Archaeology Magazine - March/April 2011 - 23

gold coins ﬁltering back in return. Without the security that allowed for the ﬂow of silk and wealth, Liu conjectures, compounds like these could never have been built. The Sanyangzhuang sites are unusual not only for their apparent prosperity, but also for the rare example they provide of farmers living permanently outside the protection of city walls.“During the Warring States period, farmers would live inside cities and go out during the day to work,” Liu explains. “Or they would live in smaller towns and go out to cultivate their ﬁelds during certain times of year.” That settlement pattern persisted throughout Chinese history and Liu guesses that many farmers still lived like that during the Han. In Sanyangzhuang, however, the farmers appear to have lived exposed on the plain, building large houses a few steps from their ﬁelds and a comfortable distance from their neighbors.

oday, with the Yellow River 20 miles in the distance and no roving warlords, the Sanyangzhuang sites are facing a new set of threats. Henan’s climate—cold in the winter and wet and hot during the summer—can be hostile to an exposed site. A large warehouse has been constructed over a portion of the site, part of a recently opened tourism complex that includes a small museum. The building is not air-conditioned, however, and in Henan’s summer, the exposed parts of the Han Dynasty layer develop a thick green sheen of mold. Liu has experimented with a range of anti-mold agents and thinks he has found the right formula. The other excavated sites have all been recovered with loose dirt until Liu can get permission to build additional structures and prepare conservation treatments. The cautious archaeologist also faces dilemmas courtesy of the Yellow River. Unlike Pompeii, where in some places volcanic ash and lava fragments ﬁlled houses and preserved their structures, the river collapsed the buildings as it preserved their contents. Typically, Kidder says, excavators would record and chart what they had discovered, and then go deeper. This site is so well-preserved, however, that Liu has stopped at roof level, wanting to keep the outline of the houses and collapsed roofs complete. He hopes to excavate further at some sites but leave others as they were found. This way, he says, archaeologists and visitors can understand both life in the settlement and the way the disaster unfolded. “There will be some diﬃcult decisions to make,” Liu says. There are so many layers of occupation, he points out, that archaeologists could potentially keep digging past the Han Dynasty into the Warring States period and beyond. Despite his cautious approach, Liu is eager to see what lies underneath the roof line. In Compound Two, he says, it’s possible the family would have kept

Henan’s hot and humid climate makes mold a pressing challenge once portions of the site have been exposed. The team believes it has found the right anti-mold agent.

Farm tools, like these millstones, provide archaeologists with a rare glimpse into rural life during the Han Dynasty. www.archaeology.org

a bamboo book, in which a wealthy or aristocratic household recorded its daily aﬀairs. “If we want to ﬁnd and preserve a bamboo book, we will have to proceed carefully,” he says. The book would likely be very fragile but could provide important details on community and household management. For now, Kidder and Liu are puzzling over a mysterious indentation. A section of the Han Dynasty layer a few yards behind the compound has been washed away, replaced by a stretch of rubble—chunks of rammed earth and broken tile that lie at an incline, as if they had settled into the side of a riverbed. Interspersed in the rubble are smooth glazed pottery sherds, an easy read for Liu.“Tang Dynasty,” he says, well after the end of the Han. The archaeologists guess that a braid of the Yellow River settled here during the Tang Dynasty ﬂood, carving its way through the soil and uncovering a collapsed wall that was once part of the homestead at Compound Two. Too heavy to be swept away, the tiles and rammed earth of the wall simply slid toward the center of the river before another layer of sediment settled on top of them. As they were sinking in this new silt, Tang pottery sherds that had been swept downstream lodged in the sludge. But that still leaves the question of what kind of structure the tiles and rammed earth came from. “Maybe this was a pigsty or a storage room,” Liu says, examining the base of the wall. “It seems too big for a pigsty,” argues Kidder, who is eager to start digging for more clues. He clambers past Liu to the base of the wall. “Can I cut a proﬁle right here?” he asks. Liu, silent and thoughtful, raises his eyebrows. “He is good at keeping me in line,” laughs Kidder. ■ Lauren Hilgers is a freelance writer based in Shanghai.
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Archaeology Magazine - March/April 2011

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Archaeology Magazine - March/April 2011