The jade workshop site group in the middle and early Ming Dynasty is the largest group of jade workshop sites in the Liangzhu period found in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River so far. Following the discovery in April of more than ten ancient wooden stakes suspected to be used as slope revetments in the Tutai period, recently, the archaeological excavation site of the small bridge head site of the Zhongchuming jade workshop site group located in Yangdun Village, Leidian Town, Deqing County, unearthed relatively well-preserved human bones from the Liangzhu period.
“At present, it is relatively rare for human bones to be preserved in tombs in the Liangzhu period.” Zhu Yefei, the person in charge of the site of the Chuming site of the Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, was very surprised by this discovery. She said that the tomb is about 170 centimeters long and 70 centimeters wide, and according to the teeth and pelvic morphology of human bones, archaeologists judge that it is an adult skeleton.
“There is only one burial item in the tomb, pottery beans and tao ding, which are common daily necessities in the Liangzhu period.” Zhu Yefei said that it can be inferred that this is a relatively low-level tomb, and the identity of the human bone may be a craftsman of the jade workshop, “The preservation of complete human bones plays an important role in our later research in the field of physical anthropology, and can also be displayed in museums, so that the public has a more intuitive understanding of the basic human physique in the Liangzhu period.” ”
In September 2017, the Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology discovered and confirmed the site of the jade workshop of the Mingliangzhu culture in the early middle and early years. The Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology and the Deqing Museum jointly carried out large-scale systematic investigation, exploration and excavation in the local area, and discovered and confirmed many sites. Jade has been unearthed at each site, and the researchers judged that during the Liangzhu culture period, it was a large-scale jade-making workshop site complex with a total area of 1 million square meters. In previous archaeological excavations, more than 3,000 cultural relics from the Liangzhu period have been unearthed, mainly jade and pottery. Most of the jade artifacts unearthed at this site are small jade objects such as jade cones and tubes, which are of great significance for studying the production mode of jade in the Liangzhu culture period and the source, transportation, distribution and consumption of jade materials.
In view of the importance of the site, the project has been included in the “13th Five-Year Plan” major special project of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage “Research on the Civilization Model of the Lower Yangtze River Region – From Songze to Liangzhu”, and has won the “2018 Zhejiang Important Archaeological Discoveries” and was shortlisted for the final evaluation of “2018 National Top Ten Archaeological New Discoveries”; This year, he won the “Important Discoveries of Zhejiang Archaeology in the New Era” and “My Like Important Discoveries of Zhejiang Archaeology”.