Original title: Zhangjiachuan Majiayuan site unveiled the mystery of the Xirong ethnic group
Thousand-year "luxury car" unearthed records
M3 tomb chamber and vertical hole burial vehicle
blue dragonfly eye glass beads
blue dragonfly eye glass beads
Wolf-shaped sticker gold silver iron car peg decoration
bird snake fighting pattern gold belt decoration
M3-2 wheel surface decoration
M14 burial No. 1 car restoration renderings (the picture of this edition is provided by Gansu Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology)
Xie Yan
There is a site in the archaeological discovery of Gansu. It must be mentioned that it is the site of Majiayuan, Gansu. In 2021, on the 100th anniversary of the birth of modern archaeology in China, the Majiayuan site was selected as the "Top 100 Archaeological Discoveries in a Century". Who would have thought that the field archaeological work of the Majiayuan site lasted from 2006 to 2020, and was excavated and sorted for 15 years. It includes Neolithic cultural relics and large-scale ruins of sacrificial pits and tomb groups in the Warring States Period. It provides important information for exploring the Western Rong culture, Qin Rong relationship and cultural exchanges between China and the West, and also unveils the mystery of the Western Rong ethnic group.
Tomb Discovery
Majiayuan Cemetery is located on a mountain ridge farmland called Majiayuan north of Taoyuan Village, Muhe Township, Zhangjiachuan Hui Autonomous County, Tianshui City, Gansu Province. One day in early August 2006, a tomb excavation case broke the tranquility here, and started the field archaeology work of the Majiayuan site with 15 years of green lights and yellow scrolls. Today, people can have a more concrete understanding of the Western Rong culture, which is precisely because of such a group of cultural relics and archaeologists who sleep in the open and unknown.
Majiayuan cemetery is backed by Majiayuan ridges, and on both sides are the higher terrain of Tuojialiang and Maojialiang. The tombs are distributed in the gentle area on the mountainside, like sitting on a chair of a Taishi.
" Zhangjiachuan has 3 tombs stolen. According to on-site investigation, there were horse bones, bow caps, patent leather and agate beads and other relics. The county public security bureau also seized a batch of cultural relics. We have applied for an excavation license from the State Cultural Relics Administration. You and Lao Zhou go to the site to guide the staff of Zhangjiachuan County Museum and clean up the robbed tombs with them. I finished the work at hand and then arrived." One day in early August 2006, Wang Hui, then deputy director of the Gansu Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology and leader of the Majiayuan Archaeology Project, told me and Zhou Guangji.
However, no one expected that the field archaeology work at the Majiayuan site lasted from 2006 to 2020, and lasted for 15 years.
On August 8, 2006, I, along with Teacher Zhou Guangji and staff from Zhangjiachuan County Cultural Relics Bureau and County Museum, entered the archaeological site and began the rescue excavation and cleaning of three robbed tombs in the Majiayuan Cemetery. We numbered the three stolen tombs M1, M2, and M3 respectively according to the order of excavation.
Excavation and cleaning
Excavation, the first thing to do is to find and identify the strata and scope of the opening of the tomb pit. In the process of searching for the opening of M1, I found that the opening has not been found, but five horse heads were unearthed about 1 meter deep under the modern surface. The snout of the horse head faces eastward, is prone to form, and there are horse hoof bones on both sides. They are about 7 meters apart from north to south and about 3 meters apart from east to west, like two horses moving eastward.
The opening of the tomb pit was not deep under the horse's head. It turned out that these horse heads were placed on the outside of the tomb opening and buried around the tomb pit, which means that the original surface of the tomb was not destroyed. Experienced Teacher Zhou proposed: There should be other relics on the opening surface. With this speculation, we expanded the area of exposure. As expected, a pile of cattle, sheep skulls and hoof bones were found 5 meters north of the northwest corner of the tomb entrance, with an area of about 2 square meters. They should have been left over from the tomb owners of this tomb. When the tomb pit was filled with soil and dug to about 8 meters below the surface, I cleared a collapsed patent leather with an east-west direction and about 6 cm wide. At first I judged that it was a lacquered wooden stick.Before I was excavated by Majiayuan, I had also cleaned some ancient tombs in other areas. My excavation experience told me that the relics are either placed horizontally or at a certain angle. As long as you clean them downwards along this angle, you can reveal the relics. But as I continued to clean up along this patent leather, I found it was arc-shaped and the east and west were constantly drilling into the filling. With confusion, I went to ask Teacher Zhou for advice. He directed the excavators to dig up the fill around the relics first, then carefully remove the fill around the relics, and the shovel was flying lightly in his hand, and the upper part of a wheel gradually came into view.
Teacher Zhou shoveled his hand into the soil, patted the soil on his hand and said to me, "We need to make a major discovery! This is the wheel, there should be a complete carriage underneath, you must clean it carefully!"
As the excavation work continues to advance, the four cars buried in the vertical holes of M1 and M3 were cleaned out by us, all of which were single shaft and double wheel carriages. Take the burial vehicles in the M3 vertical hole as an example: they form a line from east to west and travel eastward. The car rides on the east side are the most complex, and the car rides on the back are decreasing. The first car, based on the painted pattern on the surface of the wooden body, was decorated with copper square hollow decorative parts on the outside of the car, and copper triangle hollow decorative parts on the wheel surface. The second car is a car with an eagle face on both sides of the carriage. I once joked to the visitors: This is a cool summer car, and the passengers can hold their arms against the ears and visit the beautiful rivers and mountains of the motherland. The third car was painted on the surface of the car body and no other metal decorations were found. The first and third cars have the same shape, both rounded square carriages and high railings. The fourth car has the smallest car and is circle-shaped, with no decoration on the surface.
Explore and crack
Archaeological excavation must first have investigation, research, prediction and work plan in order to be targeted. Since this excavation was a rescue cleanup, the hole was hit on the tomb, so no conventional exploration was carried out before the excavation. So the question is: What is the structure of the tomb? Where is the tomb owner buried? Teacher Zhou Guangji and I have discussed this issue many times. When the vertical hole filled with soil was about to be cleaned to the bottom, the wooden boards erected on the north wall of the vertical hole were exposed - "College Tomb! Confirm!" I said to Teacher Zhou excitedly. Since it is a cave tomb, considering the safety and convenience of excavation, it is necessary to excavate from the upper direction of the cave to remove all the soil on the top of the cave. Archaeologically, this work is called "the big lifting of the top". But where to lift the top from and in which direction? It has become a question we need to consider again.
According to Li Chengjun, director of Muhe Township Police Station who had entered the M1 thieves hole, recalled: from the entrance of the thieves hole on the surface, it reached the bottom of the thieves hole vertically down about 7 meters-8 meters, and then dug horizontally in two directions, one towards the north, but it ended after not walking far; the other towards the west, it was very deep, and the thieves hole was not high, and people had to bend over and move forward, and the space became narrower the more they went in. Considering the personal safety, they did not go in.
Teacher Zhou painted various possibilities of the tomb structure on paper according to Director Li’s description. At that moment, we were like solving an eternal mystery: the vertical hole is in the east-west direction, with a stepped tomb passage at the west end, and a pit near the bottom of the east end, and 4 carriages buried in the pit, and a door sealing panel at the east end of the north wall of the tomb pit. The cave room should be dug from here to north. However, according to Director Li's description, there is another possibility: the direction of the cave chamber is also east-west, so the structure of the tomb may be arranged parallel to the cave chamber and the vertical cave, and there is a space between the two. Even Teacher Zhou, who has more than 30 years of archaeological experience and knowledgeable tombs in this structure, has never seen it.
bold assumptions and be careful to verify! On the eve of the "big top lifting", Teacher Zhou and I agreed on a plan to lift the top: first expand northward along the extension line of the east and west walls of the vertical hole 3 meters parallel to the north of the vertical hole opening, and carry out a large top lifting, and then find the top of the cave chamber, and then shrink the range.
During the process of expanding the square and uncovering the top, a dark brown tomb filling strip appeared about 4 meters away from the bottom of the vertical hole. I knew that the top of the cave was about to come out!
In the subsequent excavation, we timely reduced the expansion area based on the direction and scope of the exposed cave, greatly reducing the unearth and labor. More than a month later, a new tomb shape that had never been seen before gradually became clear under our hand shovel: the vertical opening of the tomb was nearly trapezoidal, with a 9-stage staircase with varying height and width at the west end, and 4 carriages were buried on the bottom of the square pit at the east end of the vertical hole. The tomb chamber is located at the eastern end of the northern wall of the vertical hole. It is dug to the northward to form a cave chamber. The cave chamber is divided into two front and rear rooms. The front chamber is rectangular, and there are 9 column holes under the east and west walls. The wooden columns in the column hole are used to support the top of the tomb chamber, which is similar to the shed wood of the beam-frame nature. What is amazing is that a car was buried in the front room, and the decoration is as luxurious as it is. The surface of the car body is decorated with precious materials such as gold, silver, gold and silver, iron, agate , and the decoration coverage is close to 100%, making it impossible to see a wooden part of the entire car body. But the car was seriously damaged due to the collapse of the top of the cave chamber and the wanton destruction of the tomb robbers. The back room is rectangular, and the tomb owner should be buried in it. It is estimated that because the tomb owner is in full bloom, the burial objects are precious and rich, so they are looted by the tomb robbers. We name this type of tomb "the vertical cave of the ladder tomb, the earth pit, the partial cave room tomb."
In early November, Majiayuan was already covered in silver, and the tomb looked like an ice cave. The weather is cold, but the mood of work is hot, and archaeological questions are one after another: with such a special tomb shape, such luxuriously decorated burial vehicles, and exquisite and diverse burial objects, who are their owners? What kind of ethnic group and cultural appearance are these people?
Cultural attributes
In the 1930s, Mr. Su Bingqi excavated the "shuojia" at the Baoji Doujitai site, which set a precedent for the research of Qinrong culture. In the 1980s, Mr. Zhao Huacheng of the Department of Archaeology of Peking University first divided the two types of cultural relics unearthed from the Maojiaping site excavated by him into "Handle 1 Qin culture remains (Group A remains)" and "Group B remains (Group B remains) characterized by sand-sanded red-brown pottery".
In the second half of 2006, two teachers Zhao Huacheng and Wei Zheng, who taught at Peking University , led students from Peking University archaeology majoring in the field excavation and internship at the Dabaozishan site in Li County. One day, while the work was shut down due to the rain, he took the students and rented a car to Majiayuan for inspection. During this investigation, teachers Zhao Huacheng, Wang Hui and Wei Zheng conducted in-depth discussions. Based on the relics unearthed from the Majiayuan tombs, the sandy red-brown pottery shoveled foot tripods, the sandy red-brown pottery single-ear jar, the large-horned sheep-shaped copper carriage ornaments, copper tripods, copper cocoon-shaped pots, horse carriages and other relics unearthed from the Majiayuan tombs, combined with the tomb shape, these relics were characterized as the "Xirong cultural relics" under the control of the Qin people. The Majiayuan site is a cemetery of the Xirong nobles from the late Warring States Period to the Qin Dynasty.
The history of the Western Rong in ancient documents can be traced back to , the late Shang Dynasty to the Western Zhou Dynasty. The so-called Western Rong is a general term for ethnic minorities around the Zhou and Qin cultural distribution areas in the northwest region of the pre-Qin period, and is not a specific ethnic group.
"Xirong culture" refers to the cultural relics left over from the Xirong nation in history. The Western Rong ethnic group has many castes, and its material and cultural relics are also diverse. It is difficult to summarize them with a certain archaeological culture. Xirong culture actually covers many archaeological cultures. The cultural relics of the Western Rong discovered in archaeology mainly refer to the Siwa, Xindian and Kayo cultures in the Shang Dynasty, the Western Zhou Dynasty, and the Xirong cemetery of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, which was discovered in Gansu and Ningxia and northern Shaanxi. Among them, the Xirong cemeteries and related remains of the Zhou and Qin cultures, namely, the Shang Dynasty, and the Shang Dynasty to the Warring States Period. Because the records about the Western Rong in historical books are relatively simple, although the historical community has conducted a lot of reviews and research for a long time, its understanding of its family and culture is still very vague.
attracted attention
On April 8, 2007, the "Top Ten New Archaeological Discoveries in the Country" guided by the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, sponsored by China Cultural Relics Newspaper and the Chinese Archaeological Society, and enjoyed the reputation of the Oscar of the archaeological community, was announced in Beijing. The Majiayuan Site Archaeology Project won the "Third Prize of the Field Archaeology Award 2006-2007". On October 18, 2021, as modern Chinese archaeology ushered in a century, the Majiayuan site was selected as the "100-year Archaeological Discovery". At this point, the Xirong culture reflected by the Majiayuan site and its unearthed relics has caused a continuous and huge response at home and abroad.
Archaeological achievements of the Majiayuan site have set off a small climax in all sectors of society, our excavation work is still continuing. During this period, more types of tombs were unearthed, mostly vertical caves and caves. The scale of the tombs is proportional to the number of steps, cave areas, number of cars, number of burial objects and degree of exquisiteness. Its unique tomb shape, gorgeous vehicles, complex human body decorations and relics containing various cultural factors slowly revealed its true appearance under the shovel of archaeologists. Due to the diverse types of unearthed vehicles, rich surface decoration and complex technology, most of them have collapsed and deformed when unearthed; the owners of tombs are mostly burying, etc., these complex phenomena have brought great difficulties to the field excavation. In order to better protect this batch of cultural relics and more fully extract the historical and cultural information contained in cultural relics, under the leadership of the Gansu Provincial Cultural Relics Bureau, the Majiayuan archaeological team, composed of the "Early Qin Culture Joint Archaeology Team" composed of five units, including the Gansu Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, Peking University School of Archaeology, National Museum of Archaeology, Shaanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology, and Northwest University Cultural Heritage, the work is progressing more refined with the strong cooperation of the Zhangjiachuan County Museum. We packed the unearthed wooden coffins and some vehicles into the whole box and extracted them to the laboratory to further clean and protect them in a controlled environment, achieving more gratifying results.
carriage recovery
The vehicle buried in Majiayuan has been under the ground for more than 2,000 years of chemical, physics and microbial action. When it was unearthed, the wooden part had been replaced by the tomb soil, the metal objects were rusted, and the cultural relics were mostly broken and deformed, showing the sense of vicissitudes of history and heavyness. The information on its shape, structure, assembly method, process technology, history, culture, technology and other aspects are what the archaeological work is to explore.
In 2012, approved by the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, the Gansu Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology launched the "Compass Plan - Research on the Value Excavation and Restoration of Ancient Vehicles in China" project, and many units participated in the completion. The project takes the unearthed vehicles in Majiayuan cemetery as the research object. Through dissection and excavation, high-definition photography, three-dimensional laser scanning and other means, the original information such as vehicle size, shape, and decoration can be extracted and recorded to the maximum extent; using modern scientific and technological means such as scanning electron microscope, , X fluorescence, X diffraction, infrared spectroscopy, etc., the constituent materials of the vehicle body and decorative materials are scientifically analyzed and identified, and combined with traditional craft surveys, the shape, decoration technology and production process of the burial carriage unearthed in Majiayuan are summarized.
In October 2014, after the separate "actions" of the groups in the project, Deng Tianzhen and I went to Tongzhou, Beijing to make the final sprint for the carriage restoration work in Mr. Kang Jian's studio - vehicle decoration assembly. We brought more than 36,000 beads from Lanzhou, led by Teacher Lin Yixian and helped produce more than 20 colleagues from the Gansu Archaeology Institute. Mr. Li Zhongkui brought the wooden body of the carriage he copied from Chengde . Ms. Zhou Jie completed the production of gold and silver jewelry that she was responsible for. Mr. Kang Jian and his wife prepared other texture jewelry that they were responsible for. Teacher Yang Xiaolin also came with her cultural relics protection materials. In this not-so-spacious room, everyone started work at 8 a.m. and finished work at 9 or 10 p.m. They worked for more than 40 days and nights. Finally, on the night of November 29, they completed the physical restoration of the original materials and original craftsmanship of the unearthed carriage in Majiayuan. On November 30, this restored carriage, with its beautiful figure, together with the precious cultural relics discovered by the Qin Cultural Project Team for ten years of hard archaeological work, gathered at the Sekler Archaeology and Art Museum of Peking University for exhibition, aroused strong social response.The exhibition has been exhibited in museums in Lanzhou, Xi'an, Hangzhou, Jinan, Shanghai and other places.
Today we can have a more concrete understanding of Xirong culture because there are a group of cultural relics workers with green lights, yellow rolls, wind and sunglasses, and unknown. Through their joint efforts, the mystery of the Xirong ethnic group has been unveiled. This is just a corner of the veil. In the future, more aspiring people will need to make unremitting efforts for it.
(Author’s unit: Gansu Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology)
