Master Archaeologist

Chapter 50 The merchants of Bashu reach the world!

Pump the water and clean the coffin chamber.

Familiar work content.

Chen Han, who got started for the second time, was obviously much more comfortable.

With the operation of the water pump, the situation in the coffin chamber gradually became clear to the archaeologists.

Compared with Tomb M-105, the grade of Tomb M-168 is really much higher.

The coffin chamber of tomb No. 168 is divided into three parts: head box, side box and coffin box by beams and straight plates.

The head box and side box here do not mean "head box", but two partition areas above the coffin and next to the coffin.

It's like the kind of workstations in an office room that are separated by a single board.

There is a door and two windows connecting the coffin box and the head box.

There are also two doors and four windows communicating between the coffin and the side box.

It is because of these interlinked doors and windows that all areas in the coffin chamber are filled with groundwater.

However, looking at the situation in the outer coffin, it can also be seen that in the Western Han Dynasty, the outer coffins of the nobles were all built after their living rooms.

These divided side boxes and head boxes can also be regarded as condensed wing rooms.

The coffin is the "bedroom" of the owner of the tomb.

Compared with princes, kings and emperors, they directly reproduce the palaces they lived in before they were born in the ground.

Aristocrats without strong financial resources can only restore some of the scene of their life in the coffin chamber.

An independent coffin chamber is a condensed "house".

Of course, these compartments are not really just for decoration.

The funeral objects of the owner of the tomb were all placed in the head box and the side box!

As the water level in the coffin is getting lower and lower, people can already see the funeral objects in the coffin.

Nearly 20 archaeologists from the Institute of Archeology of the Academy of Social Sciences surrounded the coffin chamber, which is 4.3 meters long from east to west and 3.1 meters wide from north to south, and immediately put themselves into the intense work of extracting cultural relics.

This big coffin room is full of treasures!
Professor Li led the team and was responsible for clearing the head box. Soon, some wood figurines of servants and servants buried with them, as well as model artifacts of vehicles, boats, horses, cows, and dogs, etc. were cleared out of the head box.

It can be seen that the head box is specially used to place the sacrificial object model.

As for the side boxes, Kong Jianwen led Chen Han and his team to clean up and extract them.

The situation of the side box is also quite complicated, mainly containing some household appliances used by the owner of the tomb during his lifetime.

A large number of living utensils made of materials such as lacquer, wood, bamboo, pottery, and copper, as well as models of pottery warehouses and stoves like the M-105 tomb, were sorted out and unearthed.

There are at least 160 pieces of lacquerware alone, including one hundred earcups, 26 plates, six lacquer boxes, eight bowls, four jugs, and other odds and ends.

Compared with Tomb No. 30, which has only more than 105 burial objects, this Tomb No. 168 is simply a bumper harvest.

"Lacquerware is made of wood. The inner layer is painted with red lacquer, and the outer layer is mostly black lacquer. On top of the black lacquer, red, brown, and golden lacquer are used to paint cloud patterns, cloud dragon patterns, fish patterns, leopard patterns, and dot patterns. And other geometric patterns."

Chen Han was holding a lacquer plate, which was simply amazing.

The lacquerware in the coffin chamber are well preserved, with bright colors like new, ingenious conception, smooth lines and exquisite decorations!
Some lacquer ware has fine needle-carved patterns on the surface, and some lacquer ware has branded or engraved characters on it.

Overall, this batch of unearthed lacquerware is all high-quality goods, there is not much lacquer peeling off, and the colors are still very bright!

This also made Chen Han and the others rekindle their expectations for the situation in the coffin.

The burial objects placed in the inner coffin are still in good condition, so the condition of the inner coffin may not be so bad!
Carefully observing the lacquer ware that his companions had just "dug" out of the outer coffin, Chen Han soon discovered that most of the lacquer ware had two main characters on their bodies.

One is the word "Ren" written in white powder, and the other is "Chengshi Cao" and "Chengshi Bao" mostly carved with a pen knife or directly branded.

"Benevolence? Chengshicao? Chengshifeng?"

When Chen Han saw these handwritings, he immediately fell into deep thought.

The appearance of the character Ren can easily remind people of Emperor Wenwen of the Western Han Dynasty.

On the basis of ruling the country with filial piety in the Western Han Dynasty, Emperor Wenwen of the Han Dynasty added the word "benevolence".

We all know that in a country, whatever the policy at the top is, the bureaucrats at the bottom will show their loyalty in this regard.

This is "upper action and lower effect", and it has been like this from ancient times to the present.

Therefore, after discovering that the word "benevolence" was written with white powder on these lacquerware, Chen Han immediately thought, whether the owner of tomb No. 168 was a bureaucrat in the Han Dynasty?
That's why there are a large number of books with the word "benevolence" on his lacquerware.

As for the "Chengshi Cao" and "Chengshi Bao" branded on lacquerware, it is easy to understand.

From the late Warring States period to the Han Dynasty, the production of official lacquerware was relatively prosperous.

In the Western Han Dynasty, Chengdu was the main place for making lacquerware.

Yang Xiong, a writer of the Western Han Dynasty, once said in "Ode to the Capital of Shu": "Carving and engraving buttons requires a lot of work." This is a vivid description of the craftsmanship and production scale of Chengdu lacquerware.

Modern archaeological discoveries can also be mutually confirmed with historical records.

According to unearthed findings, the officials of Shu County and Guanghan County were indeed mainly engaged in the manufacture of buckles.

The so-called buckleware refers to lacquerware with additional metal components such as buttons, rings, handles, feet, and shop heads. It can be said to be the most advanced lacquerware.

Chengdu has made high-end products, so it must also make ordinary lacquerware.

The "Chengshi" on this batch of lacquerware refers to the city government of CD!

The "grass" in "Chengshi grass" is commonly used in the Western Han Dynasty for the word "zao", so it means Chengshi made.

As for the word "full" in "Chengshi full", it is called "paint + bag", and the process of multiple times of painting is called "full".

These two lines of characters were branded on this batch of lacquerware, indicating that the place of origin of these lacquerware is the lacquerware handicraft workshop under the jurisdiction of the CD city government.

From this, it can also be seen that the commerce in the Western Han Dynasty was very developed.

Chengdu is nearly [-] kilometers away from Jingzhou in a straight line, but the distance does not affect the commercial exchange and communication between the two places.

This discovery alone is enough for modern people to have a clearer understanding of the business of the Western Han Dynasty.

Chen Han quickly approached Kong Jianwen and told him his discovery and guess.

"That's right, it really means Made in Chengdu."

After comparing the inscriptions on multiple lacquerware in detail, Kong Jianwen nodded in agreement: "This is indeed a very meaningful discovery."

"It has been recorded in the history books that the Bashu area has had a very strong commercial culture since the Qin Dynasty, and there have been great merchants in the world."

"The Ba widow Qing during Qin Shihuang's period, and the later Zhuo family and Cheng Zheng, the great merchants in central Shu, are all well-known in history books."

""Historical Records·Biography of Huozhi" once recorded that Bashu is also fertile and wild, and the land is full of utensils such as scorpion, ginger, cinnabar, stone, copper, iron, bamboo, and wood. Dian Bo and Bo Tong are in the south, and Ruo horses and cattle are in the west. "

"At the beginning of the Han Dynasty, a large number of commodities such as silk, lacquerware, bamboo and woodware from Bashu were sold to the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, and a large number of ironware produced in Bashu were also dumped in Yunnan, Yue and other ethnic areas in Southwest China."

"Then Bashu merchants bought Bo slaves, horses, and cattle from the Yunnan and Yue regions and sold them back to Guanzhong."

"Through Baoxie Road and other roads, Bashu trades with the Central Plains and Guanzhong in the north, and through the Yangtze River waterway, the goods reach Sanchu in the east, and pass through Guizhou and Guangxi. Bashu specialties are even sold to Panyu, the capital of South Vietnam!"

"Businessmen in Bashu, it can be said that in the Han Dynasty, they were popular all over the world, and their business was connected to the whole country, and they made countless fortunes through industry and commerce."

"When the trade between Bashu and Sichuan was at its peak, the big merchants became rich and rich, and the joy of shooting and hunting in Tianchi was comparable to that of a king!"

"The excavation of this batch of lacquerware is a favorable evidence for this historical record!"

(End of this chapter)