological excavation projects, important water-wading archaeological investigations and Haisi application for heritage. We will focus on excavation projects and strive to obtain major archaeological discoveries and breakthrough scientific research results.
At the same time, in order to ensure new breakthroughs in the construction of archaeological institutions and archaeological teams in Shandong Province, Shandong Province will strengthen the construction of cultural relics and archaeological institutions in the province, focusing on increasing the number of professionals in archaeological research and cultural relics protection, and relying on major projects and scientific research bases to accelerate scientific and technological archaeology, Underwater archaeology and other urgently-needed talent training, explore joint training mechanisms with domestic and foreign universities and scientific research institutes, and cultivate more talents who meet the requirements of cultural and museum work.
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