商品簡介
"A Song Dynasty Paper Mill at Sizhou in Fuyan":The Sizhou paper mill is located to the north of the Fuyang City, in the northern foothill of the Fenghuang Mountain, a tail branch of the Tianmu Mountain. Surrounded by hills on its southern,western, and northern sides, it sits in a valley that opens to the east. The site area, which belongs to Sizhou Village, was once used for growing rice and vegetables, but now laid to waste. In its southern part a small grove of bamboo remains. The site, which is 30° 06' 13" N and 119° 54' 33" E and 17.6m above sea level, is 16 000 square meters in dimension.
In September 2008, a joint fieldwork team consisting of Hangzhou Municipal Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology and Fuyang Municipal Bureau of Cultural Relics, during the survey procesalong the new route of State Highway 320, discovered the Sizhou site. Since then through March 2009,it carried out a rescue excavation. Altogether 21 excavation pits (T1-T21) and 24 test trenches ( TGI-TG24 ) were exposed. Plus the expanded portions in some areas, the actual exposure amounts to 2 512.5 square meters.
The Sizhou site turns out to be a culturally rich one. Below the second layer we discovered a complex of water pools, canals, a large stove, a building foundation, and heat-conducting walls, all of which are linked with each other. Based on these features and subsequent analysis of residue taken from them, textual records and local tradition of paper making, we have come to the conclusion that this was a paper mill of the Song Dynasty. The various types of features and artifacts found here display to us the entire process of paper making.
The Sizhou paper mill site faces an ancient riverbed to the south and the Baiyangxi Brook to the north. The ancient riverbed was linked up with one east-west canal and two north-south canals of the site to form a circular water flow. Located in this network, the major features were used for bringing water into the mill, decomposing the fiber, adding lime, boiling and cleansing the fiber, pounding the slurry, making and drying the paper, and draining the waste water. The entire site is thus composed of quarters of suspending, lime-applying and boilding, pounding and making, drying, and draining.
Water canals: Two of them, G2 and G9, are linked with the ancient river to the south, and a third canal G8 to the north. They were probably used to bring water from the ancient river to the mill.
Decomposing pool: Pool C4 is located in the southeast of the excavation zone. The extant part of it is roughly square, its eastern wall 317cm and southern wall 432cm long, and 28cm deep. Canal G5 to its south functioned as its drainage.
Suspending pool: Pool C3, which is located in the south of the site, is trapezoid in shape, 240cm long, 94-132cm wide, and 50em deep. Its walls are finely lined with boulders, although the eastern wall is partially damaged. The floor is flat, formed of yellowish sandy soil. Inside the pool some lime particles are found. Trough G7, which connects to C3, is finally cut out of a slab of 233cm long, 31cm wide and 15cm deep and slanted eastward. Within it some grass ash is found. At the eastern end of this canal is a long trumpet-shaped trough formed of long bricks; the western end of it is blocked with two long bricks of 6cm wide. From the lime particles and grass ash we infer that C3 was a suspending pool filled with limy or limy alkaline solution. Ancient workers placed bamboo materials upon the facility to the west of G7 and poured the solution upon them; the extra solution then flew back to C3.
Boiling stove: Stove Z7 is located in the south of the site, elliptical in shape, 540cm long, 455cm wide, and 65cm deep. It is lined with boulders of various sizes, and presently only the bottom is preserved. In the central part, where boulders are neatly laid, a pile of boulders has collapsed into it.The fill contains a lot of burned tiles, charcoal lumps, and grass ash, and when it comes near the bottom,a lot of fired clay, more charcoal lumps, and lime particles. Z7 was therefore the firing chamber below the boiling vat. To increase the volume of the vat, the ancient workers put a bucket upon the vat, filled it with bamboo materials, and sealed the top. The bucket has a holed mat so that it accepts the steam from the vat. If this was the case, the original height of the bucket was remarkable, and the beams of Building F3 were possibly raised to accommodate it.
Cleansing pool: Pool C1, also located in the south of the site, sits at Canal G2 and connects to G5.Rectangular in shape, it is 280cm long, 130cm wide, and 15cm deep. The walls are lined with boulders,but those of the southern wall are partially lost. The bottom is flat and formed of clay. At its western wall there is a pile of stone pounders. Because C 1 sits near the running water of G5, it would have been used for cleansing slurry,. Of course, the option of cleansing them in the ancient river is also open.
Pounding house: Building F1 is located in the north of the site, comprising a pillar network of 23 base stones and 9 pillar pits, 15.8m wide, and 12.17m deep. In spite of the dense pillars, the building has no wall around. It yields over 20 stone implements, including grinders, mortars, and pounders,most of which are located in the northern part. The building could have been a pounding facility. A soil sample from a pottery urn in the northeastern corner of F1 has been analyzed to contain bamboo fiber and other vegetable fiber; the urn must have been containing pulp. Pounded pulp was then cleansed before it was used for quality paper. The building has two containers, C2 and C6, for making paper and they connect to Canal G4. C2 is 1.75m long and 1.25m wide; Canal C4 nearby has a water-control facility. C6 only preserves its floor planks, 1.46m long, 1.35m wide, and has trenches along the four sides, where stone or wooden planks would have stood to form the walls for the containers. The paper made at this stage was wet, and the planks helped to dehydrate it; yet it still requires pressing to quicken the process. G4 and G6 near C2 and C4 might have functioned this way.
Drying house: Building F2, located in the west of the site, consists of a eastern and a western wall and two poststands. The eastern wall, about 85cm wide, has a pebbl6~-paved surface outside. The inner wall, Q2, of F2 is hollow between two boulder walls. The extant part is 5lOom long, 40cm wide for the hollow interior, and 80cm for the exterior, and 25cm high. The eastern end of the wall retains some fired clay and charcoal lumps, which suggests that there be a stove here. Q2 was therefore a heat conductor,and F2 was a drying house.
Drainage canal: Canal G8, located in the north, connects to the two principal canals G2 and G9, and carries water from east to west. On its bottom some yellowish residue is visible, which resembles what we find in the canals of modern manual paper mill. The residue must have been the result of long-term pollution. The canal therefore must have been used to take away the waste water from the mill, which eventually poured into the Baiyangxi Brook.
The Sizhou site yields a great amount of artifacts. Apart from the abovementioned stone artifacts,it yields pottery architectural fittings, porcelain fragments, and coins. Among the architectural fittings there are tiles, rectangular bricks and elongated bricks. Two bricks bear the inscriptions of "the second year of the Zhidao ~_ reign" and "the second year of the Dazhong Xiangfu 大中祥符 reign".Among the porcelain fragments, there are blue, blue-white, white, black(brown), rice-yellowish types and crude types. Among the wares whose forms are tellible, there are bowls, platters, cups, dishes,washes, pitchers, incense burners, vases, cosmetic cases, lamps, and lids, and the noteworthy ones are the blue-white and white ( imitations of the Ding Kiln ) type from the Jingdezhen Kiln, celadon incense burners from the Longquan Kiln, and black cups from the Jian Kiln. Some wares bear ink inscriptions of "Kusi 庫司", "wu五", and "shang商" . Among the coins found here, most are of Northern and-Southern-Song,including Xianping Yuanbao, Jingde Yuanbao, Xuanhe Tongbao, Chunyou Yuanbao, Kaiqing Tongbao, and Jingding Yuanbao, to name a few.
Overall, the Sizhou paper mill is relatively a well-preserved one, displaying nearly the entire process of ancient papermaking, including decomposing, suspending, boilding, cleansing, pounding,and forming, which well manifests what is recorded in the Tiangong Kaiwu and what we have known from our investigation of local tradition. The heat-conducting wall is most noteworthy, indicating that the advanced drying technique was already in use during the Song Dynasty. The site as a whole is well planned and large in size, and it was not an ordinalT mill during its time. The artifacts tell us that the major functioning time of this mill was the Southern Song period, although bricks that bear the inscriptions of "the second year of Zhidao" and "the second year of Dazhong Xiangfu" may point back to the Northern Song period. The site as such was the earliest and best preserved paper mill ever found in China.
"A Song Dynasty Paper Mill at Sizhou in Fuyan"authorTang Junjie.
