The discovery of Sanxingdui site began in the spring of 1929, when local farmers Yan Daocheng and his son accidentally discovered a jade stone pit, including reeds, walls, inkstones, jade rings and stone beads, with more than 300 pieces. 193 1 In the spring of, after hearing the news, Dong, a British missionary in Guanghan County, found the local garrison to help with propaganda, protection and investigation, and handed over the collected jade articles to the Museum of West China University opened by Americans for safekeeping. According to the clue provided by Dong, Ge, curator of the Museum of West China University, and Lin Mingjun, assistant, formed an archaeological team in the spring of 1934. With the permission of Sichuan Provincial Department of Education and the approval of Guanghan County Government, Luo Yucang, the county magistrate of Guanghan County, presided over a 10-day excavation near the jade found by Yan. Rich excavations, more than 600 pieces of cultural relics unearthed in * * *, including pottery, stone tools, jade beads, jade pestle, jade jade, jade laurel, etc., were later collected by the Museum of West China University. The results of this archaeological excavation were compiled by Ge into Hanzhou Excavation Briefing, which was published in Huaxi Frontier Monthly of 1936. This paper named these unearthed cultural relics "Guanghan culture".
Regrettably, since the Sanxingdui site was first excavated by 1934, the excavation has been stagnant for a long time.
Since 1950s, archaeologists have resumed the archaeological work in Sanxingdui. Wang Jiayou and Jiang Dianchao of Sichuan Provincial Museum visited Sanxingdui and Moon Bay, and found a large number of ancient city sites in Sanxingdui for the first time. At that time, they didn't realize the scale of Sanxingdui site, so they regarded Moon Bay site in the north of Sanxingdui site and Sanxingdui site in the south as one site, and named them "Hengliangzi Site" and "Sanxingdui Site" respectively. 1963, a joint archaeological team composed of Feng, Sichuan Provincial Museum and History Department of Sichuan University excavated Moon Bay at Sanxingdui site again, showing the basic features of Sanxingdui site and culture. At that time, Professor Feng had realized that Sanxingdui was "a central city in ancient Shu with such a large area of ruins". At that time, Mr. Feng predicted that Sanxingdui was probably the site of the ancient Shu people, perhaps the "capital" of the ancient Shu people. The preliminary archaeological excavation of Sanxingdui lasted until the 1980s. Archaeologists speculate that Sanxingdui and Moon Bay were the capitals of ancient Shu in Shang and Zhou Dynasties, but no bronzes representing Shang and Zhou civilizations were found, let alone corresponding written records. Sanxingdui gradually became a place for local brick factories to borrow soil, and huge mounds were gradually razed to the ground.
After 1980s and 1990s, Sanxingdui site ushered in a large-scale continuous excavation.
The excavation of Sanxingdui site lasted for 20 years. 1980 ~ 198 1 year, pieces of Neolithic ruins were cleared, tens of thousands of specimens were unearthed, and the stratigraphic superposition relationship with staging significance was discovered. According to the excavation report of Sanxingdui site in Guanghan, Sanxingdui is "an ancient culture with distinctive characteristics, which is widely distributed in Sichuan and different from any other archaeological culture". Three conditions for naming archaeological culture proposed by Xia Nai have been met, and it is suggested to name it Sanxingdui culture. 1982 and 1984, archaeologists conducted two excavations in the southwest of Sanxingdui site and Xiquankan site respectively, and found the latest remains of Sanxingdui site.
1986 July 18, news came from the local brick factory, where workers dug up a jade stone tool. After receiving the report, the Provincial Cultural Management Committee immediately sent an archaeological team to investigate and found that it was a jade Zhang about 40 cm long and had been dug up. The archaeological team immediately blocked the scene and carried out rescue excavation. From July of 18 to August of 14, * * * excavated six 25-square-meter prospectors.
At 2: 30 am on July 23rd, archaeologists unearthed a gold walking stick, the core of which was made of wood and covered with gold. There are two fish, two birds and two symmetrical heads, five teeth and a high crown. This kind of walking stick is found for the first time in the archaeological history of China, and it is by no means an idle generation. Archaeologists found a big pit, where the golden staff was unearthed. This pit is rectangular with a big mouth and a small bottom. The pithead is about 4.5 meters long and 3.5 meters wide; The bottom of the pit is flat, with a length of 4. 1m, a width of 2.8m and a depth of more than1.6m.. A total of 420 pieces of gold, copper, jade, stone, bone, pottery, ivory and other cultural relics were unearthed in the pit, including bronze 178 pieces, gold-4 pieces, jade 129 pieces, in addition to seashells and bone-burning slag of about 3 cubic meters. Large jade articles such as Yuge and Yuzhang are mainly distributed at the eastern end of the southeast pit wall; Small jades such as jade chisel, jade spear, stone axe and yufu are mainly distributed in the west corner of the pit; A small number of jade tools are scattered in the center of the pit; Copper is distributed in the whole pit; Large bronzes, such as copper heads, copper faces, copper fields, bronze statues, etc., are mainly distributed in the southwest of the pit; Ivory is mainly distributed in the middle of the pit; The golden staff came out from the middle of the pit in the west. According to the stacking of artifacts, experts speculate that these artifacts are not randomly placed, but are placed in a certain order: jade articles are placed first, then large bronzes such as gold bars, copper heads, bronze statues, copper fields and bronze statues are placed, then bone residue is poured and burned, and finally pottery lamps, pottery seats, bronze statues and other artifacts are placed. Bone chips are accumulated in the pit with a slope from south to north, and the thickest part is 60 cm ~ 80 cm. Most of the bone residues are white, some are blue-black, and there are bamboo and wood ashes inside, but there are no traces of smoke in the pit. Why are there so many bone fragments in the pit? What are these bone fragments for? After observation, archaeologists found that these bone residues had been burned and smashed before into the pit, and concluded that these bone residues were the "burned" residues of sacrifices to be used for sacrifice. Burning refers to burning sacrifices to heaven. The bronze heads unearthed in the pit have inverted triangular necks, seashells or ivory, and some have been burned. Some people think that these artifacts symbolize the gods sacrificed by the ancient Shu people, but some experts disagree. They think that according to historical records and archaeological discoveries, there are two ways of sacrifice in Shang Dynasty: "human sacrifice" and "sacrifice", and "figurines" are used to replace the jade people and stone people buried in the female tombs of Yin ruins. The bronze head in the sacrificial pit should be a symbol of "human sacrifice" being killed, not the object of sacrifice. From the Oracle bones in Yin Ruins, we can see many Oracle bones about Liao Sacrifice, with different names and utensils, such as cows, sheep and tapirs. There are broken bones, gold, bronze, jade, pottery, ivory and shellfish in the sacrificial pit of Sanxingdui. There are signs of burning. There are indications that the relics in the pit were buried by the ancient Shu people after holding a large-scale grand "Liao Festival" activity. Most scholars believe that the pit is about 3400 years ago, which is a relic left by the ancient Shu people after their sacrificial activities, so it was named the No.1 sacrificial pit. This is the first sacrificial pit found in Bashu culture, and the cultural relics in the pit provide valuable information for understanding the ritual and religious consciousness of ancient Shu people. Among them, the golden staff, Jin Mianju, bronze head and other cultural relics are of special significance in the history of metallurgy and sculpture in China.
At 6 pm on August 14, a brick factory worker found another pit about 30 meters away from the No.1 pit. Archaeologists rushed to the pit, looked into the pit and found a bronze mask exposed. They immediately covered the backfill and protected the site. After consulting the superior and getting approval, a rescue excavation was carried out from August 20 to September 17. Archaeologists named the newly discovered pit No.2, and the excavation of this pit was even more exciting and shocking. This pit is a rectangular vertical hole. The pithead is 0.55 ~ 0.65m deep, 5.3m long and 2.2 ~ 2.3m wide from the surface. The depth from the pit mouth to the pit bottom is 1.4m ~ 1.68m, and the pit bottom is 5m long and 2m ~ 2. 1m wide. The pit bottom is high in the southwest and low in the northeast. The pit is filled with yellow streaky soil, which has been compacted. According to the accumulation and pressure when unearthed, the relics in the pit can be divided into three layers: upper, middle and lower. There are a lot of vegetation ashes, carbon chips, small bronze devices, bronze animal faces, bronze branches, jade articles and a lot of seashells in the lower layer. The middle-level accumulation is mainly large bronzes, such as large vertical figures, cart-shaped objects, large faces, heads, trunks, tree seats, statues, Yi people and so on. The upper deposits are mainly more than 60 pieces of ivory. Such obvious stratification shows that the transportation of relics is obviously in a certain order. Compared with the first pit, this pit is about 3 100 years ago, which is later than the first pit. Unearthed cultural relics are much richer in variety and quantity than those in No.1 pit, and more than 300 pieces of cultural relics 1 have been cleared, including 735 pieces of bronzes, 6 pieces of gold1piece, 486 pieces of jade articles and more than 4,600 pieces of ivory vessels. Among them, large bronze statues, large bronze masks, bronze sacred trees, etc. are all not available in the No.1 pit. The excavation of these cultural relics further reflects the sacrificial ceremonies and contents of the ancient Shu people, and also shows the bronze cultural level and artistic characteristics of the ancient Shu people, which provides important information for studying the politics, economy, art, metallurgy, religion and etiquette of the sacrificial pit era and ancient Shu culture. However, it is puzzling that most of the cultural relics in the pit have been damaged, mutilated or specially treated. For example, a bronze statue is divided into two parts by the waist, the upper part is in the middle of the pit, and the lower part is in the northwest of the pit, which is pressed by a bronze tree seat. Bronze containers such as Zun, Qian and Yi are mainly located in the southeast corner and northeast corner of the pit. Most of the containers are painted scarlet and filled with shells and jade. The bronze animal face was placed in the northwest corner of the pit, accompanied by a large number of seashells. Bronze human heads and bronze human faces are mainly distributed around the pit, and some people have many seashells on their heads. Head and portrait parts are damaged and burned, especially portraits, most of which are damaged or burned. Ivory and bone wares were also obviously burnt, and some jade articles were also burnt. Some experts speculate that most of the relics were deliberately damaged when people held a ceremony in front of into the pit, and a few were broken when tamping soil. 1from July to September, 1986, two large sacrificial pits were discovered one after another, and more than 4,000 fine cultural relics were born, which caused a sensation in the world.
1986, a large number of relics have been unearthed, and the stratigraphic overlapping relationship is complicated. According to the excavation data of this year, some archaeologists began to try to stage the Sanxingdui site. Also in 1986, two rectangular pits with rich treasures were accidentally exposed, and the unearthed metal objects contained in them attracted the attention of academic circles at home and abroad to the ancient Shu civilization in southwest China. While the Sanxingdui site was excavated on a large scale, the Twelve Bridges site in Chengdu was excavated from 1985 to 1987. The lowest cultural appearance of this site is the same as the last remains of Sanxingdui site, which provides important materials for the whereabouts of Sanxingdui culture and other issues.
Since 1990, the exploration of Sanxingdui culture and civilization has been extended from Chengdu Plain to eastern Chongqing and southwestern Shaanxi. The preliminary revelation of Neolithic culture in Sichuan basin earlier than Sanxingdui culture, as well as the discovery of several ancient city sites in Longshan period and some remains in the transitional stage from Neolithic culture to Sanxingdui culture, provide a broader prospect for the in-depth study of Sanxingdui civilization.
Facing Sanxingdui civilization, Tong, curator and archaeologist of Sichuan University Museum, said with great excitement, "This is simply a miracle!" Ms. dame jessica rawson, the chief archaeologist of the British Museum in London, also sincerely praised: "These discoveries now seem to be more extraordinary than the famous Chinese Terracotta Warriors." Hong Kong's Wen Wei Po reported: "It is earlier than Mawangdui in Hunan, with more quantity and higher historical and artistic value, which can be compared with Xi 'an Banpo site! "
2065438+June, 2005 13, Sichuan News Network reporter was informed that there were new discoveries in the archaeology of Sanxingdui in Guanghan, and a section of suspected northern city wall was found. Together with the previously discovered east-west south city wall, the Sanxingdui ancient city circle is initially presented. In addition, there are three tombs under the city wall. Among them, the bones in the middle tomb are complete and fingers can be seen. It is said that this is a Neolithic bone, which is earlier than the Shang and Zhou city walls.
1From July to September, 1986, nearly 1,000 precious cultural relics such as gold, copper, jade, stone, pottery, shells and bones were unearthed from two large sacrificial pits in Shang Dynasty. Among thousands of bronzes, goldware and jade unearthed in Sanxingdui Sacrificial Pit, 300 to 400 bronzes are the most distinctive.
Among them, the types of bronzes unearthed in pit 1 include human head, human face, human face, kneeling statue, dragon ornament, dragon cylindrical vessel, tiger vessel, Ge, Huan, square hole wall, dragon and tiger statue, sheep statue, jar, vessel cover, plate and so on. The bronzes unearthed in the No.2 pit include large bronze statues, kneeling statues, human heads, human masks, animal masks, animal faces, shrines, sacred trees, sun-shaped vessels, eye-shaped vessels, eye bubbles, bronze bells, bronze ornaments, bronze squares, birds, snakes, chickens, monsters, buffalo heads, deer and catfish.
Among them, the gold rod is 142 cm long and weighs 780 grams, all of which are made of pure gold leather bags. The staff is engraved with a human figure, with a height of 18 1 cm, a base of 79 cm, a total height of 260 cm and a weight of about 300 kg. This is the oldest and largest bronze unearthed in the world. The bronze sacred tree is 350 cm high, with many birds and animals, bells and various fruits hanging on it. It's a special artifact for ancient wizards. In addition, more than 40 kinds of bronze heads and 10 masks have been unearthed. The discovery of Sanxingdui, an unprecedented group of precious cultural relics, has pushed forward the history of ancient Shu civilization for 1500 years and caused a sensation in the world archaeology.
The pottery unearthed from Sanxingdui site consists of high-handled beans, small flat-bottomed pots and bird's head-shaped spoons, including a bottle-shaped cup, which is a very local artifact unearthed from Sanxingdui. Made into a bell mouth, a thin neck and a round flat bottom, it is very similar to the ceramic wine bottle used to iron wine in northern China today, and it is also very similar to the wine bottle used by Japanese people to drink sake. There are also pottery in many sites, which is quite distinctive. Generally, it is thirty or forty centimeters high, with three baggy feet at the lower part and a hollow middle, which can increase its capacity. It is generally believed that it is used to warm wine, and most of its jade articles are jade Zhang, especially Zhang, which is known as "frontier king Zhang", with a residual length of 159 cm and a thickness of 65438.
During the excavation of two sacrificial pits in Sanxingdui, more than 80 pieces of ivory were unearthed. There are many views on its origin and function in academic circles, some think that it comes from trade, and some think that the ecological environment in ancient Sichuan is suitable for elephants to survive. The evidence is mainly that a large number of semi-fossil ebony is found in the local area, and the monomer is huge. But no matter what its source is, it can be considered as a symbol of the wealth of the rulers.
The bronzes unearthed in Sanxingdui include bronze heads with different shapes, painted faces when unearthed, earrings and earlobes. It seems that our ancestors loved beauty very much. In addition to these bronze statues, there are many sacrificial statues. There are various forms of animal and plant modeling here, including the bronze chicken, which is known as a masterpiece of realism, and a large number of outstanding cultural relics such as the bronze sun-shaped device unearthed for the first time in China. All of them are significantly different from the Central Plains culture, which shows that Sanxingdui culture is not only a typical representative of ancient Shu culture, but also the center of ancient civilization in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River, thus once again eloquently proving that the origin of Chinese civilization is pluralistic and integrated.
Sanxingdui cultural relics also fill important gaps in the fields of archaeology, aesthetics and history in China. The world needs to reevaluate China's ancient civilization. Among the cultural relics in Sanxingdui, the bronze sacred tree, with a height of 3.95 meters and functions of "Fusang", "Jian Mu" and "Ruomu", is divided into three layers and nine branches. There is a bird on every branch. It is not a bird in the general sense, but a god bird representing the sun. The bronze portrait, known as the king of bronze statues and the king of masks, is the idol of Can Cong, the ancestor of Shu people, with a length of 1.42 meters. As a scepter, the golden staff is engraved with exquisite and mysterious patterns, with two birds facing each other, the fish back facing each other, and an arrow pressed on the head and neck of each bird. There is also a head full of mysterious smiles. Yu Bianzhang, whose body is covered with patterns, and dozens of bronze heads similar to the size of real people's heads are unprecedented.
Sanxingdui site is an important representative of the world bronze civilization from16th century BC to14th century BC, which is of great value for studying the process of early countries and the development of religious consciousness and occupies an important position in the history of human civilization. It is the largest capital city in the southwest of China, with a regional center position. Its discovery provided unique physical evidence for the disappearing ancient Shu State, and pushed forward the history of civilization in Sichuan for more than 2,000 years.