The next day.

Early in the morning, on a gentle hillside at the southeast corner of Phoenix Mountain, workers numbering fifty or sixty had already arrived, all holding hoes and wearing straw hats, looking very motivated.

The ancient tombs on Phoenix Mountain are really not that big at all.

Yesterday, it was not just Chen Han and his team who discovered tombs. Five teams from the Institute of Archeology of the Academy of Social Sciences all discovered at least one tomb.

Three of the tombs need to be excavated.

Compared with yesterday's simple exploration, the workload on the second day was obviously different.

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

Chen Han and Zhuang Yunpeng, along with ten workers, also came to the exploration cave dug yesterday and started surveying and mapping.

Zhang Jianbo found a location that was convenient for distance calibration. After setting up the rangefinder, he leaned over the rangefinder and entered various data for distance measurement.

"Horizontal angle, vertical angle, height..."

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

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

"But the sad thing is that civil engineering is a science!"

"Our Department of Archeology is obviously a major in literature and history, but we still have to travel to construction sites every day."

Facing Zhang Jianbo's complaints, Chen Han really couldn't answer the question.

He is quite satisfied with his current job content, but he is not as impressed as Zhang Jianbo.

But it didn't matter whether he answered or not, Zhang Jianbo just made a few casual remarks.

It is quite normal for people who work in archaeology to complain about the content of their work.

"Okay, the location has been determined, let's lay out the layout."

After planning the standard square footage of 5 meters by 5 meters, Chen Han and Zhuang Yunpeng each took a tape tape and began to lay out the square around the mapped location.

Next, the workers hired by the archaeological team will excavate the tomb according to the survey plan laid out.

In this area of ​​5 meters by 5 meters, and the depth may be at least 3 meters, all the soil must be excavated.

This is not an easy job.

This is the biggest difference between archeology and tomb robbing.

Exploration for archaeological excavation and exploration for tomb robbing are two different things.

Tomb robbers go directly to the artifacts, and basically dig a hole big enough for one person to get in, just like a mouse digging a hole.

Archeology, on the other hand, needs to "extract" the entire tomb scientifically. It needs to study the way it was built, study its scope, and explore the scientific research value of the entire tomb.

Why do this?

Naturally, the purpose is to study the social development, social style, social appearance and customs of the ancient people at that time, to find some records of the past, and to get a glimpse of the scene back then.

Therefore, archeology must be careful and careful, serious and serious, so as not to miss any trace left by the ancients.

Archeology literally means the study of ancient times.

Why study ancient times?

Because humans live in this world, we must know where we come from and what our past was like, so we can know where we are going in the future.

Through archeology, we can understand and understand the living conditions of people two or three thousand years ago, what they thought, and why they thought so at that time.

In this way, we can learn how our nation formed this current situation and cultural atmosphere.

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

This is important.

But it is impossible for us to go back in time and witness with our own eyes the social development and humanistic things of ancient people.

Therefore, through archaeological methods, we can face them face to face and transcend time and space.

Archeology helps us transcend time and space and communicate with ancient people. This is the value and significance of archeology.

Archeology is a mirror, a mirror of time that allows modern people to dialogue with ancient people.

...

Compared with tomb robbers who can rob several tombs in a day, the archaeological team's movements are indeed much slower.

It took half a month to clear out this five-meter by five-meter square with a depth of more than three meters.

When the workers dug to a depth of three meters, the grave pits with obviously different soil colors could be vaguely seen.

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

After digging down for almost two meters along the areas with different soil colors, the entire tomb chamber was finally revealed.

"This tomb should be a pit tomb with a vertical pit. It only has a tomb chamber and no tomb passage."

"The tomb chamber is rectangular in plan, with straight walls and a vaulted flat roof, 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 tomb.

Let’s not talk about the tombs of the Western Han Dynasty, those of high-ranking nobles and royal families.

For middle and low-level nobles and commoners, the style of vertical pit tombs that has been formed since the late Paleolithic period is basically continued.

Vertical pit graves are a common burial method.

The ancients dug a burial pit vertically downward from the ground, then placed the coffin in the pit, placed funerary objects and other sacrifices, and then buried it with soil.

This method of burial has been flourishing from the Neolithic period to the present.

After all, it's very simple, just dig a hole vertically and you're done.

This is how burials are done in cemeteries today.

However, since the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, the forms of tombs have become more and more complex and advanced.

Like the tomb of King Liang Xiao of the Western Han Dynasty, which was built at the same time as this tomb, they built an underground palace directly underground with an area of ​​6,600 square meters!

The vestibule, screen wall, bedroom hall, side hall, kitchen, and cloister are all in good condition, and the burial specifications are almost the same as those of the emperors of the Han Dynasty.

Compared with this, the tomb dug by Chen Han and others is much shabby.

The size is only 6 square meters, and apart from a coffin, there is not much else.

This disappointed them greatly.

As for the aristocratic tombs we were talking about, this tomb doesn’t look like a noble tomb!

However, this tomb is quite lucky. It is relatively well preserved and has no trace of being disturbed.

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

At the north end of the tomb, there are still some funerary objects stacked in a messy manner.

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

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

The common people of the Western Han Dynasty certainly did not have the ability to obtain jade, and they could not be buried with jade.

Chen Han touched his chin and murmured to himself: "Looking at the size of this tomb, I guess the title of the tomb owner is not high."

"Among the twentieth rank of Han nobles, he should be within the fifth rank."

In any case, this was also the first tomb he excavated in the Fenghuang Mountain tombs. Although the specifications were a bit low, Chen Han still devoted himself to cleaning up the unearthed cultural relics.

One by one, he cleaned the exquisite lacquerware and pottery from the soil and put them into protective liquid.

While cleaning up, Chen Han couldn't help but admire him.

"As expected of the people of the Han Dynasty, who lived and died. In such a large tomb, there are thirty or forty pieces of artifacts alone!"

"This doesn't even include the funerary items in the coffin!"

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

"The pressure on filial sons in the Han Dynasty is probably not much different from that of young people today who are burdened with car and house loans!"

"No, at least modern people's car and house loans can be repaid in installments. For people in the Han Dynasty, funerals were a one-time deal and they had to raise a large amount of money at once."
Chapter completed!