From October to December, with the approval of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, Beijing Institute of Cultural Heritage, together with Peking University, Institute of Archaeology of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Capital Normal University and other seven institutions, carried out active archaeological excavation of Liulihe site. The excavation site is divided into city site area and tomb area, with a total excavation area of 400 square meters.
The excavation site of the city site is located in the woodland in the east of Liulidian Village, in the northwest corner of Liulihe Ancient City, and in the unified numbered G9 area. Three houses were excavated in the Western Zhou Dynasty, of which F1 and F2 were relatively intact and F3 was seriously damaged. The building site covers an area of 10-20 square meters. It is a small rammed earth building on the ground. Doorways, wall foundations, stove sites, column holes and other building site structures have been found. According to the pottery pieces abandoned in the same period, it can be known that the abandoned time of the three houses was about the late Western Zhou Dynasty. The discovery of the building site shows that there were still human activities in the Liulihe site in the late Western Zhou Dynasty. Together with the large-scale housing sites in the early Western Zhou Dynasty, they constitute rich materials of various types of housing sites in the Western Zhou Dynasty, which provide new information for understanding the form and changes of urban settlements, urban layout and architectural construction technology.
The excavation site of the tomb area is located in the woodland in the northeast of Huangtupo Village and east of the cliff, and it is in the unified numbered D15 area. A total of 5 tombs in the early Western Zhou Dynasty were excavated, numbered D15M1901-D15M1905. Among them, M1901 and M1903 are ⅡM253 and ⅡM251 excavated in 1970s respectively, and only M1902 is intact and rich in connotation.
M1902, located between M1901 and M1903, is a small noble tomb. The center of the tomb is 33 meters away from the center of M1903(ⅡM251) in the north and 16.5 meters away from the center of M1901(ⅡM253) in the south. The tomb is 3.5 meters long from north to south and 2.1 meters wide from east to west. The mouth of the tomb is 0.3 meters deep from the surface, and the tomb is about 1.5 meters deep, with a direction of 352.
There is a head niche on the north side of the tomb of M1902, in which there is a big bag of foot-less roots and two sheep phalanges. There is a coffin and a coffin in the tomb, and there is a whole dog on the coffin board, and a bronze bell is produced with the dog. Burial objects are mostly located between coffins, especially between coffins on the north side. After testing and analysis, it was found that the cover plate covered with cinnabar was draped over the coffin, and the tenon-mortise structure of the two was found in the northwest corner, which was suspected to be the head box cover plate. The funerary objects found in the tomb include one bronze statue, one bronze statue, one bronze statue, one bronze tripod, one bronze reed, two bronze brothers, one bronze dagger, one copper pie ornament, nine bronze cymbals, one bronze arrowhead (with wooden poles), one millstone and one pottery reed. The human skeleton is poorly preserved. According to preliminary identification, the owner of the tomb is about 40-45 years old and about 170CM tall, with male characteristics.
Among them, the bronze statue, bronze statue and bronze knight are located in the northwest corner of the “head box”, and the unearthed positions of the three vessels are adjacent to each other. Each vessel is wrapped in free fabric, and a red fabric covers the three vessels, which is suspected to be buried in groups. There are inscriptions in the three vessels, and the inscriptions are basically the same. The inscription on the bronze girder can be recognized, and the lid and insole are inscribed. The inscription is as follows:
Taibao, Yan, Hou Palace, Taibao gave me a copy of the shell, which was used as a father’s Xin Bao Zun Yi. Geng.
According to the inscription, it is inferred that the general idea is that Taibao built a city in the palace of marquis, and then held a sacrificial ceremony named after it. Taibao gave a gift to the copybook Bei, who made this gift for his father Xin. Geng.
This inscription complements the inscription of Ke Li Ke Qian unearthed in 1980s, and is a valuable historical material for studying the early history of Yan State. It confirms that Zhao Gong personally visited the Liulihe site in the early Zhou Dynasty and built a capital here, which fills the gap in the handed down literature about the construction of the capital city of the Western Zhou Dynasty, provides the earliest physical evidence for the history of Beijing’s construction of more than 3,000 years with undisputed written materials, proves the close relationship between Yan State and the Central Plains, and highlights the important position of Yan State in the early Western Zhou Dynasty, which has unique value in the study of world urban history.
Liulihe Site is one of the “Top 100 Archaeological Discoveries in China in a Hundred Years” and one of the major sites in the 14th Five-Year Plan period promulgated by the State Administration of Cultural Heritage. This archaeological work provides a lot of valuable academic information for understanding the ritual and music system, enfeoffment system, patriarchal clan system, early city site planning and construction in the Western Zhou Dynasty, and is an important example of the pluralistic integration of the Chinese nation.
(Jing Wong Cao Dazhi Annina Guo Jingning)