The reporter learned from the Municipal Bureau of Culture, Sports and Tourism that recently, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage approved seven active archaeological excavation projects in Anhui Province in 2024Guzhen County Qixia siteamong them.
The site is not only the ancient battlefield of the decisive battle between Chu and Han, but also the site of the late Dawenkou culture discovered for the first time in the middle reaches of the Huai River. The ruins of the lower wall are presented as an irregular rectangular platform with rounded corners 2 meters above the ground on the outer side, and the surrounding edge of the platform is built with residual soil to build a city wall, and the flat low ground on the outside of the city wall is a ditch. The length of the east, west, south and north walls is about 410 meters, 480 meters, 280 meters and 340 meters respectively, the total length of the city circle is 1,510 meters, the area in the city is about 150,000 square meters, there is a moat outside the city, and the ditch is 15-20 meters wide.
The excavation of the site will be restarted in 2021, and the archaeological practice base of the site of Shandong University will be established in that year, and the archaeological excavation of the site will continue to be carried out in the past three years, and the excavation will continue to be jointly carried out by the Anhui Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology and Shandong University, with an excavation area of 1,000 square meters. Through the excavation of the site this year, it will provide a more adequate scientific basis for clarifying the age, nature, layout, structure and evolution of the entire site, and at the same time, combined with the results of the previous excavation, it will provide a more accurate reference for the in-depth study of the cultural connotation and value of the site, as well as the effective protection and rational use of the site.
At the same time, this year, in order to cooperate with the construction of the Yuanxia History Museum, archaeological excavations will be carried out on the Jiashankou Han tombs in the construction control zone of the Yuanxia site. The excavation of the tombs here may provide new clues for the layout, evolution, and development of social life in the Han Dynasty, as well as the historical research during the Chu-Han War.
Active archaeological excavation is an archaeological excavation carried out around national key topics and solving major historical problems. This year's archaeological excavation of the site is carried out on the basis of previous years, which will further reveal the historical and cultural value of the site, and combined with the excavation of the Jiashankou tomb group, the origin and evolution of the early cities in China, the civilization process of the Huaihe River Basin and the historical development of the Haocheng area from the Neolithic period to the Qin and Han dynasties, provide valuable new archaeological information.
Take this opportunity today
Let's talk about "Xiaxia".
The ruins of the ancient battlefield under the wall.
The ancient battlefield of Guzhen is known as "one of the seven ancient battlefields in the world", the history books record that "the overlord once fought in the city", the scope of the entire ancient battlefield is centered on the ancient city of Yuanxia, and is distributed in the vast area of more than 100 square kilometers at the junction of Sixian, Lingbi, Wuhe, Guzhen and other counties. A large number of cultural relics such as arrow clusters, carriage accessories, war horse corpses, and armor pieces have been unearthed in this area, proving that large-scale wars took place here, and are of great value for accurately understanding this history.
In 1986, the site of Guzhen was approved by the people of Anhui Province as a provincial key cultural relics protection unit, and in May 2013, it was announced as the seventh batch of national key cultural relics protection units.
The site of Dawenkou Cultural City.
When it comes to "Yuanxia", the first thing that comes to people's minds is the battle of Yuanxia, which laid the foundation of the Han Dynasty 2,200 years ago. However, under the eternal swan song of "ambush on all sides" and "farewell my concubine", there is also a Neolithic cultural relic buried here - the site of Dawenkou Cultural City.
Dawenkou culture is a Neolithic culture distributed in the lower reaches of the Yellow River, named after the ruins of Dawenkou Town, Dawenkou Town, Tai'an City, Shandong Province, about 6500-4500 years ago, and is also the source of Longshan culture. The Dawenkou cultural relics in the Bengbu area have been repeatedly found in the three counties of the urban area, such as the second phase of the Huaiyuan Shuanggudui site, the Wuhe Hancun site, the Dawenkou cultural city site in Guzhen, the Nanchengzi site, the Wugudui site, the Jinzhuang site, the Qianzhuangding site, the Hugou site, etc. These sites are located on the platform on both sides of the river, and there is a general phenomenon of cultural layer association, the lower layer is the middle and late stage of Dawenkou culture, and the upper layer is Longshan culture, and its cultural characteristics are mainly manifested as: the pottery is mainly sand-filled red pottery and brown pottery, followed by argillaceous gray pottery, the fetal quality is harder, and the fire temperature is higher. The vast majority of the pottery is plain, and the ornamentation mainly consists of string patterns, additional pile patterns and a small amount of perforated decoration. The shape of the vessel has tripods, skulls, beans, cans, pots, cups, etc. In particular, the site of Dawenkou Cultural City in Guzhen County is a typical representative, and it is also the first site of Dawenkou Cultural City found in Anhui Province.
The site of the Dawenkou cultural city is located in the scenic area of the ruins park of Haocheng Town, Guzhen County, the city site is now a place, the Tuohe River flows to the east through the west side of the city site to the north side, there is the city wall that was built in the late period of the Dawenkou culture and the Han Dynasty, the two are stacked on top of each other, more than 400 meters long from east to west, about 300 meters long from north to south, there is a circle of ditches outside the city, the plane of the city site is an irregular rounded rectangle, the outline is clear, there is a city wall around it, the wall is 2-3 meters higher than the ground on the outside, The inner ring of the city wall covers an area of about 150,000 square meters.
In the period of Dawenkou culture about 6,000 years ago, the primitive human groups in Shandong and northern Jiangsu moved westward many times, and some primitive ancestors lived by water, and entered the Guzhen in the Huaihe River Basin to live and multiply for generations, living a life of gathering, hunting, and slash-and-burn farming, and gradually built a city under the Guzhen around 5,000 years ago.
After archaeological excavations, there are moats outside the city wall of the city site, and there are platform-shaped foundation sites, pieces of red clay accumulation, kiln sites, wells, trenches, early row houses, platform-shaped foundation sites, pottery kilns, tombs, etc. Among them, on the top of the city wall in the northwest of the site, a group of row houses cleared out are particularly prominent.
This group of terraced houses is built in the direction of the city wall, consisting of 5 townhouses and 1 independent annex house, the house structure is exquisite, the inside of the wall and the ground are plastered with fine white ash, due to the fire, the texture of the wall and the ground is hard and flat, the surface color is bright, the part is smooth like a mirror, and the junction of the wall and the ground is even painted with red foot lines, indicating that the house has lived for a long time and has undergone many repairs and transformations. There is also a doorway on the north wall of the house, which is only 03～0.5 meters, even a single person can only pass sideways, and the north gate is facing the ditch.
It is worth mentioning that during the excavation, a strange phenomenon was discovered: a layer of ash appeared on the slope of a group of city walls, and there seemed to be a straight crack in the middle of this layer of ash. Several on-site sampling and analysis by experts from the ** bureau confirmed that this is a strong evidence of prehistoric ** that occurred about 4,500 years ago.
In addition, the archaeologists also found pottery fragments such as sand-filled pottery, argillaceous gray pottery and clay black pottery in the city wall and six excavation points in the city, as well as a small number of yellow pottery and white pottery, and the shape of the recognizable vessel has a pot, a skull, a basin, a pot, a cup, a lid and a dingzu, etc., the surface of the vessel is mostly plain, the pattern is mainly a basket pattern, and there are pile patterns, rope patterns, checkered patterns, concave string patterns, line patterns, etc., which have the common characteristics of Longshan culture.
*: Bengbu**Sherong**Reporter: He Pei Text and Picture Information Provided: Guzhen County Museum Bengbu City Museum Editor: Zhou Ze).