Dahuashi site

Dahuashi site

Dahuashi site is located on the second terrace on the West Bank of Nujiang River. It is a gentle slope with a length of 100 meters from north to South and a width of 50 meters from east to west, covering an area of about 5000 square meters. It faces Nujiang River in the front and steep slope in the back, with narrow entrances and exits at the north and south ends. There is a karst cave in the north and a Yanxia in the northeast. 800 meters above sea level

brief introduction

At the end of 1991, with the approval of the national Department of history and materials, the cultural relics workers of the provinces, prefectures and counties carried out scientific archaeological excavation of the dahuashi Neolithic site in Mengnuo Township, Longling County. This is the first excavation to the west of Nujiang River and the third large-scale excavation in Yunnan Province after liberation. This excavation is like opening a window to the prehistoric culture of Western Yunnan, making us have a clearer view of the living conditions of the local people at that time.

survey

Dahuashi site has a North tropical river valley climate. In general, it has many advantages, such as safe living, convenient fishing and hunting, rich food and so on. Before excavation, lac trees were planted on the ground and well protected underground. The cultural layer and envelope can be divided into two phases. The bottom layer is in the early stage, and most of the unearthed stone tools are small-scale ladder stone axes and strip stone axes, which belong to the late Neolithic age, about 4000 years ago. The middle layer is the late stage. Most of the unearthed stone tools are made of stone axes and oval scrapers, and a small amount of metal molds and stone molds. The artifacts belong to the early Bronze Age, about 3200 years ago. The excavation covers an area of 492 square meters, with 7 tombs. Eight houses, five fire ponds, six ash pits, one metal smelting furnace and more than 2400 stone tools, pottery, bone ware and animal bones were unearthed. The basic characteristics of the site culture are quite different from those of the stone relics in the past, which answers some important questions of Neolithic Archaeology in Yunnan.

The foundations of the houses unearthed are all rectangular or nearly square, with columns and holes arranged into boxes. The middle hole of the sideline is mostly located outside the line, and there are usually two or three holes in the corner column. The top of the column is R-shaped, which is easy to bear the beam. The columns are connected with a "well" shaped frame and tied with rattan. It is surrounded by grass reinforced mud wall, mud stone wall and reed pole mud wall. This kind of houses still exist on both sides of Nujiang River, but as prehistoric relics, it is still the first to see.

All the tombs are long or oval shaped stone Mound Tombs. From the periphery of the tomb to the top of the tomb, stones of different sizes are layered to form a stone pile higher than the ground. Most of the tombs are large in front and small in back, in the shape of fish back. Some of them are built in the shape of "eight" in front and sealed with stone slabs. Among them, only the pit of tomb No. 9 is in a circular shape, and the mound is also close to a circular shape. The front and back of the mound are sealed with stone slabs. The largest one is 295m long, 1.5m wide, and the thickest one is 1.4m. There are stone tools, pottery, bronze ware, deer, muntjac, cattle, sheep, pigs and other animals in the tomb. There are several small tombs and hundreds of large tombs. This kind of tomb is also very rare in Neolithic sites in China. The age of the tombs belongs to the early Bronze Age.

The furnace is a semi cavern type tube furnace, which is similar to the original furnace still used by local residents. At the bottom of the furnace, there are melt flow spring holes, blast channels on the side, smelting slag at the bottom, and many copper scraps nearby. Four stone molds for casting axe and Tomahawk like bronze ware were unearthed in the site, and the shape of the molds is the same as that of the copper axe and Tomahawk unearthed in some nearby places. It is the first time in Yunnan that the smelting furnace and batch casting model were unearthed.

Related knowledge

As we all know in prehistoric archaeology at home and abroad, the general rule of the development of stone tools is: first, a large number of stone tools were made, and then gradually to the transition of grinding stone tools. However, the situation of dahuashi site is quite the opposite: in the early stage, all the polished stone tools were used, and then a small number of stone axes with two shoulders were produced. In the late stone age group, the stone axes and scrapers with two shoulders account for 70% or 80%. There are still a large number of stone, stone cores, stone chips and semi-finished stone tools left on the site. It shows that this is a stone processing plant with copper ware production, which reflects the special law of productivity development in a certain environment. There is also a striking phenomenon in the remains: fishing nets are placed in piles in pottery pots, many ground arrowheads are unearthed in batches, and some are inserted in the jaws of wild boars, indicating that hunting and fishing occupy a high position in life. Among the sites similar to dahuashi culture found in the past, there are few pottery, and the shape of pottery is primitive and monotonous. But dahuashi is very developed, not only in considerable quantity, but also in many kinds and high quality. During the excavation, more than 30000 pieces of pottery pieces were unearthed, most of which were polished black pottery and a small amount of gray pottery, with hard and smooth texture. In addition to the common flat bottomed pots, basins, bowls, vats, urns, pots and plates in Yunnan, there are also a large number of deep belly bowls with internal folds along the inclined wall, high breast nail round foot bowls, and large-scale perforated beans. It is decorated by means of engraving, embossing, pricking, finger pressing, plastic piling and hole carving. There are more than ten kinds of patterns, and most of them are large-area combined patterns. Not only in the abdomen, shoulder and neck. Besides, it is decorated on the bottom of the vessel and even on the top of the pistil. This is also rare in Yunnan Province. The carved pottery symbols and a stone flower found here are rare and precious materials in Neolithic Archaeology. The symbols are engraved on the shoulder and neck of large folding cans, including long and short straight line symbols, cross broken line symbols and so on. Most people in archaeology believe that the carved symbols of pottery are related to the origin of characters. In the past, Yangshao culture in the upper reaches of the Yellow River and Songze culture in Taihu Lake region were found. This discovery is of special significance in the southwest border region. The four petaled flowers, similar to dozens of plant patterns on both sides of the Nujiang River, are the earliest artistic portrayal of the natural scenery in the narrow valley of the Nujiang River, which can be regarded as the beginning of the history of stone carving art in western Yunnan. Dahuashi site is a settlement of ancient clan. The excavation of this kind of culture enables us to have a more comprehensive and in-depth understanding of the "MANGHUAI type" culture, which is widely distributed in the Nujiang River and Lancang River basins. It is proved that it is mainly a relic of the early Bronze Age, and it is later than the cultural type with grinding small stone axes as a typical tool. In addition, the Nujiang river flowed into Myanmar not far southwest of the site, which is called the Salween river. This excavation will help us understand the cultural exchanges between ancient China and Myanmar.

Address: y035

Longitude: 99.051311

Latitude: 24.376159

Chinese PinYin : Da Hua Shi Yi Zhi