Welcome to pay attention to "Fangzhi Sichuan"!
Liu Zhangze: Fields surround the "city"
Historical explorer on the outskirts of the Sanxingdui ruins
Finishing / Editorial Board of the History of Bashu Koala look
Liu Zhangze, a native of Deyang City, Sichuan Province, is currently the director of the Deyang Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology. He has witnessed and participated in the excavation of Sanxingdui No. 1 and No. 2 sacrifice pits, put forward the viewpoint that "the people of the first phase of Guiyuanqiao crossed Jiuding Mountain directly into Shifang from Maoxian County", which played a key role in solving the problem of traceability of Sanxingdui; participated in the creation of "Deyang Archaeological Three Character Classic" and "Deyang in the Depths of History: Records of Important Archaeological Discoveries in Deyang" and other works.
On June 5, 2017, Liu Zhangze delivered a speech at the launching ceremony of the "Investigation of Early Sites of Ancient Shu Civilization - Series of Activities Through the Longmen Mountains" (Courtesy of Liu Zhangze)
Yin and yang fate
"Archaeology is a boring job, and you must have love to always maintain passion in your perennial work." The person who said this was Liu Zhangze. The bronze skin is the imprint of an archaeologist's perennial wind and sun; behind the black-rimmed glasses, there is a bit of a bookish tone; on weekdays, it seems a little unkind, but when talking about archaeological findings, it talks endlessly. Decades of perseverance in the field, from the love of the heart.
Liu Zhangze's parents have the traditional educational expectations of Chinese parents for their children, hoping that their children will become talents through learning, so they have always encouraged Liu Zhangze to study well. In such a family atmosphere, Liu Zhangze developed the habit of loving books, and the pocket money he had to get when he was a child was basically spent on buying books. Because he is smart and studious, he can always get good grades in his studies.
Time has quietly passed, and Liu Zhangze is about to enter the threshold that many Chinese students need to go through - the college entrance examination. The story of him and archaeology has to start from the volunteer filling out of the yin and yang before the college entrance examination.
Before the college entrance examination, the school arranged for high school students to fill in volunteers, and Liu Zhangze faced the first career choice in his life. In that era, information was closed, most students had no concept of the future career they wanted to pursue, nor did they understand the situation, and everyone was bored to sign up. Liu Zhangze is no exception.
Group photo of the excavation team of Sanxingdui site during Liu Zhangze (front row, fourth from right) during his internship in 1986 (courtesy of Liu Zhangze)
That day, there was a college entrance examination volunteer form in front of me, and Liu Zhangze, who was struggling to fill in what major, suddenly heard a classmate say: "Archaeology major is good, you can travel everywhere, but I dare not fill in Sichuan University, in case I can't do it." Several students expressed their liking for the archaeology major of Sichuan University, but they did not dare to fill in the report. At that time, college students were "rare products", as long as they graduated, it was equivalent to serving an "iron rice bowl", everyone did not dare to gamble on the future, and many students retreated to choose the teacher training major.
For the archaeology major, Liu Zhangze did not like it at that time, only knew that he most wanted to go to the Southwest University of Political Science and Law and become a criminal policeman. However, in the year of Liu Zhangze's college entrance examination, the criminal investigation major of Southwest University of Political Science and Law, which had previously been a combination of arts and sciences, suddenly stopped recruiting liberal arts students and only recruited science students.
The criminal police suddenly did not go through this road, and listened to the classmates discuss the benefits of the archaeology major of Sichuan University, and Liu Zhangze was moved. Since everyone is afraid to fill in the report, then I will come. When the class teacher saw that Liu Zhangze had chosen to major in archaeology at Sichuan University, he immediately shook his head, worried that he would not be able to pass the examination. After the score line of the college entrance examination came down, Liu Zhangze estimated it himself and counted it in his heart.
In this way, Liu Zhangze chose the archaeology major that he struggled for half his life. Referring to the choice at that time, although it was a yin and yang mistake, Liu Zhangze had no regrets, he said: "The road of life is not good to overturn and start over, and the choice will continue to go on." ”
Group photo of the team crossing jiuding mountain, the second from the left is Liu Zhangze (courtesy of Liu Zhangze)
Internship first saw Sanxingdui
In the spring of 1986, when it was the third year of internship, Liu Zhangze and other students went to the Sanxingdui site together and followed Sichuan University teachers Lin Xiang, Huo Wei, Li Yongxian and The Sichuan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology Instructors Chen De'an and Chen Xiandan to start his internship life. This internship has had a great impact on Liu Zhangze's life trajectory.
It is said to be an internship, but in fact, it is an elite team jointly formed by the Sichuan Provincial Cultural Relics Management Committee (Sichuan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology), the Archaeology Department of the History Department of Sichuan University and the Guanghan County People's Government, which went to Sanxingdui to carry out rescue excavations. The team of more than 130 people became the largest archaeological excavation in the history of Sanxingdui excavations at that time.
Archaeology is like this, and the ability to make a discovery depends not only on the size of the team or the quality of the people. Half a year of field archaeology time passed quickly, but Liu Zhangze's archaeological team did not excavate valuable cultural relics as desired. According to the plan, the team basically completed the evacuation at the end of June, leaving only Liu Zhangze and two other students to assist in sorting out the excavation materials.
On the morning of July 18, 1986, Liu Zhangze was sorting out the materials as usual, and a brick and tile factory worker hurried into the office, saying that he had dug something during the construction process and asked the archaeological team to quickly check it out. Chen De'an listened and snatched the door out, followed by Chen Xiandan with Liu Zhangze and others. Arriving at the scene, the crowd found that the workers were talking about several pieces of jade similar to Yu Ge and Yu Zhang, Chen De'an and Chen Xiandan immediately realized the importance of this discovery, protected the scene at the same time, quickly reported the situation upwards, and organized rescue excavations.
It was the height of summer, the countryside fields were extremely hot, and there were snakes, insects, rats and ants, but thinking of the significance of this excavation, the crowd could not take care of too much. The entire excavation team implemented "three shifts", working 8 hours per shift to ensure uninterrupted operation throughout the day. During the day, the sun is blazing, sweating like rain; at night, the lights are carried out without slacking off.
Crowds gathered in the pit, holding hoes and shovels in hand, carefully "opening up the territory and expanding the soil", and carefully cleaning up the accumulated soil with bamboo sticks and brushes. The excavations lasted for nearly a month, unearthing a total of 567 artifacts of various types, including the golden staff of the ancient Shu king. Shortly after the excavation of the No. 1 sacrificial pit was completed, the No. 2 sacrificial pit was found next to it, and the archaeological team quickly entered the excavation of the No. 2 sacrificial pit.
If it is said that these common instrument types such as Yuge and Yuzhang have also appeared in textbooks, then the bronze masks with large ears, bulging eyes and flat mouths, and the bronze human heads, their appearance is different from any previous excavated cultural relics, which can be said to be unheard of. Liu Zhangze, who was still in college, did not know himself, and the erudite teacher in his daily life also made trouble, and once regarded the bronze mask as the throne of the ancient Shu people and the ears as handrails.
In just two months, archaeologists have excavated thousands of cultural relics such as gold, jade and bronze in two sacrificial pits, which have attracted the attention of the global archaeological community, and the term "Sanxingdui" has officially entered the public eye.
Liu Zhangze (right) in the field archaeological survey exploration (courtesy of Liu Zhangze)
Bold assumptions be careful to verify
Since 1986, when sanxingdui no. 1 and no. 2 sacrifice pits were excavated in Deyang Guanghan Nanxing Town, since then, it has been difficult to get rid of this ancient Shu relic.
After graduation, Liu Zhangze returned to his hometown of Deyang and continued to devote himself to archaeology-related work, during which he participated in the excavation of the Sanxingdui site many times. Compared with the fiery relic ontology research, Liu Zhangze wants to start from the peripheral research to fill the gap in the origin of the Sanxingdui civilization.
The Sanxingdui ruins group is centered on the site of Sanxingdui City and radiates a large area around it, including a number of large, medium and small ruins in the same period, and the ecological structure and political structure of the regional culture constituted by the ecological structure and political structure of the regional culture are an organic system. In the range of 15-25 kilometers radiating around the Sanxingdui city site as the center, it is of great academic significance to clarify the structure and relationship of the site group of about 200 square kilometers around the Sanxingdui city site.
In order to further clarify the distribution, stratigraphic accumulation and cultural connotation of the Shu cultural sites during the Shang and Zhou Dynasties around the Sanxingdui site, liu Zhangze began to study the outer ruins of Sanxingdui along the Yazi River, Shiting River and Mianyuan River in 2006. In the past 10 years, Liu Zhangze and other archaeologists have found dozens of sites from the late Neolithic to the Shang and Zhou Dynasties in their investigations in the northern part of the Western Sichuan Plain, providing important information for the study of the origin and development and evolution of the Sanxingdui culture.
In Majing Town, Shifang City, Liu Zhangze removed the layers of sediment on the riverbed and found a large number of fragmented pottery pieces, although the color and texture of the pottery are not the same, but it is enough to prove the relationship between the area and the Sanxingdui site. However, the era of this site is sanxingdui phase IV, that is, the "twelve bridge culture" after 3000 BC, and where the origin of the Sanxingdui civilization is still a mystery.
In 2009, the Shifang Guiyuanqiao site was discovered, after excavation and collation, the industry unanimously believes that the Guiyuanqiao site is earlier than sanxingdui phase I, is the earliest late Neolithic site found in the Chengdu plain, the characteristics of the first phase of cultural pottery are more similar to the Maoxian Yingpanshan culture, revealing the source of sanxingdui phase I (Baodun) culture. This discovery successfully enriched the origin of sanxingdui culture, but for Liu Zhangze these are not enough, as long as the problem of the origin of Guiyuanqiao culture is not solved, the origin of Sanxingdui culture will always be a mystery.
Scholars believe that the Guiyuanqiao culture comes from the late Yangshao culture in the middle and upper reaches of the Yellow River, but there is no conclusive conclusion about its route into the Chengdu Plain. It is generally recognized that there are two routes, namely: along the Bailong River basin south, through the Songpan Grassland, and then to The present-day Mao County, Wenchuan, Li County and other places, and then down the Min River into the Chengdu Plain; along the Bailong River into the Baishui River, and then turn to the Golden Bull Road into the Chengdu Plain. In the ancient times when transportation was inconvenient, the possibility of living by the water and going down the water was indeed very large.
However, Liu Zhangze believes that the first phase of the Guiyuan Bridge site is more similar to the Yingpanshan culture in Maoxian County, while Shifang and Maoxian are only separated by a mountain, although the road is steep in between, but there should be a contact channel in ancient times, is it possible that "the ancient Shu people crossed the Jiuding Mountain to Shifang"?
After putting forward his views, Liu Zhangze quickly launched data collection and in-depth investigation, hoping to use empirical evidence to support his speculations. Opportunities are always left to those who are prepared. In August 2016, Liu Zhangze organized a symposium on "Crossing Jiuding Mountain, Finding the Way to Guiyuan Bridge", and Mr. Yu Youqiang from the Maoxian Wildlife Conservation Association showed the stone axe he found in ShauJitang, which provided a new and important clue for the study of the cultural source and path of Guiyuanqiao.
To Liu Zhangze's surprise, in October of the same year, when he led a team to carry out an archaeological survey of the upper reaches of the Yazi River and the Shiting River, one or two pieces of pottery were excavated in the alluvial strata of the Shiting River outlet in Luocheng Village, Luocheng Village, Shifang Luoshui Town. "The sand is very heavy, the particles are very thick, and you can see at a glance that it is something of guiyuanqiao culture," Liu Zhangze said firmly.
The discovery of pottery tablets from the Guiyuanqiao period proves that there may be remnants of the Guiyuanqiao period in the canyon area of the upper reaches of the Shiting River. A route of "first crossing the Jiuding Mountain, and then following the upper gorge of the Shiting River into Shifang" gradually became clear. But evidence of mountain canyons is not easy to find, and for thousands of years, thick mudslides have accumulated on both sides of the Shiting River Gorge, which cannot be explored at all, let alone excavated. Liu Zhangze led the team to try, but he could only return without success.
So far, from the Yingpanshan culture to the Guiyuanqiao Phase I culture, from the Sanxingdui site Phase I culture to the Sanxingdui culture, the ancient Shu painting scrolls represented by Sanxingdui have been thoroughly unfolded under the efforts of Liu Zhangze and many other scholars, constituting a relatively complete sequence of regional cultural development, providing important information for the study of the origin and development evolution of Sanxingdui culture.
Liu Zhangze at Jiuding Mountain (Courtesy of Liu Zhangze)
Explore history in excavations
Archaeological excavations are never a "I found!" It was done in exclamations, because history would never be sealed there in its entirety, waiting for future generations to open. Rather, history as we know it now is made up of countless remnants of pieces spliced together.
Any dusty historical picture can only be speculated until it is supported by empirical evidence. Although Liu Zhangze did not personally participate in the excavation of the 6 newly discovered sacrificial pits, he was very concerned and full of expectations. He believes that the No. 1 and No. 2 sacrifice pits are just individual cases, opening a window into the mystery of ancient Shu culture; the excavation of the new 6 sacrifice pits will display all the treasures of the ancient Shu country, and provide a new interpretation of the nature of the sacrifice pits and the cosmology and religious views of the ancient Shu people. Judging from the artifacts unearthed from these 8 pits, these are the "sacrificial pits" where the ancient Shu people carried out certain sacrificial acts, or the "sacrificial pits" where the sacrificial vessels were buried, which is worth re-understanding. In order to truly solve the mystery, it is necessary to study all the data after the excavation.
As Liu Zhangze said: "Archaeology is a rigorous discipline, discovery is only the beginning, excavation is only the extraction process of archaeological data, archaeological conclusions must be through a longer process of data collation and research to reach." He spent more than 10 years to put forward new views on the migration route of the ancient Shu ancestors and made new progress on the issue of Sanxingdui traceability.
For the general public, it is usually only the conclusions that are concerned, but often ignore that these conclusions are obtained by archaeologists through long and even painful exploration, which is often difficult for some young and energetic new archaeologists. As a senior in the industry, Liu Zhangze naturally welcomes more young people to join the archaeological cause, but at the same time, he also hopes that these newcomers who have just entered the industry can sink down and realize their value in the fertile land of Deyang and the cultural site of Sanxingdui with full enthusiasm and hard work.
To this day, sanxingdui still has many unsolved problems. For example, why are the bronze relics of Sanxingdui similar to the styles of some cultural relics excavated in West Asia and ancient Egypt, is it homologous or the commonality of ancient civilizations? For example, as a representative of the bronze civilization, what is the source of copper in Sanxingdui? Where is the casting site of its bronzes?
"We can never really restore history," Liu Zhangze said with regret. As archaeologists, they are more of a scavenger of historical fragments, who can explore and discover for a lifetime, but they cannot really restore them. Despite this, Liu Zhangze still did not stop exploring. In the future, he will further start from the periphery, looking for clues and traces in the vast Sichuan West Plain, and exploring the unknown past of the ancient Shu people.