Archaeology in Jun County, Henan Province

Rescue archaeological excavation of Guanyinping prehistoric site in Jun County

1. Rare archaeological discovery

In 1960, in conjunction with the first phase of water storage in the Danjiang Reservoir area project, a male teammate of my team and I excavated the Guanyinping ruins in Jun County, which is about to be submerged in the reservoir area and has been surrounded by water in the reservoir. The site is located in the southeast corner of Jun County, on a secondary platform east of a tributary of the Han River. It is a prehistoric settlement site with Neolithic culture as its main content. During the excavation, all the residents of the site and nearby villages had moved away. There was no smoke in this area. We could only stay in the small town of Dingjiaying on the other side of the site. We had to take a bus every day to go to the Guanyinping site for archaeological excavations. The wooden rafts used to ferry people back and forth on the Langhe River cross the river. There are more windy weather in winter. When the wind is strong and the waves are strong, the rafts bump and rise with the waves, which is frightening.

The Guanyinping site has a thin layer of Zhou Dynasty cultural deposits on the upper layer, and beneath it are the Qujialing cultural remains of the Neolithic Age. Below this layer of deposits is the yellow sand layer on the river beach. After digging into the sand layer, we drilled and found that there was a cultural accumulation layer below the 1 meter sand layer. The lowest layer (that is, under the sand layer) is a cultural relic containing elements of the Yangshao culture in the Yellow River Basin.

From the cultural relics of the first phase of the Guanyinping site that are stacked under the sand layer, we know that the river bed of this section of the Langhe River has changed in the past. It is equivalent to the late Yangshao Culture in the Central Plains, which is about 5500 years ago. This may be the first and second terraces on the east bank of the Langhe River. At this time, there was an indigenous clan tribe in the upper reaches of the Han River living here. The ancestors of this clan lived here In the process of harmonious coexistence and cultural exchanges with the surrounding clans of the same period in the Central Plains, its local culture gradually incorporated many elements of Yangshao culture in the north. During this period, due to flooding in the Han River, the waters of the Langhe River widened and the riverbed changed, forcing the original settlements on the river bank platform to move away from here; after about 500 years of river sand sedimentation on both sides of the Langhe River, around 5000 years ago, another New riverside terraces are formed. With the prosperity of the Qujialing cultural clans in the Jianghan Plain, a clan tribe from the Qujialing Culture in the upper reaches of the Han River came to the upper reaches of the Han River along the Han River. They settled here for a period and then moved to a new location. , until the Western Zhou Dynasty, a branch of the Zhou people came south to live here for a short period of time. The new discovery of the changes in the Langhe river bed at the Guanyinping site provides valuable information for studying the historical hydrological conditions in this area.

2. Unforgettable hard life

During the rescue archaeological excavations in the reservoir area, since many villages around the ruins have been relocated, there is no condition for starting their own business near the ruins. Food and accommodation for personnel has become a big problem. Taking the archaeological excavation of the Guanyinping site as an example, I returned to Dingjiaying, my residence on the other side of the Langhe River, in the morning and evening. I could meet my meals at the snack bar in the town and use food stamps to buy some cheap food (the daily field excavation subsidy per person at that time was only 3 dime), at noon, if you cross the river and return to your place of residence for dinner, there is no guarantee that there will be a raft to cross over at all times, and it is a waste of time and money to go back and forth, so lunch every day becomes a problem. The person in charge of our lives is the captain of the second team (the above-ground cultural relics relocation team in the library). He came up with an idea for us and used food stamps to buy some flour in the dining room of the second team (the first team is the underground archaeological excavation team). Bake some flatbreads for us to eat for lunch. Every time we set off from our place of residence, we take half a flatbread with us to the Guanyinping ruins construction site. We eat cold flatbread for lunch every day. There were so many rats in the inn in the rural town that we had no choice but to put the baked pancakes in our carrier bags and tie the bags to the roof beams with ropes to hang the carrier bags in mid-air. Men have big appetites, so I eat sparingly in order to maintain a steady flow of water. I restrain myself from eating less at lunch every day and let my male teammates eat more. The climate in the south is humid, and food is prone to mold. The cakes in my pocket became moldy within a few days. If I didn’t have food stamps, I couldn’t buy food. Throw away the moldy cakes and I’d have nothing to eat. Every day I Before going to the excavation site, take out a big cake and use a knife to scrape off all the yellow and green mold on the cake, then wrap it up and take it with you for the day's lunch. At that time, as long as the stomach was full and there was no other luxury, the few months of excavation were spent in this way.

3. Eternal Regret

After the excavation of the Guanyinping site in Jun County, we borrowed a house from the cultural unit of Danjiang City and planned to organize and study it on site in Danjiang City. I have compiled an archaeological excavation report and have just packed and transported all the physical materials from the archaeological excavation to Danjiang City. Suddenly, we received a telegram from our unit and asked us to go back to participate in political studies (when politics was in command, everything had to be subordinated to political activities). After the study, I was asked to move to Jiangling to cooperate with the emergency archaeological mission of the water conservancy project there. In the early days of the "Cultural Revolution", due to work needs, the Danjiang City Cultural Department wanted to free up the room that we had occupied for a long time as an office. They were about to consign all the cultural relic boxes unearthed from the Guanyinping site to Wuchang, where they overthrew everything and denied everything. In the absurd years, all the boxes of cultural relics unearthed from the archaeological excavation of the Guanyinping site were lost during shipping. When all walks of life were paralyzed during the turmoil of the "Cultural Revolution", we went to the railway transportation department many times to inquire but could not find it. It was said that it was disposed of by the "revolutionary rebels" during the consignment.

The country spent a lot of money, and we worked hard for nearly two months under difficult conditions. All the prehistoric physical and historical materials obtained from the Guanyinping site were completely lost. It is sad and regrettable that a batch of scientific and historical materials from archaeological excavations were all destroyed before any results were produced, leaving us with an eternal regret.