Wang Wei: Chinese archeology needs to see all living beings
China News Weekly reporter/Ni Wei
Published in the 1076th issue of "China News Weekly" magazine on January 9, 2023
2022 Scholar Wang Wei
Award reason
He is one of the most photographed archaeologists on the screen and the chief expert of the Chinese Civilization Exploration Project; The evidence of civilization is also written in the study, so that the remote and lonely archeology can talk to all living beings.
The Ministry of Education invited Wang Wei to participate in the review of junior high school history textbooks. He opened the textbook for the first grade of junior high school, and the opening chapter was Chinese prehistory, based on archaeological findings including the skulls of the cavemen at the top of the mountain, and the ruins of Banpo and Hemudu.
Wang Wei was surprised that the archaeological progress after 1975 was not included.
The prehistory that children learn has actually stayed half a century ago.
As the chairman of the Chinese Archaeological Society, Wang Wei was worried about the poor popularization of archaeological achievements, and then felt deeply dereliction of duty.
He set out to revise the textbook, adding rice cultivation at the Shangshan site on the Pujiang River in Zhejiang ten thousand years ago, the bone flute at the Jiahu site in Wuyang, Henan 8,000 years ago, the giant city and water conservancy project at the Liangzhu site in Yuhang, Zhejiang 5,000 years ago, etc. go in.
These are all important discoveries that have rewritten Chinese history in recent decades.
That's 2019.
After that year, the situation changed suddenly, and archeology suddenly became a hot topic, and the attention of the whole people increased sharply.
The new round of excavations in Sanxingdui started in 2020 is the most typical. Thousands of unique bronzes were unearthed in six artifact pits. The famous Sanxingdui masks and Dali people have new partners.
CCTV rarely moved the live broadcast room into the archaeological site, and broadcast live three times successively. Wang Wei, as an expert, interpreted the scene for the public in front of the camera.
A major project he led also received the spotlight last year.
In 2022, the Chinese Civilization Discovery Project entered its 20th anniversary. In May, the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China conducted the 39th collective study on deepening the Chinese Civilization Discovery Project. Wang Wei gave a report explaining the ins and outs and achievements of the project.
The Chinese Civilization Exploration Project brings together 20 different disciplines, combining a large number of natural sciences with archaeology to find the source of Chinese civilization.
This is the largest joint research project in the history of Chinese archaeology.
It is also an important task for him in 2022 to introduce this academic project to ordinary people in a simple way.
At the same time, several variety shows, documentaries and public lectures with the theme of archeology and cultural relics suddenly appeared on the screen.
Wang Wei hastily wandered around and became one of the most photographed archaeologists.
He is also worthy of this position. He has been the director of the Institute of Archeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences for ten years, and the chairman of the Chinese Archaeological Society for ten years. , can be described as a "knowledge of everything" in Chinese archaeology.
From the field and the study to the screen, Wang Wei's transformation also heralds the changes in Chinese archaeology.
2022 is the 101st year since the birth of modern Chinese archaeology, and entering the second 100 years, Chinese archeology is no longer satisfied with digging and sorting out, but is going towards interpretation and seeing all living beings.
archaeological pusher
In the second half of last year, Wang Wei went to the Lingjiatan site in Ma'anshan City, Anhui Province.
This inspection surprised him again and again. After Lingjiatan discovered the tomb in the early years, he found traces of high-level public buildings in the past two years.
More than 60 stone axes symbolizing military power were unearthed from a sacrificial pit, one of which was the largest Neolithic ax found in China.
These discoveries are incredible and may add to the length of the history of Chinese civilization.
The deep meaning has to be connected to see.
Located not far from Lingjiatan, the Liangzhu site in Zhejiang Province is regarded as the most powerful evidence to prove the 5,000-year civilization of China. The city wall, tombs, palaces, altars and other elements in the site are all available.
But the Liangzhu civilization with all internal organs is like a young man. Where was its childhood and where was its predecessor?
Wang Wei has always hoped that this place can be found.
Because jades similar to Liangzhu were unearthed in Lingjiatan, it was speculated to be the predecessor of Liangzhu in the early years, and now the chain of evidence is more and more complete.
"The Liangzhu site has demonstrated a civilization of 5,000 years, and the high-grade buildings in Lingjiatan are dated from 5,500 to 5,350 years ago. Therefore, the Lingjiatan site may be evidence of a Chinese civilization of more than 5,000 years." Wang Wei said "China News Weekly" said: "The word 'many' is very remarkable."
Wang Wei reminded the archaeologists in Lingjiatan to release the news quickly to increase attention.
There is a purpose for doing this: after becoming famous, it will be valued by the local government, which may increase the strength of archaeology.
The Lingjiatan site has always been in charge of only one full-time archaeologist, with a few technicians, the progress is slow, and many tasks appear to be slow.
He travels to archaeological sites across the country every year, and most of the projects are stretched and short-staffed.
For most projects, only one or two full-time archaeologists are in charge. Sometimes one person has to watch two or three construction sites at the same time, lead technicians, recruit migrant workers, and conduct small-scale excavations of hundreds of square meters every year.
Compared with the total area of the ruins, which is easily one million square meters, it is simply a slow speed.
Wang Wei was in a hurry, and hoped that the local government would support more, strengthen the archaeological team, and increase the speed.
For a long time, archaeological excavation has been in this kind of manual workshop mode. Compared with when he entered the industry, there is not much difference in this respect for decades.
In the spring of 1979, he was studying archeology at Jilin University, and went with his classmates to practice at prehistoric sites in Yu County, Zhangjiakou, Hebei.
It was the first time they entered the archaeological site, and they were very excited.
The ruins are in the village, and the archaeological team invited farmers from the production team to excavate them. It costs a few cents a day, and the enthusiasm is not high.
Wang Wei looked anxious, and worked hard to dig in the exploration area. The farmers were too embarrassed to work abroad, so they worked hard.
Now, Wang Wei has an even bigger impetus.
He used to think that he didn't have to go to some project sites, but the local archaeological unit told him that when you come, the city leaders have to come, and the local government will pay attention.
The vast majority of archaeological projects in China are undertaken by local archaeological institutions, and the amount of manpower and funds depends on the local government.
He thinks about it too. He is a member of the Academy of Social Sciences and has been a representative of the National People's Congress for ten years, so he can really play a role.
Every time he meets local leaders, he reminds them of the value of the ruins in detail, hoping that they will give them more resources.
When giving lectures to places, he will deliberately add a few pages of slides showing local archaeological projects, not to draw closer, but to draw attention.
Last year, a certain city invited him to give a lecture, and the secretary of the municipal party committee would also attend.
When preparing for the lecture, the local archaeological institute complained to him that there were only a dozen archaeologists in the whole city. In the past two years, the attention of archaeologists has increased, and the number of archaeological units across the country has been expanding.
On the day of the lecture, Wang Wei said at the end of his speech that I would like to mention one situation in particular.
Turning to the last page of the slide shows the growth chart of the archaeological compilation of the surrounding prefectures and cities in the same province. Some have doubled, some have increased by 1.5 times, but the growth rate of this city is an embarrassing zero.
The face of the secretary of the municipal party committee changed, and a meeting was held soon to discuss it, and ten establishments were added.
The main battlefield and the source of civilization
Wang Wei has been in the industry for 40 years and has experienced the whole process of archaeological development since the reform and opening up.
He divided the 40 years into two periods. The first 20 years were East Asian archaeology and Xia, Shang and Zhou archaeology. His field archaeological career was mainly in these 20 years.
He was 23 years old when he was admitted to Jilin University majoring in archeology.
In the autumn of 1977, the first year of the resumption of the college entrance examination, he was working as the deputy secretary of a commune in Changchun, and secretly signed up without telling his colleagues.
He was born in an intellectual family in Changchun, his parents were college students.
He jumped into the queue in the second year of junior high school, and later returned to the city to work as a worker. He successively served as a propaganda committee member of the factory trade union, deputy director of the trade union, vice chairman of the district trade union, and deputy secretary of the commune.
He worked solidly as a fitter for five years. At that time, he thought he would spend his whole life in the factory.
After three years as an apprentice, he had already reached the level of an eighth-level worker.
One day, he saw a feature film on TV, talking about the achievements of Chinese archaeology in the past ten years.
He thought this was quite interesting, turned around and picked up the wrench and went to work.
After the college entrance examination, he wanted to apply for a volunteer. He wanted to apply for science, but there was a lot of lack of middle school courses, and his foundation was not good.
An old leader in the factory accidentally said: Archeology is the science of the liberal arts.
As soon as he heard it, he remembered the feature film, and immediately applied to Jilin University to major in archaeology.
The Department of Archeology of Jilin University is headed by archaeologist Zhang Zhongpei. Zhang Zhongpei graduated from the Department of Archeology of Peking University and studied under the famous archaeologist Su Bingqi.
Zhang Zhongpei personally taught the students with a blank sheet of paper. Wang Wei was nearsighted and always sat in the first row, staring at the board book with wide eyes. When taking notes, he used different colors to mark the key points. Many students borrowed them as reference materials.
Zhang Zhongpei did not bring handouts and had a strong Hunan accent. Wang Wei later became Zhang Zhongpei's "interpreter", and the students asked him for technical terms they did not understand.
Zhang Zhongpei attaches great importance to the ability of field archaeology, and hopes that the students will be proficient after graduation, so he found a good practice site for them.
In addition to practicing excavation in Yu County, Zhangjiakou, Hebei, Wang Wei and his classmates also undertook a task to investigate the ruins of the whole county.
Wang Wei and another classmate teamed up and ran around in the fields, lying in front of ditches and cliffs to look at cross-sections, analyze strata, and search for prehistoric relics. In this way, they found the first remains of the Xia Dynasty in Zhangjiakou.
When they go out, they carry ten catties of noodles and a piece of solid soy sauce on their backs, which is several days' rations, and they borrow pots from ordinary people to cook noodles.
At that time, ordinary people did not understand archaeology, and they were not very willing to actively support it.
After graduation, he was assigned to the Institute of Archeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and presided over the excavation of the Zhouyandu site in the west of Liulihe for five years in Fangshan, a suburb of Beijing.
In order to pay more compensation for the occupation of cultivated land, the secretary of the brigade negotiated back and forth with the archaeologists.
Wang Wei and his colleagues invited the secretary to drink, and when the wine was hot, they persuaded him to agree, and then both parties passed out drunk.
Early the next morning, the secretary of the brigade came to the door and said that drinking too much didn't count.
During the five-year excavation of Liulihe, Wang Wei became famous for a unique skill: excavating the carriage.
The wooden carriage in the Liulihe tomb was rotten in the soil and had been disassembled during the burial, so it did not look like a complete carriage.
The only difference is that after the wood rots in the soil, the color and softness are slightly different from normal soil.
Wang Wei was stunned to find out the rotten carriage and found 21 carriage pits.
An Asian archaeological conference was held in Beijing in 1983. More than 40 foreign experts visited Liulihe and were shocked by how he did it.
"There is no trick, just find the soil in the soil, and be meticulous." He told "China News Weekly".
In the late 1980s, he went to Nara, Japan to study abroad for three years, which broadened his horizons, and his influence continues to this day.
There are many ruins in Nara, and he has participated in three archaeological projects. To be honest, there are very few things unearthed from those ruins, but his Japanese counterparts have worked meticulously.
The latitude and longitude must be recorded for each piece of pottery, and the data is input into the computer using an advanced total station. However, China is still in the stage of manual workshops, and the position is measured with a tape measure, and the error is often 20 to 30 centimeters.
In addition to scientific and technological means, there are two other characteristics of Japanese colleagues that impressed him deeply. One is that great experts write small books for ordinary readers and do science popularization in person; Discover contrast.
It took some years for China to catch up with these characteristics.
After receiving his first doctorate degree from Kyushu University, a national university in Japan offered him a high annual salary to stay as a researcher. The annual income was equivalent to dozens of times what he could get in China at that time.
But he returned to China.
After returning to China, he faced a choice of academic direction, should he continue to do research on ancient East Asian cultural exchanges, or return to Chinese archaeology?
He asked his teacher Zhang Zhongpei for advice, and the teacher said five words: return to the main battlefield.
The main battlefield of archaeology is of course Chinese archaeology. Specifically, it was during the Xia, Shang and Zhou dynasties, with numerous ruins and countless mysteries.
With a single word to wake up the dreamer, he re-enters the historical maze of Xia, Shang and Zhou dynasties.
Later, he successively presided over projects such as the Yanshi Commercial City in Henan, the Western Zhou Palace Ancestral Temple in Zhouyuan, Shaanxi, and the Xiaomintun Site of Yinxu in Anyang, Henan, all of which achieved important results.
At that time, a century-long project had already been launched—the Xia, Shang and Zhou dating projects combined history, archaeology and some natural sciences to establish a chronology for the three ancient dynasties.
Wang Wei undertook research topics related to the Western Zhou Dynasty.
The project was completed in 2000, but Wang Wei and some experts are still not satisfied. They feel that the dating project has opened up a new paradigm of archaeological research involving multidisciplinary participation, and should do more.
Wang Wei and the experts plan to explore the picture of the origin stage of Chinese civilization comprehensively, with the Yellow River, Yangtze River, and Xiliao River as the axis, through the extensive integration of natural sciences and archaeology.
This is the Chinese Civilization Exploration Project. Wang Wei and Zhao Hui, a professor at the School of Archeology and Museology of Peking University, jointly served as the team leader of the executive expert team and presided over this ambitious project until the end of 2016.
The project unites 20 disciplines and more than 400 scholars to outline the context of the origin of Chinese civilization, build a theory with the excavation results, and turn the 5,000-year Chinese civilization from a legend to a demonstration.
This is the most important thing in the last 20 years of Wang Wei's career.
"The exploration project has established a civilization standard that is in line with China's reality. This is of extraordinary significance." Wang Wei said that the exploration project has formed an "alliance" of prehistoric archaeological projects scattered across the country, from individual operations to collective tackling, and finally The important change is the unity of purpose.
"The work of each site has been targeted, that is, to find evidence of civilization and to find elements that are lacking in each, the most important being city sites, palaces, and high-level buildings." Wang Wei said.
Chinese archeology should move from excavation to interpretation
Archaeologists spend half of their time on the construction site and half of their time in the study.
It is not enough to be an empty theorist, and it is not enough to just bury your head in digging for treasure. Wang Wei called the latter an "archaeologist".
The leap from "archaeologist" to archaeologist is a compulsory course for every aspiring archaeologist.
Wang Wei said frankly that an obvious shortcoming of Chinese archeology lies not in excavation but in interpretation.
"Everyone says that archaeology is the most practical social discipline. Yes, the real objects we study are real, but the real objects themselves do not explain the problem, and archaeologists need to explain it." Wang Wei said that for the same batch of archaeological materials, different people will Different interpretations, different academic systems, academic backgrounds, and even masters will lead to differences, which is very normal.
"That's why I often tell everyone, don't be superstitious about archaeologists, you have to see if his analysis is logical and convincing."
The interpretation of archaeological achievements is divided into two types, one is theoretical construction, and the other is popular science.
Compared with the excavation progress of Chinese archaeology, the construction of theory lags behind, which is the consensus of many scholars—contemporary Chinese archeology lacks original and systematic theories, and also lacks archaeologists with high-level ideas.
In Wang Wei's eyes, among previous generations of archaeologists, Su Bingqi is the real theoretical master.
In the archaeological institute in the 1980s, his office was next door to Su Bingqi.
When archaeological teams from all over the country discover new things, they will come to Beijing to find Su Bingqi to show them and answer their questions.
But Su Bingqi likes to go around in circles when talking, and he always starts from the big background and talks around the site.
After listening to Yunshan Mist, visitors often walk into the offices of Wang Wei and scholar Yin Weizhang next door, and ask Yin Weizhang to translate for them.
Su Bingqi has the temperament of a poet and often uses rhetoric in his speech.
For example, his famous assertion on the independent origin of civilizations in prehistoric China was summarized with the image metaphor of "starry sky".
In his later years, he put forward the theory of six major regions, which was earth-shattering and magnificent.
To this day, projects such as the Chinese Civilization Discovery Project and Archaeological China are still enriched and extended on the basis of Su Bingqi's theory.
How can there be a further breakthrough in theory?
Wang Wei said that we must broaden our horizons. Today's archaeology not only requires the application of various scientific and technological means, but also comprehensive knowledge of humanities and social sciences to expand into social archaeology, economic archaeology, and spiritual archaeology.
Even within archaeology, knowledge of different eras and fields is a shift in perspective compared to specialization in one field.
Su Bingqi was born as an archaeologist in the Qin and Han Dynasties, and only later did he get involved in prehistoric archaeology.
Wang Wei feels that his ability to connect prehistoric civilizations with a grand vision may be related to his overall grasp of the unified multi-ethnic country in the Qin and Han Dynasties.
"For another example, if you look at prehistoric society from the perspective of the Xia, Shang and Zhou dynasties, you will have a different perspective, because the Xia, Shang and Zhou dynasties have closer ties with the localities." Wang Wei said, "This point, I am Benefited from Mr. Su."
Wang Wei is 68 years old this year, and he is fond of grandchildren, but he still travels to archaeological sites across the country every week. Among the newly acquainted archaeological team leaders, there are many "post-90s".
For the future, he hopes to do more things in terms of popularization.
Rewriting textbooks is only a step towards popularization. He also wants to organize a group of archaeological experts to compile several sets of archaeological popularization books for readers of all ages, telling the history of China as revealed by the latest archaeological achievements.
Not long ago, he just returned from his inspection in Changzhou, which is planning to build a Chinese civilization theme park.
Different from archaeological parks and museums, theme parks will start anew, transforming correct archaeological and historical knowledge into amusement projects, and using the latest multimedia technology to entertain and teach.
This is Wang Wei's greatest wish.
In his vision, theme parks can be large or small, flexible in form, and can be implemented across the country.
He remembered that in Japan more than 30 years ago, archaeologists gave lectures on weekends, and citizens bought tickets to enter, and the seats were full.
Most of the seats are old people and housewives. They carry notebooks and remember seriously.
Seeing that the people are so close to archaeology, he is very envious.
Now, China also has such soil, and it is the archaeologists who need to work hard.
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