Revealing dig at Tang royal garden

The life and affairs of the Chinese emperors in the Tang Dynasty (618-907), when the ancient Chinese civilization reached its peak period, have kept archaeologists at the ruins of the Tang imperial Daming Palace for years.

At a forum held on Tuesday at the Institute of Archaeology with Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), they reported the discovery of the biggest imperial garden within the palace.

Their findings have initially confirmed the historical record that a fairyland-like garden centered around Taiyechi Pool in the palace.

"And the results also offer fresh materials for a comparative study of the ancient gardens at home and abroad," said Gong Guoqiang of CASS, who is leading the investigation team.

Located in northeast Xi'an, Shaanxi Province, the palace was once an administration center of both state and foreign affairs.

However, history annals about the garden was sketchy as even historians then had no access to it, Gong said.

When researchers from a joint team of CASS and Japan's National Research Institute for Cultural Properties of Nara arrived at the ruins in 2001, the area was largely farmland.

"Careful excavations on the site unveiled the design of the historically recorded Taiyechi Pool. It reflected the thought of Taoism," Gong said.

In the center of the west pool of Taiyechi was an island called Penglai. Now in the same pool, the archaeologists also discovered a new island, whose name still remains unidentified.

"There should be a third island, probably in the smaller east pool, which, however, is covered by village buildings meaning the excavation work can not be carried out," said Gong.

According to history, there were 400 winding corridors around Penglai Island. The archaeologists proved their actual existence.

Researchers also discovered waterside pavilion and banisters-supported buildings, which were not mentioned in ancient records.

On the southern bank, the finding of a group of large-scale corridor and court complex structure greatly excited the archaeologists. "It is the first time to see such a scale of the structure of its kind in imperial palaces," said Gong.

A large batch of rare relics has also been excavated on the site, some of them not documented before.

Palace city under scrutiny

Roughly during the time when Hammurabi found the Babylonian Empire and devised the Hammurabi's Code, ancient Chinese were expanding the first palace city in their history, in today's Yanshi, Central China's Henan Province.

The ruins, called Erlitou, have already been well recognized in archaeological circles.

Over the past two years, archaeologists from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) conducted further investigations on the ruins and obtained fresh knowledge about it.

"The discoveries indicate this old palace city set the first example for the constructions of later imperial palaces," said Dr Xu Hong of the Institute of Archaeology, CASS, who is leading the archaeological investigation team.

Covering an area of about 108,000 square meters, the rectangular city is about 300 meters wide from the east to the west, and 360 to 370 meters long from the north to the south.

The newly excavated city wall was built along the inner sides of the four roads, each 10 to 20 meters wide, which was discovered at an earlier time. The crisscross roads, in the shape of a nine-square chessboard, form the transportation network in the central area of the palace region.

Two groups of unearthed palace foundations have a clear central line. Also, either the palace, or the large-scale building complex, or the roads, are lined up in the same direction, showing the city had a clear layout.

The discovery of small-sized two-wheeled vehicles tracks has pushed back the appearance of two-wheeled vehicles in China to the period corresponding to the Xia Dynasty (2100-1600 BC).

Xu said the layout is one of the important characteristics of ancient Chinese cities.

In previous excavations, researchers unearthed a lot of relics used in daily life of the ancient residents.

However, researchers are tempted to change their original concept after their discovery of the ancient city wall and large-scale earth building foundations.

"We need more exploration work," said Xu.

The latest excavation of large-scale rammed earth projects and turquoise ware making and bronze melting workshops provides a firm proof that Erlitou Site still played an important role until the late stage of Erlitou Culture.

Xu said that it was highly possible that the late stage of Erlitou still enjoyed a period of continuous development, instead of an all-around downfall as previously believed. According to sketchy history records, the country might have been undergoing some dynastic changes at the time.

Erlitou Culture was distributed in almost the whole middle reaches of the Yellow River. It features the first core culture covering a vast region in Chinese history.

Northern settlers wore masks during rituals

A large Neolithic village that came to light last summer revealed the earthly and religious lives of the hunters and gatherers in the country's northern plains some 7,000 to 8,000 years ago.

The village, namely the Beifudi Neolithic Site, covers more than 30,000 square meters on a terrace on the northern Bank of Yishui River, Yixian County of north China's Hebei Province.

"The foundations of 10 houses built at the riverbank have been preserved till today," said Duan Hongzhen, leader of the excavation team and deputy director of the Hebei Institute of Cultural Heritage and Archaeology.

They showed the villagers lived in "basements," with their houses built half into the ground. The properties of its early residents include quantities of earthenware - pots and vases.

The most interesting were a dozen or so earthenware masks, resembling faces of people, monkeys, pigs and animals from cat family. These ranged in size from that of a real human face to 10-centimetre-long miniatures.

"The masks are bas-reliefs. You can see the mouths and noses were sculpted so vividly. It's the first time a bas-relief human mask has been found at a Neolithic site in China," Duan said.

Around the edge of each mask are five tiny holes. Duan speculated the mask was fastened onto the face with strings similar to today, whenever they held religious rituals.

"The masks have vital importance for us to explore the spiritual life of the ancient people," said Duan.

Archaeologists also discovered at a 11-metre-long, 8-metre-wide square, where rituals were probably held. "The items excavated in the square are very exquisite, but not for practical use, so we have surmised that this might be the ritual ground," said Duan.

Ruin offers clues to storage facilities

XI'AN - Archaeological research appears to prove a ruin of an ancient storage building discovered in Fengxiang County, Shaanxi Province in Northwest China is of great historical significance.

"The discovery offers very important object materials for the study on transporting, storage, arms and building technology in the Western Han Dynasty (206BC-24AD)," claims Tian Yaqi, researcher with Shaanxi Provincial Archaeological Research Institute.

The ruin was found last May when an archaeological team from Shaanxi Provincial Archaeological Research Institute and Baoji Municipal Archaeological Research Institute, worked near the Qinian Palace which was built in the Warring States Period (475-221 BC).

The ruin, located in Fengxiang, a county some 300 kilometers west of Xi'an, was built on an open platform next to the eastern bank of Qianhe River, Tian explained.

The exploration shows a large-scale construction was made up of three storage houses linked to each other from the south to the north, and the whole area of the building is more than 7,000 square meters.

There are annular rammed soil platforms around the three storage peripheries, and on the rammed soil platform linking each two storage houses are two passageways in south-north direction. There are also seven ventilating channels in the eastern and western sides of each storages.

Archaeologists have found walls, post plinth and roads.

Experts deduce the storage overall arrangement, setting up erect logs at the plinth in intensive posts and then put the plank on the logs and preserve the things above. The goods preserved like this way far from the ground can be best protected from damp.

Tian said the research will give a better understanding of the Qinian Palace which is only 600 meters east from the storage area.

The palace was built in the middle or late period of the Warring States Period, and used as royal palace up to the Western Han Dynasty, and Qinshihuang, the first emperor of the Qin Dynasty (221-206 BC), the first feudal dynasty in Chinese history, used it to hold his coronation ceremony.

Liangzhu tombs give up ancient secrets

HANGZHOU: Xu Xinmin never thought of making headlines when he and his team first stepped into a vast paddy field in the southeast suburbs of Pinghu, a city in East China's Zhejiang Province.

The site, dating back 4,000 to 5,300 years, turned out to be the largest tomb area ever found belonging to the Liangzhu Culture of the New Stone Age.

The discovery will provide further hard evidence for historians to rewrite the lives of the primitive community who created Liangzhu Culture in the lower Yangtze River valley, covering today's Zhejiang and Shanghai.

At the site, archaeologists discovered 236 tombs in an area of 2,000 square meters, unearthing 2,600 funeral objects ranging from pottery ware, stone implements, jade ornaments and bone objects.

"To find such a large number of tombs of the Liangzhu Culture period is amazing," said Xu, leader of the archaeology team, also vice-director with the Archaeological Research Institute in Zhejiang Province.

The Zhuangqiaofen Site is located 13 kilometers southeast of Pinghu. It was first discovered in Qunfeng Village of the Lindai Town in late May, 2003 by a local farmer, who accidentally came across objects.

When he reported the find to the local culture station, Li and his team rushed to the site as they began salvage excavation on June 1, 2003.

"The tomb area was once a huge mound of earth, 1 meter high. It was turned into a paddy farmland for taking soil," Xu told China Daily.

Grave robbers had destroyed more than 10 pits when the archaeology team first got to the site. In the following 15-month excavation, archaeologists have been reporting fantastic finds on the tombs.

One of the interesting and significant finds is 162 tombs or nearly two-thirds of the total, piled one upon another and destroyed. "Such concentrated tombs in the style of packed tightly together was the first to be found in Zhejiang Province," according to Xu.

He explained the "packing tombs" (Dieya Dapo) means a new tomb is built upon an old one. During the construction of the new, the old is partly destroyed owning to limited space.

The largest packing tomb group in the Zhuangqiaofen Site is composed of 10 tombs.

Though the exact reason for the "packing tombs" is still unknown, it seems that ancient people buried in this area might have come from one big family tribe or worshiped the same ancestor, said Xu.

He speculates that the high concentration of tombs may also relate to the site's natural environment. The area is squeezed in between the sea and marshland. The dry land for the community was very limited.

At the large tomb site, researchers also discovered dogs and pigs used in the funeral ceremony. About 12 well-preserved dog skeletons lying in the same pit with their masters unearthed in the site.

Xu said the discovery of the dog or pig pits of the Liangzhu Culture period was also a first for China.

Experts believe these pits might be the place where people worshiped ancestors and gods.

Earliest plough

Among relics excavated from the site, a stone plough with a wooden bottom was first discovered in Zhejiang Province. It is also the earliest of its kind ever found in China.

"With a length of 1.06 meters, the huge plough shows that the farmland in ancient times was very large," Xu said.

As a plough must be pulled by animal such as the cow and controlled by a person, the total space between the animal and the person can reach 3-4 meters.

"It is a new discovery in the pre-historical period, which provides valuable material evidence for the study of the agricultural development in China," Xu said.

It also shows that the agriculture depending on ploughs had reached a high level in the area at that time, Xu added.

With regard to currently unearthed relics, Xu said the Zhuangqiaofen Site should be composed of a relatively large residential area, agricultural area and a tomb area.

At present, the first phrase of excavation is completed. The site is now under local government's protection for future excavation.

"With the excavation, the mystery of Liangzhu Culture will be gradually unveiled," Xu said.

(China Daily January 13, 2005)