The earliest capital axis was discovered at the Liyang City site
Completely reveals the plane shape of important buildings in the core area of the capital from the middle of the Warring States Period to the early Western Han Dynasty
Newspaper, Xi'an, February 16th (Reporters Li Jie and Zhang Zhehao) The Afang Palace and Shanglinyuan archaeological team, jointly composed of the Institute of Archeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the Xi'an Institute of Cultural Relics Protection and Archaeology, have made archaeological discoveries at the Liyang City site in recent years. fruitful.
Since 2018, the archaeological team has carried out large-scale excavations in the No. 3 ancient city. From 2019 to 2020, the No. 4 to No. 9 buildings of the No. 3 ancient city have been excavated, and the "harem" area near the north wall of the city will be relatively complete. expose.
In 2022, the archaeological team fully revealed the No. 3 and No. 11 buildings on the south side of the aforementioned excavation area, and found flushing pottery toilets in them. It is also the first flush toilet discovered by archeology in my country.
Building No. 3 faces south as a whole and is rectangular in shape, consisting of platform foundations and scattered water.
During the excavation, archaeologists found scattered water around the foundation of Building No. 3, and outside the scattered water on the north and west sides of the foundation, dripping pits formed by dripping water from the eaves were found, indicating that the building was originally a tile roof.
Within the outer edge of the scattered water, pottery standpipes with continuous distribution and unequal spacing were found.
During the excavation process, a large half-circle tile commonly known as "Wadaang King" was also found in the northwest, northeast, southwest, and southeast corners of the No. How to use and other academic issues, provides important information.
The base of building No. 3 is the original building space, which was damaged by late remains, and the ground during the building’s use was not found on the east side. There is a semi-underground building (number F1, cleared during the trench excavation in 2016) in the west of the middle of the base. ), and cleared out a new relic (number F2) to the west.
F1 faces south and is composed of doorways, passages and underground spaces. The overall shape is irregular A, with a usable area of 29.27 square meters.
Judging from the shape, F2 is composed of two parts: the indoor toilet seat on the platform and the sewage pit outside the house.
Damaged by the remains of the late period, the upper structure of the toilet seat does not exist.
Excavations show that the toilets can be divided into two phases: morning and evening.
Building No. 11 is located on the east side of the excavation area, and is connected to Building No. 10 after turning westward through the north corridor.
Its base is rectangular.
Scattered water was found on the west, south, and north sides of the platform foundation. The remaining scattered water to the east of the corridor on the north side was paved with pebbles in the two vertical tiles inside and outside. The remaining length is 2.6 meters and the width is 0.67 meters. It is 2.52 meters long and is high in the south and low in the north.
The pebbles are elliptical, with a diameter of 8-10 cm. There are pottery risers distributed between the scattered water on the north, south and west sides of the platform and the platform.
Through archaeological clearing and further dissection and excavation, it was revealed that No. 3, No. 11 and other buildings in the No. 3 ancient city were built in the middle of the Warring States period and continued to be used until the early Western Han Dynasty. The architectural shape and layout did not change.
During the cleaning process of the archaeological staff, on top of buildings No. 3 and No. 11, farmland of the Han Dynasty distributed in patches, consisting of field roads, ditches, wells, fields, etc., were also cleared out. Together with ditch, cattle hooves, etc., they constitute the first agricultural landscape discovered near the capitals of the Qin and Han Dynasties so far.
During the archaeological excavation of buildings No. 3 and No. 11 in the No. 3 ancient city of the Liyang City site, it was the first time to fully reveal the plane shapes of important buildings in the core area of the capital from the middle Warring States period to the early Western Han Dynasty.
Judging from the excavation of buildings from No. 3 to No. 11, there are obvious grade differences among buildings with different functions and grades, whether it is the building plan and layout, or the use of building materials, water distribution location and combination.
According to the exploration and excavation data, combined with the two north and south steps on the east side of No. 3 building, it can be determined that there is a north-south axis running through the core palace building of No. 3 ancient city.
As the earliest capital axis discovered and determined by archaeology, its discovery and determination is of great value to the study of the layout of the capitals of the Warring States, Qin and Han Dynasties and even the ancient capitals of our country.
The Liyang City site is one of the major sites during the "14th Five-Year Plan" period announced by the State Administration of Cultural Heritage. Since 2019, large-scale continuous archaeological excavations of palace buildings in the core area of No. 3 ancient city have been the core of the capitals of various countries in the middle of the Warring States period in my country in recent years. The important excavation of the building, with the clearing of a series of large buildings, we have become more and more clear about the characteristics, shape and evolution of the main core buildings in the Warring States period, especially the main core buildings from the kingdom to the early Western Han Dynasty that lasted from the middle Warring States period to the early Western Han Dynasty understanding.
Guangming Daily