Master Archaeologist

Chapter 356 Tomb No. M1
"A total of 17 tombs have been cleared in the Jiangjiashan cemetery, and the basic and comprehensive exposure has been carried out. However, the existing depth of all the tombs is relatively shallow, so the possibility that a small number of tombs have been completely disturbed and destroyed cannot be ruled out."

The staff of the Zhejiang Institute brought Kong Jianwen and his party to the construction site of the Jiangjiashan cemetery.

At this time, there were already 17 detectives, large and small, on the construction site.

Each exploration square represents a Liangzhu noble cemetery.

"The tombs are all rectangular vertical pit tombs, and only a small amount of human bones remain in some of the tombs, which are extremely poorly preserved."

The staff member brought Kong Jianwen, Chen Han and the others to the side of a detective square marked M7, and pointed to the inside of the detective square.

Everyone craned their necks to look in.

This tomb is located on the west side of the middle row of the cemetery, and is stacked under the second floor, breaking the raw soil. It is a rectangular vertical pit tomb.

The filling soil in the pit is gray-brown spotted soil, with reddish-brown soil interspersed with a small amount of burnt soil particles.

According to the naked eye, the length of this tomb should be more than three meters, and the width is a little more than one meter.

The burial utensils have been completely decayed, and the traces are not obvious, and the soil filled in the outer coffin is gray-red soil.

"Is there any burial utensils?" Chen Han murmured.

From the traces of the soil layer, it is obvious that there is a "coffin" trace with a length of more than two meters and a width of eighty to ninety centimeters.

Because the soil layer inside the coffin is different from the outside of the coffin, the filling soil is light gray soil with a small amount of red soil.

It can be seen that there should have been a wooden coffin in the pit originally, but as time passed, the wooden coffin completely decayed, and the soil on it collapsed, covering the original coffin.

This will cause the soil inside the coffin to have a different color from the outside of the coffin, just like backfilling soil.

Because the raw soil structure is broken.

"The coffin is 2.33 meters long and 0.72 meters wide. There is one human skeleton in the tomb, which is extremely poorly preserved. Only part of the ribs, upper limb bones and lower limb bones can be distinguished. The orientation is unknown, and the head is facing north at 1 degrees."

The staff member of the Zhejiang Institute who led everyone seriously introduced: "According to the unearthed jade huang, jade spinning wheel, and filter, it is speculated that the owner of the tomb is a woman, and her age is unknown."

Kong Jianwen was a little puzzled and asked, "How did you tell the difference between the male and the female tomb owner?"

"It's hard to tell the gender of these bones, right?"

The staff member smiled and pointed to the vaguely visible burial objects in the tomb: "According to the previous excavations in Yaoshan and other cemeteries, it can be known that the stone axe, trident-shaped vessels, and groups of cone-shaped vessels basically came from male tombs."

"The jade huang, spinning wheel, steamer, and filter are basically from the female tomb, so the gender of the tomb owner can be roughly inferred from the relics."

Kong Jianwen nodded suddenly.

indeed.

Although humans were originally a matrilineal society.

But basically after entering the Neolithic Age, late Homo sapiens all over the world began to transition from a matrilineal society to a patrilineal society.

Because of the emergence of the Neolithic Age, men's productivity was improved, and farming culture also began to appear. At this time, men with strong military skills gradually replaced women and became the backbone of society.

In a mature ancient society like Liangzhu, the division of labor between men and women is already very mature.

For male tomb owners, the burial objects are generally related to conquest and force, and most of them are buried with weapons.

As for the tomb owner of a woman, because in the family structure, she is in charge of weaving, food and clothing, etc., so most of the burial objects are spinning wheels, retorts and other things related to food and clothing.

The appearance of the spinning wheel is a very important discovery.

Although the Liangzhu culture has basically confirmed that there was a textile industry and silk products, the appearance of the spinning wheel can definitely prove that the Liangzhu people at that time had a textile industry and were very mature!
The appearance of the coffin is also very important.

This shows that the Liangzhu people have already used burial tools proficiently, instead of just digging a pit hastily, placing some funerary objects and burying them like some ancient tribal cultures in the Neolithic Age.

Pay more attention to "things after death", and will use wood to make coffins and burial utensils.

The staff member went on to introduce: "In some tombs, there are traces of coffins, in some tombs there are only traces of coffins, and in a small number of small tombs, there are no traces of coffins."

"The burial objects in the tomb are mainly jade wares, including cong, bi, crown wares, trident wares, huang, cone wares, column wares, bracelets, end ornaments, pipes, beads, etc."

"Pottery and stone tools come next. Pottery includes tripods, beans, ring-footed pots, basins, strainers, steamers, etc. Stone tools are only one type of Yue, and a small amount of shark teeth."

One point needs to be clarified.

In the Jiangjiashan cemetery, the tombs of senior nobles are buried, not the tombs of civilians.

The burial objects of these high-ranking nobles can only represent the living conditions of the high-ranking nobles of the Liangzhu Kingdom, but not the majority of Liangzhu commoners.

At least in that era, Liangzhu people were not yet so luxurious that everyone could have a coffin for encoffining after death.

After all, it is necessary to cut huge logs to make coffins, and then use giant logs to make coffins, which is a waste of productivity.

And from the burial objects of these nobles, it can also be seen that Liangzhu has basically entered the age of jade and pottery.

At least on the noble side, low-end stone tools are no longer used, and jade is more widely used to represent power and force, as well as accessories.

In daily life utensils, a large number of pottery is used.

If you let Chen Han classify.

The Liangzhu Kingdom can already be regarded as a civilization that was more advanced than the Neolithic Age, but slightly behind the Bronze Age.

They are no longer in the Neolithic age, but they are not yet in the Bronze Age.

If you insist on dividing it, it should belong to the "Jade Era" alone!
The jade culture of the ancient Liangzhu country is simply not well-developed. Basically, the mature types of jade wares in later generations can already find their original styles in Liangzhu.

It is no wonder that academic circles at home and abroad agree that Liangzhu civilization is the beginning of Chinese jade culture.

Although it is said that other late Neolithic Chinese cultures such as Longshan Culture and Dawenkou have unearthed jade articles.

However, compared with the sporadic and unsystematic use of jade articles in those cultures, the jade article culture of the Liangzhu civilization not only had a complete system, but also developed very maturely.

It is even possible that the jade culture of Longshan Culture, Dawenkou Culture, and many later cultures in the Central Plains may have originated from Liangzhu.

It was the well-developed jade culture in Liangzhu, which radiated to the outside world, that made many other cultures in the Central Plains start to use jade.

"My friends from the Institute of Archaeology, Academy of Social Sciences."

"Tomb M7 next to Tomb M1 will be excavated and cleaned up by you."

"This is a noble tomb with rich burial objects."

The staff of the Zhejiang Institute of Archaeology pointed to the M7 pit next to the M1 with a smile, and informed Kong Jianwen and the others of their upcoming tasks.

There are a total of 17 noble tombs in Jiangjiashan. Due to the shortage of manpower, at least 4 tombs in Zhejiang Province have been assigned to the Institute of Archeology of the Academy of Social Sciences to help.

The first one, let’s start with this tomb M1!
(End of this chapter)