The chrysanthemum-shaped gold bowl, lotus pattern silver bowl, bamboo hat silver bowl and other utensil shapes unearthed this time have been found in Mian, Yangjiazang, Deyangjiazang, Fujian, Jianshaowu, Jiazang and other places.
On the chrysanthemum-shaped gold bowl, there is clearly the year "Shaoxi", and "Shaoxi" is after 1190.
From this, experts infer that the upper limit of the age of Pengcheng gold and silver artifacts should not be earlier than the "Shaoxi" period. Almost all the artifacts show obvious characteristics of the Southern Song Dynasty, and the lower limit should not be later than the late Southern Song Dynasty.
However, the age of the artifacts does not necessarily mean the time when they were put into the cellar. What was the reason that prompted the owner to bury this batch of precious treasures?
Hasty "cellaring" often involves hiding things in jars, wooden boxes, or even burying them directly in pits.
However, Pengzhou's gold and silverware are buried in regular brick rooms. The items are placed neatly and orderly. Most of the items are also wrapped in gauze. The precious gold items are all packed in a large silver bowl. When they are taken down to the cellar, they are arranged in order of size first and then size.
Put them in order, and some of the same shapes overlap.
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The brick chamber is just big enough to hold all the utensils, leaving no big space and not crushing the utensils because the space is too small, and it is buried more than 2 meters deep underground.
This shows that the owner had plenty of time when he went down to the cellar and did not panic at all.
Experts found that "Dong", "Dong Zhai" and other inscriptions appeared on a large number of gold and silver wares. It is estimated that this should be the owner of this batch of gold and silver wares, a wealthy family named Dong.
Although luxury was prevalent in the Song Dynasty, ordinary people were proud of having a few pieces of gold and silverware, and were able to own such a large number of exquisite gold and silverware. Obviously "Dong" was a family with a high social status and financial resources.
Ordinary social events will not have much impact on these huge families. The reason why they have to bury precious gold and silverware underground must be serious events that are difficult for them to control and predict.
Many clues made the experts' thinking gradually clear.
After the "Shaoxi Change to the Yuan Dynasty", events did occur in Pengcheng that caused local wealthy people to flee in a hurry and bury their treasures.
In the third year of Duanping in the Southern Song Dynasty, that is, in 1236, the Mongolian cavalry occupied most of the Song Dynasty. At that time, people fled in a hurry.
What emerges in front of us is this scene: A wealthy family in Pengcheng with the surname Dong learned in advance that the Mongolian soldiers were going south, and expected that Pengcheng would fall sooner or later. So they buried the gold and silverware they had accumulated over the years, hoping to wait until the war broke out.
Take it out later.
But what I didn't expect was that when the Mongolian soldiers arrived, the whole family was slaughtered or fled, never having the chance to come back. This left modern people with physical information leading to the Southern Song Dynasty.
However, the most accurate speculation requires more historical data to support it.
Although the origin of these hoards has been roughly deduced, new questions have arisen one after another.
Since it is a cellar, does the Dong family only have these more than 350 pieces of gold and silverware?
Since you can afford to buy so much silverware, don’t you have the strength to buy goldware?
You need to know the difference between goldware and silverware, just like the difference between a current Santana and a coupe. It is absolutely impossible for a wealthy family to be without goldware.
Moreover, judging from the discovery of the cellar, it is obvious that the cellar is incomplete.
Judging from this discovery, the owners of this batch of gold and silverware at that time were well prepared. They were able to hide everything completely in the cellar, which shows that they were very calm when they left.
Since this is the case, the things left behind by a large family cannot be incomplete. For example, women’s jewelry cannot be all gold and silver headdresses. At the very least, there are bracelets, rings, earrings and so on.
Silverware is also obviously incomplete, such as some tableware. Only silver bowls were found in this batch of cellars, while other cups, spoons, chopsticks, wine utensils, etc. were not found.
Therefore, even if this family does not have the strength to purchase many gold items, they will definitely have the silver items mentioned above.
With such questions, the staff of Pengcheng City Museum became excited, and they soon gained something.
The place where Pengcheng gold and silverware was discovered has now become a prosperous commercial district. It was the site of a temple in the Qing Dynasty. Before that, it was impossible to find out.
This time, the unexpected discovery was made because of the urban reconstruction project, so when they cleared the entire construction site, they quickly made another discovery.
That place was obviously a cellar, but what they discovered next poured a bucket of cold water on them.
The cellar was discovered, but it was an obviously damaged cellar. This cellar was right next to the cellar that was accidentally discovered by workers.
If the staff hadn't been careful and discovered some special soil used for caulking, they would never have been able to discover the completely destroyed cellar.
With the target in mind, they quickly cleared out the general location of the cellar.
Only then did they discover that there was only a wall separating the damaged cellar from the intact cellar they found. From here, it was obvious that they belonged to the same underground building.
What they found next was even more frustrating. They cleared out four cellars one after another. Including the well-preserved one, there should be five cellars.
The cellars were distributed in a plum blossom shape, all close together. By this time, no one doubted that there were originally five cellars here.
Now that this fact has been established, why were the other four cellars destroyed?
Through the investigation of the scene, it was obvious that the four cellars had been destroyed recently, and there were obvious signs of man-made damage. This showed that the four cellars were dug up in a planned manner and then deliberately destroyed.
By this time, everyone had a clear understanding of the matter, but at this time, as a result of Pengcheng's investment promotion, the person in charge of the patriotic company had disappeared without a trace.
The huge sum of one billion yuan that this group of people had just received from the account of the company undertaking the renovation project had already been evacuated for various reasons.
At this time, everyone understood that this patriotic company that came to their hometown to make contributions was probably a tomb robbing gang.
Sure enough, with the in-depth investigation, all the personal information of the group was forged, and their company, money, and business dealings were all real. However, the companies related to them had all been banned by this time.
After draining the funds, it has become an empty shell.
At this time, the investigators had a clear understanding that they were facing a very powerful and well-organized tomb robbing group, and such a group would naturally be able to smuggle.
With this judgment, everyone felt cold. There were more than 350 pieces of gold and silverware in just one cellar. How many treasures were there in the other four cellars?
There are at least a thousand pieces. This is the conclusion everyone reached by sorting out the damaged cellars and analyzing the complete cellars.
Thousands of gold and silverware are enough to support a large museum. No one can afford such a loss, so Pengcheng City attaches great importance to it. From then on, they started an eleven-year tracking journey
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Over the years, the Pengcheng City government has spent a lot of effort, from monitoring changes in the international smuggling market to collecting information on major domestic smuggling gangs. It can be said that they will pay attention to any news about gold, silver and antiques.
It was under such strict monitoring that this batch of gold and silverware disappeared for eleven years.
Until recently, a group of very large smuggling gangs were destroyed, thus alerting the public and allowing another group to gradually surface.
These frightened criminals finally couldn't help but show up.
The next thing was the black market auction that Han Peacock personally participated in.
With the recovery of this batch of gold and silverware, Pengcheng's gold and silverware can be said to be famous all over the world.
"Pengzhou gold and silverware represents the highest level of gold and silverware in the Song Dynasty." This is Xu Fang, a famous professor at Modu University, who commented on the collection of gold and silverware in Pengcheng from the Song Dynasty.
Among these rare treasures, the inscriptions on gold and silverware have become rare physical data for studying the industry and commerce of the Song Dynasty.
In particular, there is a silver ewer with a lotus cover and a shoulder strap. This silverware represents the highest level of manufacturing in the Song Dynasty. It can be selected as a fine cultural relic of Chinese archaeology and will be the treasure of the Pengcheng City Museum in the future.
Among the more than 1,500 pieces of gold and silverware in this batch, nearly 850 pieces have identifiable inscriptions on the objects, accounting for 70% of this batch of gold and silverware. This is extremely rare in the Song Dynasty hoards.
In the inscriptions, the names of craftsmen, manufacturers, and places of manufacture such as "Luozu Ichiro", "Wang Family Made Ten Points", "Temple Street Chen Family", etc. only appear on a certain type or set of utensils, indicating the division of labor at that time.
It is already very detailed, with each workshop only producing one or a few types of gold and silver items.
More importantly, many gold and silverware are marked with fineness and weight, such as "Yuan Jiafen", "One pay of notes weighs thirty-one taels", etc. It can be seen that people's pursuit of quality in ancient times is compared with modern times.
Worse than that.
These inscriptions are left on the objects through engraving, stamping, engraving, etc., which all reflect the dignity and cherishment of the holder.
Among Pengcheng's gold and silverware, except for two types of jewelry: gold hairpins and gold hairpins, the rest are containers and various tableware.
There are 15 types of bowls, plates, cups, pots, bottles, etc., and more than 30% of them are gold and silver wares, with vivid patterns as decorations. This shows that gold and silver wares in the Song Dynasty were widely used among the people, and the decoration has become secular and no longer
Pay more attention to decoration.
In terms of production technology, although Pengcheng gold and silverware was mostly made by private workshops and individual gold and silver craftsmen, the workmanship is very fine. Almost all the techniques used in the production of gold and silverware in the Song Dynasty are reflected in Pengcheng gold and silverware.
In addition, among the unearthed gold and silverware, many items have inscriptions with the word "official" carved on them. These items have complex shapes and exquisite craftsmanship, and should be products of government workshops.
The manufacturing of gold and silverware in the Song Dynasty was already very advanced. As Pengcheng was the core area of the early activities of the ancestors, it is reasonable for so many exquisite gold and silverware to appear.