One Hundred Years of Chinese Archaeology
Archaeological documentary "Excavations" witnesses extraordinary journey with lens
2021 is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Chinese archaeology.
To commemorate this special year, China Central Radio and Television Records Channel launched five episodes of archaeological documentary "Excavations". From March 10th to March 14th, it will be broadcast at 8 o'clock every night, recording the archaeologists with the lens. The complete working process.
"Excavations" takes into account the historical span and archeological type, respectively selecting the Pingliangtai site in the Neolithic period, the Jin noble tombs site in the Spring and Autumn period, the Qin and Han Dynasty sites in Liyang City, the Liao Shangjing site in the Liao Dynasty, and the Shen ship Dingyuan in the Jiawu period. The ruins of the warship present in-depth the little-known stories behind them, making history and culture more vivid.
Presenting Chinese civilization from the perspective of global civilization history
In the first episode of "Running to the Field", we are led to the excavation site by a group of students from the School of Archaeology, Beijing University, and they will complete all the archeological processes including excavation, indoor finishing, and report writing during the four-month internship. .
After experiencing real archaeological excavations, some people will choose to switch careers and leave, and some people will firmly embark on the archaeological road from then on.
In the southwest of Shanxi, there are a large group of ancient Jin noble tombs dating from around 1000 BC.
Jin Wengong, one of the "Spring and Autumn Five Tyrants", lay here forever.
The second episode of the documentary "Deep in the Jin" tells us the story of the archaeologists represented by Tian Jianwen of the Shanxi Archaeological Research Institute, and brings out a story about the persistence and inheritance of intellectuals.
Tian Jianwen was admitted to Peking University at the age of 15, under the tutelage of the founders of Chinese archaeology such as Su Bai and Zou Heng. He has been engaged in archaeology for more than 30 years. His greatest expectation is to find the real Guquwo.
The name Quwo began in the early Western Zhou Dynasty.
Quwo's generation of the Jin Dynasty was a landmark event in ancient China's "decay of rituals and music. At the same time, Quwo also witnessed the way to dominate Jin Wengong.
However, there has been controversy in academic circles about the specific location of Guquwo.
Tian Jianwen presided over the excavation of this spring and autumn tomb.
After three months of exploration, the archaeological team found the city wall of Guquwo as expected.
Tian Jianwen sighed with emotion: "This is Guquwo, how beautiful and fertile." In the eyes of ordinary people, this is a wasteland full of grass.
The excavation site in the third episode of "The Code of Liyang" is the site of Liyang City, which has been excavated for 40 years. This is the third large-scale Qin and Han capital city discovered near Xi'an after Qin Xianyang City and Han Chang'an City. Shang Yang The reform happened here.
We can see from the cultural relics excavated that the people of Qin began to orientalize from Liyang, and the unification of China in the real sense began.
In the fourth episode "Ten Years of Liaoyuan", the archaeological team excavated the Liao Shangjing site, which was the first capital of the Liao Dynasty.
A thousand years ago, the Khitans established the Liao Dynasty here. Since there are not many records of it in the handed down documents, many details can only be found in the ruins by archaeologists.
When the exquisite ancient city is revealed little by little under the hands of archaeologists, a nomadic history that refreshes our knowledge is also laid out on the vast grassland.
Underwater archaeology is a completely different method of excavation from field archaeology. The fifth episode of "Never Sinking" recorded such a special archaeological team.
In 2020, their task is to complete the archaeological investigation of the sinking ship Dingyuan on Liugong Island's Jiawu.
During the archaeological excavation, a giant iron armor wreck of the Dingyuan ship weighing 18.7 tons was discovered by the archaeological team.
In the documentary picture, when this rusty and unchanging iron armor surfaced, the tragic war more than a hundred years ago was truly unfolding before us.
For the archaeological team, the excavation of the sunken ship of the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895 was not only an excavation and protection, but also a gaze on history.
The first shovel of new Chinese archaeology
Let me talk about the ins and outs of Chinese archaeology.
There are about three opinions about the beginning of Chinese archaeology: one is found in the "A Brief History of Chinese Archaeology" in the "Chinese Encyclopedia Archaeology Volume", which established the archaeological group of the Institute of History and Language of the Academia Sinica in 1928 and the Yin Ruins site in the same year. The excavation is a sign of the birth of Chinese archaeology; the second is the archaeological work of the Xiyin Village site presided over by Li Ji in 1927 as the starting point; the third is that most researchers believe that Antesheng's excavation of Yangshao Village in 1921 is the beginning of Chinese archaeology .
The archaeological community publicly promoted the third opinion, that is, the birth of Chinese archaeology in 1921.
As a matter of fact, in the field of traditional Chinese culture, there has long been a science related to ancient relics—the "Shen Jing Supplementing History".
The study of epigraphy achieved high achievements in the Song Dynasty. For example, Li Qingzhao’s husband, Zhao Mingcheng, was a famous epigrapher, and the Qianjia School of Qing Dynasty pushed it to its peak.
However, epigraphy mainly stays on the study of handed down products, lacking systematic and scientific methods, and has not developed into archaeology.
Archaeology in the modern sense originated in the West.
The Italian Renaissance in the 14th century sparked people's interest in history and antiquities flourished.
In the 18th century, the Industrial Revolution occurred in Europe. With the development of industrialization and urbanization, a large number of ancient relics under the ground were resurrected.
Therefore, under the scientific cultural background and thinking logic, people gradually seek to systematize the study of relics and relics into a discipline, and archaeology comes into being.
At this time, academic circles generally believe that it was around 1840.
At that time, with the trend of "western learning spreading to the east", Chinese academic circles began to understand and study archaeology: intellectuals represented by Zhang Taiyan began to introduce archaeology; the discovery of oracle bones in the Yin Ruins and Dunhuang documents made the world know about the vast ocean of Chinese archaeology. .
Therefore, in January 1922, the Guoxuemen of Peking University Research Institute took the lead in establishing an archaeological research institution, with an editorial office, an archaeological research office, a folk song research association, and a Ming and Qing archives organization. Ma Heng served as the director of the archaeological research office. (Later, he served as the director of the Palace Museum).
This is the first archaeological research institution in China.
In 1952, the Ministry of Culture and the Chinese Academy of Sciences jointly supported Peking University to establish an archaeology major in the Department of History, and hired Zheng Zhenduo, Pei Wenzhong, Xia Nai, Lin Yaohua, and Guo Baojun as adjunct professors.
This is the first archaeology teaching institution in a university in the country.
Before that, in October 1950, the newly established Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences started the first archaeological excavation in New China in Hui County, Henan Province. Some people called it "the first shovel of New China's archaeology". The curtain of archaeology in the People’s Republic of China.
The team was headed by Xia Nai, the deputy head was Guo Baojun, and the secretary was Su Bingqi. There were no more than 20 people including the members, but they all became the authority of Chinese archaeology.
This archeological excavation has successively excavated the Shang Dynasty ruins of Liuli Pavilion and Shang Dynasty tombs, Liuli Pavilion Spring and Autumn, Warring States Tombs and Chema Pit, and Western Han Tombs, Wei King Tombs and Noble Tombs in the Warring States Period, and the Warring States Tombs in Baiquan A large number of high-level burial objects and rich materials of high-level nobles’ tombs were unearthed in the Qun and Han Dynasty tombs.
The system cleaned up and protected precious cultural relics in the Shang, Warring States, and Han dynasties, providing important material evidence for understanding the appearance of ancient Chinese society.
The brilliant achievements of Chinese archaeology
Since the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the archaeological community has confirmed that more than 1 million years of human history, more than 10,000 years of cultural history, more than 5,000 years of civilization history and its development and evolution have been confirmed by the archaeological community through extensive excavations and scientific research. Have enough right to speak in the study of the origin of culture and the origin of Chinese civilization.
"Three generations of archaeology and Neolithic archeology research, represented by the Xia, Shang and Zhou Dynasties Project and the Civilization Discovery Project, have made significant progress. The early emergence of the ancient country-the kingdoms are lined up-the empire has been unified for more than 5,000 years. , Tangible, and felt.” In the words of archaeologists, this can be seen to a certain extent as the epitome of the development and progress of archaeology over the past 70 years since the founding of the People’s Republic of China.
Archaeology has become a career to retrieve memories, enlighten wisdom, and move toward the future, and it shines brightly in the study of human history.
Not only that, but science and technology have been widely used in archaeology, which has effectively broadened the scope of research and improved the ability of archaeology to obtain information from ancient remains.
For example, the dating method represented by carbon-14 provides important technical support for the dating of Xia, Shang and Zhou dynasties and the dating of prehistoric culture.
Looking back at Chinese archaeology, there has been considerable technological progress in many aspects such as dating, human bone research, plant archaeology, animal archaeology, and environmental archaeology.
In addition, computer archaeology, remote sensing archaeology, metallurgical archaeology, material structure and composition analysis, archaeological DNA research, and the application of archaeological geographic information systems have all made our archaeological achievements quite fruitful.
In a nutshell, China's scientific and technological archaeology is advancing with each passing day, contributing more data and information to archaeological research, and greatly improving the scientific nature of archaeological research.
Compared with the West, Chinese archaeology has persisted out of the Chinese road, formed a theoretical method system with its own characteristics, and has a distinctive Chinese style-abundant literature resources and a strong historical tradition.
Although we started late from the perspective of archeology in the modern sense, after several generations of archaeologists, we have achieved achievements that have attracted the attention of the world and even the envy of the world—showing the historical context of the origin and development of Chinese civilization and showing the Chinese civilization. The brilliant achievements of the People’s Republic of China demonstrate the great contribution of Chinese civilization to world civilization.
In this regard, Professor Zhao Hui of Peking University’s School of Archaeology and Cultural Sciences, who has long been engaged in Neolithic archaeology, once wrote this paragraph: The study of history is not only to soothe our nostalgia for the time that has passed, or to satisfy our past Curiosity.
The fundamental purpose of historical research is to sum up experience, review the past and learn the new, understand the modernity over the course of time, and plan for the future.
Archaeology makes the past and the present, layers of time, and a personal thing intertwined in a specific space, giving new life to the past time and space.
(Mudor)