China News Service, Huzhou, April 18 (Shi Zinan, Fu Lubo, Pan Jiangwei) The Zhongchuming Site located in Yangdun Village, Leidian Town, Deqing County, Huzhou City, Zhejiang Province, is a large-scale jade-making workshop site group in the late Liangzhu Culture. .
The site covers an area of about 75,000 square meters and is only 18 kilometers away from the Liangzhu site group. It is adjacent to the Tiaoxi River and the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal and faces the Taihu Lake Plain.
Regarding this place, there is a record in the second volume of the "Deqing County Xinzhi" of the Republic of China: "The middle and early Ming, Xia Chuming, Sangyu, Gaoqiao, and the middle of the earth were excavated with miscellaneous horns and ancient jade and ring cloth pendants... …”
Photo by Yao Jie Yang at the excavation site of the Zhongchuming site
It is reported that archaeological excavations at the site have been launched since 2017.
At present, the archaeological excavation of the fourth site is progressing in an orderly manner, and more than ten ancient wooden stakes have been newly discovered recently.
"There are more than a dozen of these ancient wooden piles, and we suspect that they may be used for the slope protection of the soil platform during the Liangzhu period." Zhu Yefei, site director of the Zhongchuming Site of the Zhejiang Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, introduced that the excavation work has not yet been completed. At the end, further dissection and cleaning are still required.
"After it is fully revealed, we will make further judgments based on the relationship between the wooden piles and the soil platform. After that, we will sample the wooden piles and determine the specific age and use of these wooden piles based on carbon-14 dating." Zhu Yefei said.
In fact, as early as September 2017, the Zhejiang Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology discovered and confirmed the Zhongchuming site here.
Subsequently, the Institute and the Deqing Museum conducted a large-scale systematic survey, exploration and excavation in the local area, and discovered and confirmed many sites, each of which has jade materials unearthed.
Photo by Yao Jie Yang, the cultural relics unearthed at the Chuming site
"During the archaeological excavations in the past few years, we have unearthed more than 3,000 cultural relics from the Liangzhu period, mainly jade and pottery." Zhu Yefei said that the jade unearthed at the site consisted of small pieces such as jade cones and pipes. There are many jade articles, which is of great significance to the study of the production mode of jade articles in the Liangzhu Culture period and the source, transportation, distribution and consumption of jade materials.
As a new content of the field archaeology of Liangzhu Culture, the site of Zhongchuming is also an important academic growth point of Liangzhu Culture.
In terms of production scale, the site is the largest group of jade-making workshops in the Liangzhu period discovered so far in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River.
In view of the importance of the site, the excavation and research of the Zhongchuming site has been included in the “13th Five-Year Plan” major special project of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage of China, “Archaeological China: Research on Civilization Models in the Lower Yangtze River Region—From Songze to Liangzhu”.
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