Large ancient basement unearthed in China's Shaanxi

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Saturday, January 10, 2004

Large ancient basement unearthed in China's Shaanxi

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Chinese archaeologists have discovered a basement with a floor space of over 240 square meters in the ruins of a palace building of the Western Han Dynasty (206 B.C.-25 A.D.) in northwest China's Shaanxi Province.

The basement is located under the ruins of a building at the Changle Palace, residence of the empress of the Western Han.

From the center of the unearthed basement, a 2-meter-wide and 15-meter-long tunnel extends northward and at the entrance of the tunnel is a 10-square-meter room, similar to a "guardhouse", according to archaeologists from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS).

The Changle Palace, a building complex, makes up one-sixth of the ancient Chang'an City, capital of Western Han more than 2,000 years ago. The ancient city covered 36 square kilometers and was the largest city in the world at that time.

A team of Chinese archaeologists had been excavating the ruins of the Changle Palace area over the past three months. The excavation site is near the current Luozhai village of Weiyang District of Xi'an, capital city of Shaanxi Province.

Discovery of the basement is of academic value in the study of construction of ancient capitals in China, especially the technologies used to build palace buildings, said Liu Zhendong, who headed the excavation work at the ruins of ancient Chang'an city.

Liu Zhendong and his colleagues discovered 40 orderly-arranged wooden pillars, each with a diameter of over 40 centimeters, inside the basement. They said the pillars were used to hold the heavy weight of the building, together with the walls and 30 wooden pillars built into the walls of the basement.

Judging from the traces of burnt wooden plates, archaeologists said the roof and floor of the basement were built with thick wooden plates or girders.

"It (the basement) was impossible to be a residential zone," said Liu Qingzhu, a research fellow with the archaeological research institute of the CASS. "It was possibly used as a storehouse and might be used to help proof damp and keep warm for people living in surface building."

Chinese archaeologists also unearthed a subterranean chamber at the same area where the basement was discovered. They found large quantities of damaged murals from the semi-subterranean chamber and selected 30 pieces, ranging from several square centimeters to several dozens centimeters as specimens for further study.

Archaeologists said the semi-subterranean chamber and the afore-mentioned basement belong to the one and same palace building.

This was the first time that murals were excavated from the ruins of the palace buildings of the Western Han, said Liu Qingzhuwith the CASS. "The discovery provides not only important materials for studying palace frescos of the Western Han, but also links up the development chain of mural history in ancient China."

Historical records show that decorative murals had been very popular since the Western Han, and many palace buildings of ancient Chang'an city were decorated with murals.

However, due to the fact that Chang'an palace buildings have not survived and that historical documents only have very simple records on murals, "we can not judge the content of the murals," said Zhang Zhenfeng, an archaeologist who also participated in the recent excavations.

The floor of the semi-subterranean chamber was colored red, indicating that the room was a very important place used by very important people, said Liu Qingzhu with the CASS. "The significance of the red floor is quite like that of red carpet today."

The red floor showed that the Western Han empress enjoyed almost equal political status as the emperor, said Liu Qing Zhu.

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