Dadiwan Museum

Dadiwan Museum

Dadiwan museum is located in Dadiwan site, Shaodian village, Wuying Township, northeast of Qin'an County, Tianshui City, Gansu Province, 50 kilometers away from the county. It is a famous important Neolithic site in China.

There are 315 most representative cultural relics unearthed from the Dadiwan site, including 70 national precious cultural relics. The exhibition, with its simple and lively design style and modern display means, interprets the ancient Dadiwan civilization, reproduces the production and living conditions of Dadiwan ancestors, and achieves the organic combination of science, art, knowledge and interest.

Development history

In March 2006, the project was approved by the Ministry of Finance and the State Administration of cultural relics. The construction of Dadiwan Museum started in November 2007, with an investment of more than 20 million yuan. It covers an area of 26680 square meters and a construction area of 3155 square meters.

On December 31, 2011, Dadiwan Museum officially opened.

architectural composition

The main part of the building extends to the ancient river, which is composed of cultural relics storehouse, exhibition hall and office building. The theme of Dadiwan museum is "prelude to civilization - Exhibition of archaeological achievements of Dadiwan site", which is divided into four units: excavation and protection, traces of time and space, pottery charm and Guanghua sustainability.

Collection

A total of 240 house sites, 98 stove sites, 325 ash pits and pits, 71 tombs, 35 kiln sites and 12 ditches have been excavated at Dadiwan site. A total of 4147 pottery, 1931 stone tools (including jade), 2218 bone horn clams and 17000 animal bones have been unearthed. According to the research, Dadiwan site can be roughly divided into five periods: qianyangshao culture, early, middle and late Yangshao culture and lower Changshan culture. Its historical period extends from 8000 years ago to 5000 years ago. Among them, the first period of culture 8000 years ago is the earliest Neolithic culture discovered so far in Northwest China.

archaeological excavation

From June 2006 to October 2008, Gansu Provincial Institute of cultural relics and archaeology, School of resources and environment of Lanzhou University and Gansu Dadiwan Conservation Institute jointly excavated the Dadiwan site for many times, and discovered the remains of human activities from 60000 to 8000 years ago, which provides important information for the study of hunting and gathering culture and the origin of agriculture in the Paleolithic age.

Dadiwan site is located in Shaodian village, Wuying Township, northeast of Qin'an County, Tianshui City, 102 km away from Tianshui city. Dadiwan site was announced as a provincial-level cultural relic protection unit after 1958. It was excavated in the autumn of 1978 and was announced as a national key cultural relic protection unit in 1988. According to the data obtained from the excavation, Dadiwan site is a relatively intact ancient cultural relic of the Neolithic Age in the eastern part of Gansu Province, 4900-8120 years ago.

Dadiwan site is a large Neolithic site. Up to 1984, a total area of 13700 square meters has been exposed, and the total area of the site is 1.1 million square meters. There are 238 house sites, 357 ash pits, 79 tombs, 38 kilns, 106 stoves, 8 ditches for protection and drainage, and 8034 pieces of bones, stones, mussels, pottery, ornaments and living utensils. Dadiwan was 8120 years ago and 4900 years ago, with 3000 years of cultural continuity. Its large scale and rich connotation are rare in the archaeological history of China.

In addition to pottery, bone horn ware, stone tools, clam ware, primitive sculpture and other art treasures, it is particularly worth mentioning that the housing construction site in Dadiwan is not only magnificent in scale, but also complex in shape. In particular, f405, which belongs to the late period of Yangshao culture (about 5000 years ago), is a large building with three doors and eaves gallery. The house site covers an area of 270 square meters, and the indoor area is 150 square meters. It is built on flat ground and has a wooden bone mud wall. The restoration plan is a four slope top house.

The scale of this house is unique in the Neolithic archaeological culture of China. What's more striking is that f411 houses also have ground paintings on the living surface. The patterns are composed of people and animals. It is the earliest primitive ground paintings in China. This discovery provides extremely precious information for the study of ancient Chinese painting history. Most of the houses in Dadiwan site were built with lime surface and various column bases, which fully demonstrated the improvement of productivity and the development of construction technology at that time. A large number of agricultural production tools such as stone axes, stone knives and pottery knives unearthed from Dadiwan site, the construction of large bag shaped cave for storing goods, and the appearance of large-scale pottery urn, jar, jar and other storage containers all indicate and reflect that the economic form of Dadiwan site belongs to the type of settled agriculture.

Painted pottery is a prominent feature of Dadiwan culture. The ancestors of Dadiwan were the earliest manufacturers, producers and users of painted pottery in China. From 7800 to 4000 years ago, they experienced a process from prosperity to decline. In the early stage of Dadiwan, the painted pottery was decorated with purplish red color, which was generally painted outside the mouth of bowl shaped utensils to form a continuous ribbon.

In the second period of culture and beyond, most of the painted pottery objects were fine clay red pottery, and most of the decorative patterns were black. The black color of red pottery gave people a striking and calm visual feeling, and the painted parts were mainly concentrated in the middle and upper part of the outer wall of the objects and the mouth of the bowl. The main decorative patterns are geometric patterns, followed by fish patterns and animal patterns. The main types of pottery are pots, bowls, bowls, pots, bottles, pots, etc. these pottery contain the observation and understanding of the ancestors of Dadiwan on the world, show the superb pottery making technology of primitive agricultural settlements, and reflect the development level of prehistoric productivity of Dadiwan.

The best of Dadiwan

The earliest dry farming crop specimens in China

The age of carbonized Ji unearthed in the first stage of Dadiwan is similar to that of the same kind unearthed in the pre alcissa pottery stratum of Greece. It not only pushes forward the origin of dry farming in northern China for 1000 years, but also indicates that the earliest grain variety planted in northern China is Ji, and then millet is popularized. Before that, most of the northern crop specimens found in domestic archaeology were millet, about 7000 years ago.

The earliest painted pottery in China

More than 200 pieces of painted pottery, such as sanzubo, were unearthed from Dadiwan culture, which is the earliest batch of painted pottery discovered so far in China. Although the pattern of these purple red painted pottery about 8000 years ago is not complete, it pushes the manufacturing time of China's painted pottery up to 1000 years. It is an indisputable fact that the Northwest Loess Plateau is the origin of China's painted pottery.

The earliest prototype of Chinese characters

More than ten kinds of painted symbols have been found on the pottery unearthed in Dadiwan phase I. these symbols are more than 1000 years earlier than the earliest carved symbols found in Xi'an Banpo pottery, and some of them are basically the same as Banpo symbols. Although the meaning of these mysterious symbols has not yet been deciphered, experts believe that they may be the earliest prototype of Chinese characters.

The earliest palace architecture in China

A building named "f901" excavated from the Dadiwan culture of 5000 years ago is the largest and most technologically advanced building in prehistoric China. This complex building, with a total area of 420 square meters, has a regular layout, central axis symmetry, front and back echo, and clear primary and secondary, creating a precedent for future palace architecture.

The earliest concrete floor in China

The main room of "f901" palace style building with an area of 130 square meters is made of aggregate and sand, which is similar to modern cement floor. This is the oldest concrete in the world, as is the cement made from volcanic ash by the ancient Romans.

The earliest painting in China

Experts confirmed that a painting painted with black pigment found on the floor of the building site with the serial number of "f411" in Dadiwan is the earliest independent painting found in China. About 1.2 meters long and 1.1 meters wide, this well preserved ground painting rewrites the history of Chinese art and pushes it forward for more than 2000 years. According to textual research, the earliest silk paintings of Chu state unearthed in Mawangdui, Changsha were preserved as paintings.

The earliest weights and measures and decimal system in China

A group of pottery measuring tools unearthed from room f901 of late Yangshao period in Dadiwan are the earliest ones found in China so far. Dadiwan is a set of ancient pottery measuring utensils, which was unearthed in the main room (front hall) of room f901. There are mainly four kinds of pottery measuring utensils, such as muddy trough shaped strip plates, long handle Mahua ear spade shaped plaques with fine sand, muddy single ring ear dustpan shaped plaques, and four deep belly pots with mud cover. Among them, the volume of strip tray is about 264.3 cubic centimeter; the volume of shovel shape is about 2650.7 cubic centimeter; the volume of skip shape is about 5288.4 cubic centimeter; the volume of four deep belly cans is about 26082.1 cubic centimeter. It can be seen from this that the relationship of the other three items is increased by ten times, except that the skip shaped copy is twice as much as the shovel shaped copy.

In order to fit the name of ancient measuring tools, we will use the names of Sheng, Dou and Hu on their corresponding capacities, which can be called "tiaosheng, Chaodou and sibahu". In addition, several bone daggers and spades unearthed from the early ruins of Yangshao in Dadiwan are often marked with equidistant dot shaped drilling scale, and the nest is painted with red color

Chinese PinYin : Da Di Wan Bo Wu Guan