Following.

Early in the morning, on a gentle hill located in the southeast corner of Phoenix Mountain, fifty or sixty workers had already arrived, all holding hoes and straw hats, looking full of energy.

The ancient tombs on this side of Phoenix Mountain are really not a little bit big.

Yesterday, not only Chen Han and his group discovered the tomb, but the five teams from the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences all found at least one tomb.

Three of these tombs are in need of excavation.

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

At 8 o'clock in the morning, with the arrival of a bus carrying personnel from the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the excavation work officially began.

Chen Han and Zhuang Yunpeng, together with ten workers, also came to the cave that was dug yesterday and began to survey.

Zhang Jianbo found a position that was convenient for calibrating the distance, and after setting up the rangefinder, he leaned over and entered various data for ranging on the rangefinder.

Horizontal, Vertical, Height, ......

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

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

"But sadly, civil engineering is science!"

"Our archaeology department is obviously a major in literature and history, but we also have to run around the construction site every day."

In the face of Zhang Jianbo's complaints, Chen Han really couldn't answer.

He is quite satisfied with the content of his current work, but he is not as deeply touched by Zhang Jianbo.

But it doesn't matter if he answers or not, Zhang Jianbo just complained casually.

It's normal for people who do archaeology to complain about what they do.

"Okay, let's determine the location, let's go to the square."

After planning the standard 5-meter by 5-meter standard probe, Chen Han and Zhuang Yunpeng took a soft ruler and began to lay out the square around the mapped location.

Next, the workers hired by the archaeological team will excavate the grave according to the layout of the burial.

In this area of 5 meters by 5 meters, and probably at least 3 meters deep, all the earth has to be dug up.

It's not an easy job.

This is the biggest difference between archaeology and tomb robbing.

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

The tomb robbers go directly to the utensils, and basically make a hole enough for a person to get into, just like a mouse makes a hole.

Archaeology, on the other hand, is to scientifically "extract" the entire tomb, and it is necessary to study the way it is built, study its scope, and explore the scientific research value of the entire tomb.

Why?

Naturally, it is to study the social development, social mode, social outlook and atmosphere of the ancients at that time, find some records of the past, and get a glimpse of the scene of the past.

Therefore, archaeology must be careful and careful, serious and serious, and not miss any trace left by the ancients.

Archaeology, literally, is the investigation of antiquity.

Why look at antiquity?

Because human beings live in this world, they always have to 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 know the state of life of people two or three thousand years ago, know what they thought and why they thought at that time.

In this way, we can learn how our nation formed this status quo and cultural atmosphere.

It can also use the past experiences and stories of the ancients to illuminate our future path.

This is important.

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

Therefore, through archaeology, we can meet them face to face, allowing us to transcend time and space.

Archaeology helps us transcend time and space to dialogue with the ancients, which is the value and significance of archaeology.

Archaeology is a mirror, a mirror of time that allows modern people and ancient people to have a dialogue.

......

Compared to tomb robbers who can rob several tombs in 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 probe to be cleared out.

When the workers dug to a depth of three meters, the grave pit with a distinctly different soil color was already faintly visible.

Chen Han and his party were also deeply involved in the excavation work.

After digging almost two meters down along the different colors of the soil, the whole burial chamber was finally revealed.

"This tomb should be a pit tomb, with only a burial chamber and no burial tunnel."

"The burial chamber is rectangular in plan, with straight walls and a flat vault, 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 grave pit.

The tombs of the Western Han Dynasty, high-level nobles and royal families are not to be talked about.

For the middle and low-level nobles and commoners, it basically continued the style of pit tombs formed since the late Paleolithic period.

Pit tombs are a common burial method.

The ancients dug burial pits straight down from the ground, then placed the coffins in the pits, placed the burial goods and other sacrifices, and buried them with earth.

This type of burial 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.

The current cemetery is also buried like this.

However, since the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, the form of tombs has 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, people directly built an underground palace underground, with an area of 6,600 square meters!

There is no shortage of vestibules, walls, dormitories, halls, kitchens, and cloisters, and the burial specifications are almost the same as those of the emperors of the Han Dynasty.

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

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

This disappointed them.

What about the noble tomb group, this tomb doesn't look like a nobleman's tomb no matter how you look at it!

However, this tomb is lucky, it is relatively well preserved, and there are no traces of theft.

A dark black coffin was quietly placed in the center of the burial chamber.

At the north end of the burial chamber, there are also some funerary goods stacked in a messy manner.

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

If there is jade, it means that the owner of this tomb does belong to the aristocratic class.

The civilians of the Western Han Dynasty must not be able to get jade, and they can't use jade for burial.

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

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

In any case, this is also the first tomb he dug up in the Phoenix Mountain tomb group, although the specifications are a little lower, but Chen Han is still full of enthusiasm to clean up the unearthed cultural relics.

He cleaned up the exquisite lacquerware and pottery from the soil and put it in a protective solution.

While cleaning up, Chen Han was inevitably amazed.

"It is worthy of the Han Dynasty people who died like life, and there are thirty or forty burial utensils for such a large tomb!"

"And that's not even counting the burial goods in the coffin!"

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

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

"No, at least modern people's car loans and housing loans can be repaid in installments, and the funeral of the Han Dynasty is a one-shot deal, and you have to raise a large amount of money at one time."

"Tut-tut, I remember that the loan business in the Han Dynasty seems to be very developed, I don't know if there is a funeral loan!"