Chapter 254: Find Out First, Then Talk

Each department moved at the news, and the road north of the village was as jammed as a parking lot.

Tan Wu brought over the old Party branch secretary, who was just over seventy and in quite high spirits.

Lin Sicheng offered a greeting and had Fang Jin record it.

"This place used to be called Heizhapuo. In the past, all the village's trash was dumped here. Waste ash and slag from burning stoves, broken bricks and tiles from building houses—everything was here."

"By the fifties, the commune had us build terraced fields, and this whole section of the mountain was leveled, burying the tile piles and trash. At first, we planted alfalfa, then wheat, and in the last two years, we returned the farmland to forest and planted trees..."

"Old Secretary, was any porcelain ever dug up back then?"

"No porcelain, but when we were building the road in the seventies, we dug up broken Pottery Jars, quite a few of them... right where you just dug open!"

The old secretary pointed to the Waste Porcelain Pit, "After the road was built, we just filled it in!"

"Back when the road was being built, was an old river ever dug up in the deeper parts?"

Lin Sicheng gestured, "Was the top layer fine sand, the middle layer sand mixed with rice-grain-sized grit, then below that coarse sand and pebbles, and finally a very hard soil that a shovel couldn't move?"

"There was plenty of that, just follow this way upward, for hundreds of meters!"

The old secretary pointed to the foot of the mountain, "The commune even sent people to look back then, telling us to use local materials and screen road slag (pebbles for the road base) right here; the deepest parts were eight or nine meters..."

"Then thank you, Old Secretary!"

Lin Sicheng said his thanks and let out a breath.

An eight or nine-meter-deep ancient riverbed—how long must that have taken to deposit?

This is the place, no doubt about it...

With a "beep," the walkie-talkie sounded, and Gao Zhangyi's voice came through: "Teacher Lin, the third layer of the waste pit has been uncovered!"

"Good, I'm coming over right away!"

It wasn't far, about a hundred meters; Lin Sicheng climbed down the terraced field and walked over.

It was a large pit about eight or nine meters in diameter, surrounded by a fence, with people standing all around the outside. Seeing Lin Sicheng, the crowd automatically cleared a path.

In three days, the Waste Porcelain Pit had been dug four meters deep; the first two meters were mostly construction waste filled in during road construction, and the second layer was the broken pottery the village secretary mentioned.

It was indeed Pottery, but there was even more coarse Black Porcelain and Sandware. Thermoluminescence testing determined the age to be 800±60, which happens to fall at the end of the Jin Dynasty and the beginning of the Yuan Dynasty.

Besides that, it was mixed with quite a bit of waste ash: wood ash, coal ash, furnace slag, unburned coal cinders, and so on. This indicated there were both Chai Kilns and coal kilns.

It was also extremely thick, a full two meters, and took two whole days to clear.

Next was the third layer, the one currently being excavated.

The waste pit was funnel-shaped, getting smaller the further down it went; at this point, the bottom diameter was about five meters, and six technicians stood on each side, barely able to turn around.

The slopes were reinforced and protected, with a terrace built every half meter, and people were specifically assigned to transport Cultural Relics and waste ash upward.

The waste ash at the bottom had been cleared, and one could roughly see the waste materials exposed at the pit floor: there were Pottery Molds (stamping molds), Saggers, and supports like Support Cakes and Support Nails.

Wang Qi Zhi stared hard: what happened to the White Porcelain that was promised?

He and Sun Jiamu had been watching for three days; let alone White Porcelain, they hadn't even seen a speck of porcelain scrap.

A wasted excitement...

"There is indeed White Glazed Porcelain; Director Tian wouldn't deliberately lie to you!"

Lin Sicheng joked, pointing downward, "But it's in the very bottom layer, about five point seven to six point three meters down. However, the quality is relatively poor; most of it is Collapsed Glaze Porcelain (glaze surface collapsed and flaked off) and Yellow Porcelain..."

"But we're only at about four meters now?" Wang Qi Zhi calculated, "What is the one point seven meters in between?"

"Sagger Bodies, supports, Pottery Molds; roughly the kind you see before you, most of them are quite complete."

Wang Qi Zhi was stunned: one point seven meters, all firing tools, and most of them complete?

What was this for, smashing them and not firing anymore?

And where did the Black Porcelain and Sandware above come from?

Just as he was pondering, Lin Sicheng pointed to the Sagger Bodies and molds brought up: "Teacher, look!"

Wang Qi Zhi squinted and looked, then leaned down and picked up a Sagger Body that had just been cleared.

At just one glance, Wang Qi Zhi could determine that this was fired from select White Porcelain Clay mixed with Quartz. The body color was light white, the body texture dense and hard; the exterior was slightly rough, but the inner wall was smooth and delicate, no less than Fine White Porcelain.

The key was that this was a single sagger. In other words: one sagger contained only one porcelain blank.

The coarse Black Porcelain and Sandware unearthed from the second layer just now wouldn't have needed such fine sagger tools at all.

He looked again at the stamping molds nearby, and Wang Qi Zhi frowned: the second layer was a full two meters deep, and nearly a thousand pieces of Black Porcelain shards and broken pottery were dug out, yet not a single one had a stamp; then what were these sets of molds for?

Wang Qi Zhi pondered: "At first, what was fired here must have been White Porcelain, so the very bottom of the waste ash pit is waste White Porcelain. But later they switched to firing Black Porcelain, and the original Sagger Bodies and supports couldn't be used, so they had to throw them all away?"

"That's roughly it!" Lin Sicheng nodded, "I estimate the technology wasn't up to par, the quality of the White Porcelain fired was too poor, and in the end, they gave up and switched to firing Black Porcelain and Pottery."

Sun Jiamu was thoughtful: "The bottom layer is mostly Collapsed Glaze Porcelain and Yellow Porcelain; was this because they didn't master the temperature when firing White Porcelain?"

Lin Sicheng nodded again: "Correct!"

Wang Qi Zhi and Sun Jiamu suddenly realized: if White Porcelain is over-fired (temperature too high), the glaze will collapse, or even crack. If the temperature is not enough, the Glaze Layer will turn yellow, or even fire into Mon-smoke Porcelain.

The soil layers probed during the survey also confirmed this.

But the strange thing was, the waste porcelain at the very bottom was less than a meter deep, at most a few hundred pieces. Even relying only on that one Kiln Furnace on the terraced field, that was at most the output of three or four firings.

Then the question arises again: it's impossible that after the new kiln was built, they only fired three or four times before abandoning White Porcelain to fire Black Porcelain; not to mention anything else, just these nearly two-meter-deep firing Sagger tools—how much of a cost is that?

"So I speculate that this was just a test firing. They fired a few kilns, the quality was too poor, so they simply changed course. Therefore, there should be earlier kilns nearby, otherwise, these tools specifically for firing White Porcelain cannot be explained."

Wang Qi Zhi's eyes lit up: "Luanbai Jade?"

Lin Sicheng thought for a moment and shook his head: "Even if it is, I estimate it's the kind with relatively poorer quality, at least worse than the Bowl from General Manager Shui, and even worse than the Bowl received in Yongji."

Because technology cannot just break in continuity; even if it degrades, there is a gradual process. So White Porcelain was definitely fired, but wanting to restore the Luanbai Jade craft based on this, I estimate it's not very likely.

Looking again at the Black Porcelain and Sandware unearthed in the second layer, the technology is clearly very mature, so it is inferred that the kilns nearby mainly fired Black Porcelain and Sandware. It's even hard to say, they might have also fired Pottery.

Sun Jiamu remembered: Wang Qi Zhi had mentioned that they had received a Porcelain Pillow from the Jin Dynasty in Yongji, which used the clay from Hejin.

It seems the Pottery Lin Sicheng mentioned refers to this.

So after all that, even if there are kilns nearby, at most they are Jin Dynasty kilns?

"Could there be Luanbai Jade?"

"Unlikely!" Lin Sicheng shook his head. "Look at the porcelain slag at the very bottom of the QianTanjie soil layer; it doesn't even reach the quality of Tang Dynasty Jade Wall Base White Porcelain!"

Doesn't this mean the more they fired, the more they regressed?

But it is not strange: it is acknowledged by the archaeological and ceramic circles that, due to the chaos of war, the porcelain firing technology in the north during the Jin Dynasty regressed significantly compared to the Northern Song Dynasty.

Just as he was secretly sighing, Lin Sicheng's walkie-talkie beeped: "Teacher Lin, a waste pit was discovered under the Taidi about 1.5 kilometers southwest of the terraced fields. Three waste porcelain pits have been identified. The upper layers are all waste ash and black porcelain, the middle layer is pottery and a small amount of Celadon-White Porcelain, and the bottom layer is currently being probed..."

"Good, I'll be there immediately!"

Lin Sicheng hung up the phone and waved to the distance. With a "vroom," the pickup truck drove over.

The back row had been removed to store tools and couldn't seat people, so Sun Jiamu and Wang Qi Zhi hurriedly ran toward the Jeep Grand Cherokee.

Just after sitting in the car, Sun Jiamu looked strange: "Lin Sicheng said there must be more kilns nearby, I believe that, but how did Tian Jie find them so fast?"

Counting it all up, it hasn't even been three days.

If it were right next to the terraced fields, it would be understandable, but it's over a kilometer away, with roads, fields, and residential areas in between; how did Tian Jie find his way there?

"Lin Sicheng drew a map for Tian Jie, roughly inferring the flow of the ancient riverbed based on the No. 1 Kiln Furnace and waste pit on the terraced fields, and then, based on the surrounding Ceramic Clay Mine, pinpointed the possible distribution points of ancient kiln sites from the same period!"

Wang Qi Zhi said as a matter of course, "Just like he said, as long as you find the ancient riverbed, the kiln sites are as clear as day!"

Sun Jiamu was stunned for a moment, his words stuck in his throat.

That's right, Lin Sicheng had said that, but he didn't expect it to be this easy to do.

It was only a little over a kilometer, and they arrived in a few minutes; the two cars followed the dirt road along the river ditch to the bottom of the Taidi.

The river ditch was very wide, about twenty meters or so, and in the center, three QianTanjie were rumbling.

Several arm-thick drilling pipes were laid to the side, revealing the soil layers that had been drilled out.

It was about six meters deep, and the layers were clear at a glance: three meters of sandy yellow soil, basically Taidi yellow soil washed down by mountain floods. Below that was an intermittent layer of about one meter, and further down, there was suddenly waste ash and porcelain slag.

Lin Sicheng squatted down, put on gloves, and dug slowly.

There was a lot of ash and little porcelain, indicating that the firing technology was relatively mature. Among them, black porcelain was the most common, indicating that the late period here was still dominated by firing civilian black porcelain.

After roughly flipping through it, Lin Sicheng paused slightly and fished out a palm-sized piece of pottery from the waste ash.

The body was brick-red, the texture was very rough, and the sand grains in the body could be clearly seen. The inner wall had basically not been trimmed, the exterior was glazed with green, and the edges were neat and smooth.

At first glance, it looked like the edge of a pottery box.

Lin Sicheng, however, narrowed his eyes: if nothing went wrong, this should be the bottom edge of a ceramic pillow. If restored as a whole, it should look like this:

Looking at the degree of aging, it was slightly earlier than the ancient kiln in the terraced fields, roughly belonging to the early Jin Dynasty.

Therefore, this should be a Jin Dynasty Three-color Ceramic Pillow.

Suddenly, Lin Sicheng remembered the porcelain pillow fragments he had received in Yongji, and even more so, the White Ground Carved Flower Child Pillow in the Forbidden City that was mistaken for Ding Kiln White Porcelain by the Emperor and even had a poem inscribed on it...

He stood up abruptly and looked at the positions of the three drilling rigs: they formed an obtuse triangle, with the two furthest ones about seven meters apart in a straight line.

Lin Sicheng picked up a drilling rod and first drew a triangle: "These are the No. 1, 2, and 3 waste pits. With this as the Center, the area between fifty and one hundred meters should all be waste pits. The number is estimated to be quite large, at least ten or more..."

"The ancient riverbed is here, two hundred meters to the southeast is the downstream of the river, and about one hundred meters from the waste pits, there should be a forming field and a Washing Pool..."

Lin Sicheng drew another circle and finally pointed a few times: "Further south, within one hundred meters of the waste pit area, look for the Kiln Furnace!"

Sun Jiamu and Wang Qi Zhi both leaned in: an oval circle with four points marked. Looking at the positions, they knew that the three small dots were the three identified waste pits, and the large dot was the Kiln Furnace.

A rough calculation: two hundred meters north to south, fifty or sixty meters east to west; according to Lin Sicheng's estimate, the area of the ruins should be about ten thousand square meters.

It was very small, only one-sixth of the Old Kiln Head Ruins, and only half the size of the Beiwuqin Tang Kiln, not even as big as the one under the terraced fields?

As the two were pondering, Lin Sicheng had the team members stop the drilling rigs and pull out the drilling pipes.

This time it was deeper, about eight meters from the surface. After taking apart the drilling pipes, the bottom layer contained not only fragments of three-color glazed pottery but also some white porcelain shards.

The pottery shards had edges, corners, ridges, and curves... a Jin Dynasty three-color carved pottery pillow.

The white porcelain glaze was lustrous, but it faintly revealed a grayish-green, deeper in color than the Tang Dynasty Jade Wall Base Bowl of General Engineer Shui, and deeper than the Egg-White Jade Bowl received in Yongji, closer to the color of a duck egg.

Subconsciously, Lin Sicheng recalled his previous inference with General Engineer Shui regarding the Luanbai Jade kiln site: Luanbai Jade began in the late Tang or Five Dynasties, flourished in the Northern Song Dynasty, and declined in the Jin Dynasty.

But it was only a decline, not a break in the lineage; even if the craftsmanship regressed, there was a gradual process, and some techniques must have been passed down.

Just like these white porcelain shards: nine times out of ten, the kiln temperature did not meet the standard, and wood ash had to be added to the Glaze Material to assist melting, which caused the glaze to appear gray and green.

Just as recorded in the Nanyao Notes: "If there is much ash, the glaze color is green; if there is little ash, the glaze is white... the difference in the green and white of the glaze lies in the amount of ash added."

To put it bluntly: there must be earlier kiln furnaces nearby, such as from the early Jin Dynasty, or even the Northern Song Dynasty...

Lin Sicheng looked at the terrain, opened his bag to take out paper and a pen, and while drawing the map, gave instructions to Tian Jie: "Director Tian, notify Team Leader Gao to withdraw everyone and bring them over. Leave the terraced fields to the City Archaeology Team."

"Then divide into three teams. First go to the Jianhe ancient riverbed north of Guzhen Village (downstream of Zhemayu), then go south five hundred meters and explore along the Beijian. One team will look for the riverbed in the ditch, and the other two teams will explore south along both banks. The exploration points don't need to be too dense; drill once every two hundred meters and try to probe..."

Wang Qi Zhi recalled: "Beijian ditch... we were just there yesterday. A few years ago, when they built the residential area on both banks, they dug four or five meters deep. If there were an ancient riverbed, shouldn't it have been dug up long ago?"

Lin Sicheng sighed: they did indeed dig four or five meters.

But what did that old branch secretary say just now: the deepest ancient riverbed of the Jianhe is a full eight or nine meters deep.

Look here again. It is also a ditch under the Taidi, and the bottom of the ditch is at least four meters deep from the flat ground. Then they dug another four meters to reach the waste pits.

How deep is this? Nearly eight meters.

Regardless of how it was formed—whether it was silt accumulation from mountain floods or soil piled up during the large-scale land reclamation in the 1950s and 60s—the water level of the ancient riverbed must be deeper than the waste pits, at least nine to ten meters down!

Lin Sicheng handed the map to Tian Jie: "Go find it first; it won't take much time anyway!"

(End of this chapter)