In late August, 2008, an ancient tomb of the Qing Dynasty was unearthed in Eling Street, Chongqing. This tomb is actually made of more than 2000 blue and white porcelain bowls. This kind of bowl tomb is so strong that it is almost impossible to completely break a bowl. When the renovation of the municipal pipe network in the main street of eling reached the section of the second printing plant, the workers suddenly dug up some porcelain bowl fragments. Then more doubts arose, and the workers saw the bowls overlapping together, as if there were traces of artificial masonry. The tomb is under the road of the main street in eling, perpendicular to the road, and the top of the tomb is 0.6 meters away from the road. Because most tombs are hidden under the road, archaeologists can only drill into the tombs to see what's going on inside.
Chongqing wanmu
A large pile of blue and white porcelain bowls in the tomb overlap one by one to form an arch; Then build a row of porcelain bowls into arches. Many bowls and arches overlap layer by layer to form a vault tomb. The whole tomb is 2.4m long,1.35m wide and1.3m high, all made of porcelain bowls, and only the tomb door is sealed with stones.
With more than 2000 blue and white porcelain bowls, how can porcelain bowls be arched? It turned out that the grave repairman made "cement" with glutinous rice paste and three-way ash, and glued the porcelain bowls together, which was very strong. "It is almost impossible to completely break a bowl." The diameter of the bowl mouth of the porcelain bowl is about 16 cm, which is a common white porcelain bowl with blue and white edges in Qing Dynasty, and it is painted with flowers, plants, geometric patterns and other patterns. Because the bowl tomb is located under the main road, the archaeological institute can only cut part of the bowl wall for research, and use chemicals to "melt" the sticky rice paste stuck on the bowl. It is estimated that more than 2000 porcelain bowls were used in the whole tomb. "The design of the bowl wall is also very clever." Archaeologists involved in the excavation introduced that the bowls of adjacent bowls are facing the opposite direction, "one is facing down and the other is facing up, just biting together." Unfortunately, archaeologists found a stolen hole at the entrance of the tomb, and the funerary objects in the tomb had long since disappeared, only a rotten wooden coffin and a few bones were found.
These bowls are produced by ordinary folk kilns in terms of material and technology. The reason why the tomb owner built the tomb with bowls is not to show his identity, but a unique funeral custom. 1986, an ancient tomb was found in Chongqing Special Steel Factory under Qingcaopo, which was excavated and cleaned by the municipal museum and identified as the bowl tomb of Qing Dynasty. The coffin outside is made of porcelain bowls and lime. It is judged that the porcelain bowl used in the tomb is the product of Shaping kiln (now Ciqikou). More than 4,000 porcelain bowls are expected to be unearthed from the First Bowl Tomb in Sichuan.
20 13 On April 26th, workers in Baiyi Farm, Baiyi Town, Pingchang County cleared the idle land and planned to plant flowers and trees. An excavator accidentally dug up a strange grave and surrounded the coffin with bowls and wine glasses. They reported this discovery to the local government, Wenguang New District Bureau of Heping County. Then gradually clean up and check, and found two "bowl tombs" in the same place.
The Present Situation of Bowl Tomb in Sichuan
The tomb found this time has two bowls, one large and one small. The big one is 3.3 meters long and 1.8 meters wide, surrounded by blue-and-white porcelain bowls and wine glasses in the folk kiln; The small one is 3 meters long and 1.6 meters wide, and it is surrounded by blue and white porcelain bowls of folk kiln. On the 28th, two experts from the Provincial Institute of Archaeology also came to the scene. The "Bowl Tomb" is of great value, because all the "Bowl Tombs" found in the past are isolated. This time, it was found that the two tombs were adjacent and well preserved, which provided valuable information for studying the funeral culture of "Bowl Tomb". According to people in Baiyi ancient town, they often dig such bowls when planting crops and repairing houses.
On March 27th, 2005, Dazhou Cultural Management Institute excavated a huge bowl tomb on Fenghuang Mountain in the suburb of Dazhou, and found 8,000 well-preserved local porcelain bowls in Guangxu period of Qing Dynasty (about 120). 8000 porcelain bowls have been excavated, with a mouth diameter of 15cm and a bottom diameter of 7cm. The porcelain bowl is full of glaze, with corns at the bottom, blue and white and geometric patterns inside and outside. These bowls are made of lime, glutinous rice and tung oil. They are very strong and difficult to disassemble.
Before that, more than 20 bowl tombs were found in Dashu, Liu Ma, Daxian County and the northern and western areas of Tongchuan District, but their scale was not as large as this one. According to him, the local people began to use porcelain bowls as funerary objects at the end of the Yuan Dynasty, and this custom continued until the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China. The bowl tomb excavated this time consists of 8000 porcelain bowls with arched roofs. This tomb is very spectacular. It is estimated that the owner of the tomb was a local rich gentleman during Guangxu period. On March 3, 2008, an ancient "bowl tomb" was discovered in Wei Ping Natural Village, Gunshan Village, Luo Yang Town, Hui 'an County, Fujian Province, which was suspected to have been built in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. A bowl tomb built with sugar water ash was exposed to the air, leaving only a pile of loess in the tomb, which was covered with bowls with blue and white patterns and nearly 100 bowls. Unfortunately, all the exposed bowls are broken. When the bowl is buried, the bowl on it falls firmly on the sugar ash, and it can't be taken away. There used to be a tomb near the bowl tomb, but it was later destroyed. Probably the bowl tomb where husband and wife were buried together in the Ming Dynasty. Who is the owner of the tomb is now a mystery. Chen Pengpeng, captain of the Quanzhou Archaeological Team, said that it is common to find a bunch of bowls as sacrificial objects in a grave, but it is rare to build a grave with bowls. It is understood that the age of this bowl tomb is probably in the Ming and Qing Dynasties.