Master Archaeologist

Chapter 38 Han Dynasty People Need Funeral Loans!
The next day.

Early in the morning, on a gentle hillock in the southeast corner of Mount Fenghuang, five workers, no.

The ancient tombs on the Phoenix Mountain side are really not as big as at 01:30.

Not only Chen Han and his team discovered the tomb yesterday, but the five teams from the Institute of Archeology of the Academy of Social Sciences all discovered at least one tomb.

Three of the tombs were to be excavated.

Compared with yesterday's simple exploration, the workload of the next day is obviously different.

At [-] o'clock in the morning, with the arrival of a bus carrying personnel from the Institute of Archeology of the Academy of Social Sciences, the excavation work officially began.

Chen Han and Zhuang Yunpeng brought ten workers to the cave that was drilled yesterday and started surveying and mapping.

Zhang Jianbo found a convenient place to calibrate the distance. After setting up the rangefinder, he leaned over the rangefinder and entered various data for distance measurement.

"Horizontal angle, vertical angle, height..."

While looking at the data, he sighed and said to Chen Han, who was standing next to him and was studying humbly: "Junior Brother Chen, do you feel that the work we do is really no different from civil engineering?"

"It's just that we dig first and then fill, and they dig first and then build."

"But sadly, civil engineering is a science!"

"Our archeology department is obviously a literature and history major, but we have to go to construction sites every day."

Faced with Zhang Jianbo's complaints, Chen Han really couldn't answer.

He is quite satisfied with the content of his current job, but he is not as impressed as Zhang Jianbo.

But it doesn't matter whether he answered the words or not, Zhang Jianbo just made complaints about it casually.

It is quite normal for archaeologists to complain about their work content.

"Okay, the location is confirmed, Bu Fang."

After planning the standard detection square of 5 meters by 5 meters, Chen Han and Zhuang Yunpeng each took a roll of soft ruler and began to lay out the square around the surveyed and mapped position.

Next, the workers hired by the archaeological team will excavate the tomb according to the exploration plan laid out.

In this area of ​​5 meters by 5 meters, and the depth may be at least 3 meters, all the soil must be dug away.

This is not an easy job.

This is the biggest difference between archaeology and tomb robbery.

The exploration of archaeological excavations and the exploration of tomb robbery are two different things.

Tomb robbers go directly to the utensils. Basically, it is enough to make a hole big enough for one person to get in, just like a mouse digging a hole.

And archaeology is to scientifically "extract" the entire tomb, and it is necessary to study the way it was built, study its scope, and explore the scientific value of the entire tomb.

Why do you want to do this?
Naturally, it is to study the social development of the ancients at that time, the way of social interaction, social appearance and atmosphere, to find some records of the past, and to get a glimpse of the scene of the past.

Therefore, archeology must be careful and careful, serious and serious, not to miss any traces left by the ancients.

Archaeology, literally, is the study of antiquity.

Why study ancient times?

Because human beings live in this world, we must always know where we came from, what our past was like, and thus know where we are going in the future.

Through archaeology, we can know and understand the living conditions of people two or three thousand years ago, what they thought, and why they thought so at that time.

So as to know how our nation formed this status quo and cultural atmosphere.

It is more able to use the past experiences and stories of the ancients to illuminate our future path.

This is very important.

But it is impossible for us to go back in time to witness the social development and humanistic things of ancient people.

Therefore, through archaeological methods, we can face them face to face, allowing us to transcend time and space.

Archeology helps us communicate with the ancients beyond time and space, which is the value and significance of archeology.

Archeology is a mirror, a time mirror that allows modern people to talk to ancient people.

Compared with the tomb robbers who can rob several tombs a day, the archaeological team's movements are indeed much slower.

It took half a month for this five-meter-by-five-meter, three-meter-deep exploration square to be cleared out.

When the workers dug to a depth of three meters, the tombs with obviously different earth colors could be vaguely seen.

Chen Han and his group also deeply participated in the excavation work.

After digging down almost two meters along the places with different soil colors, the entire tomb was finally revealed.

"This tomb should be a vertical pit tomb, with only a tomb chamber and no tomb passage."

"The plane of the tomb is rectangular, with straight walls and a vaulted flat roof. It is 3.9 meters long, 1.9 meters wide and 1.8 meters high."

Su Sa took a notebook and carefully recorded the measured data of the tomb.

For the tombs of the Western Han Dynasty, let’s not talk about the high-ranking nobles and the royal family.

For middle and low-level nobles and commoners, the vertical pit tomb style that has been formed since the late Paleolithic period is basically continued.

Shaft pit graves are a common method of burial.

The ancients dug a burial pit vertically downward from the ground, then placed the coffin in the pit, placed the funerary objects and other sacrificial objects, and then buried it with soil.

This kind of burial method has been prosperous from the Neolithic period to the present.

After all, it's very simple, just dig a hole vertically and you're done.

Today's cemeteries are also buried in this way.

However, since the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, the forms of tombs have become more and more complex and advanced.

Like the Tomb of King Liang Xiao of the Western Han Dynasty at the same time as this tomb, they built an underground palace directly underground, with an area of ​​6600 square meters!
The vestibule, the screen wall, the bedroom hall, the toilet hall, the kitchen, and the cloister are all missing, and the burial specifications are almost the same as those of the emperors of the Han Dynasty.

Compared with it, the tomb dug by Chen Han and the others is much shabby.

The size is only 6 square meters, except for a coffin, there is nothing else.

This disappointed them greatly.

As for the tombs of the nobles, this tomb doesn't look like a noble's tomb at all!
However, this tomb was lucky, it was relatively well preserved, and there were no traces of being stolen.

A deep black tomb coffin was quietly placed in the center of the tomb.

At the northern end of the tomb, there are still some funerary objects piled up messily.

It can be vaguely seen that there are some lacquerware, pottery and jade in the funerary objects.

If there is jade, it means that the owner of the tomb really belongs to the aristocratic class.

The commoners in the Western Han Dynasty must not be able to get jade, and they cannot be buried with jade.

Chen Han rubbed his chin and muttered to himself: "Just looking at the size of the tomb, it is estimated that the title of the owner of the tomb is not high."

"Among the twentieth ranks of the Han Dynasty, it should be within the fifth rank."

In any case, this is also the first tomb he dug out in the Phoenix Mountain tomb group. Although the specifications are a bit low, Chen Han is still full of energy and devoted himself to cleaning up the unearthed cultural relics.

One by one, exquisite lacquerware and pottery were cleaned out of the soil by him and put into the protective liquid.

While cleaning up, Chen Han couldn't help admiring.

"As expected of the people of the Han Dynasty, death is like life. In such a large tomb, there are only thirty or forty pieces of funerary objects!"

"That's not counting the funerary objects in the coffin!"

"No wonder the history books say that many people in the Han Dynasty had to go bankrupt in order to give their parents a decent funeral!"

"The pressure of the filial sons of the Han Dynasty is probably not much different from that of young people with car loans and house loans in modern times!"

"No, at least modern people can pay back their car loans and mortgages in installments. People in the Han Dynasty hold funerals as a one-off deal, and they have to raise a lot of money at once."

"Tsk tsk tsk, I remember that the loan business in the Han Dynasty seems to be very developed. I don't know if there is any funeral loan!"

　Why archaeology?

　　The answer comes from a reporter's question from Mr. Pang Pu.

　　Pang Pu - a famous Chinese historian.He used to be the editor-in-chief of "Historical Research", a researcher and doctoral supervisor of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and an international editorial board member of UNESCO's "History of Human Science and Culture Development".

　　
　　Let's have an hors d'oeuvres first, and the tomb will follow.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)