Starting My Treasure Hunting In England

As we all know, the excavation of cultural relics is not a simple matter. This is especially true when it comes to thorough excavation instead of the simple excavation of samples for verification and identification like Liang En did before.

To give the simplest example, it took three months to clean Tutankhamen's tomb, and another ten months to transport all the unearthed cultural relics to Cairo!

But then again, it took so long to work on a tomb chamber with only a few dozen square meters, not just because of the large number of items in the room and the cumbersome archaeological process.

According to historical records, the most unlucky thing about those people back then was that half of the funds were used up after digging according to the standard process. As a result, they had to temporarily give up digging and go to solicit sponsorship.

Knowing that the formal archaeological process would take a lot of time, Liang En simply donated a guest room in his room to allow these museum staff to rest for free.

Anyway, his manor is a two-story building that is not too small. If it is crowded, twelve or three people can easily live in it.

Fortunately, compared to Tutankhamun's tomb, this Viking cemetery is much smaller, so it's not that difficult to clean up.

So on the third day after discovering the cemetery, they cleaned out the entire tomb under the leadership of Professor John and exposed the main part of the tomb.

The tomb is divided into two parts. One part is the burial pit, which contains the bones of a horse as a burial object for the owner of the tomb, while the other side is the main tomb chamber.

However, unlike tombs in China or Egypt, this medieval Viking cemetery is very small. The two tombs can only accommodate corpses, and there is not even a coffin.

Of course, the walls, floor and top of the Viking tomb were all covered with wooden boards. In theory, it can be regarded as a coffin buried entirely in the earth.

"This should be a woman." Looking at the excavated part of the pelvis, Liang En quickly came to a conclusion. "In other words, the owner of this tomb should be the second tomb belonging to a female Viking warrior in the world."

Because he had nothing to do during the Christmas vacation, Liang En simply joined the excavation work. And with his current status in the archaeological community, he can naturally enter the core of the tomb to excavate like Professor John.

"Yes, this warrior may not be at the top, but overall he is relatively rich." Professor John said while looking at the contents of the box that had been put aside to isolate the air.

They unearthed several weapons from the cemetery. In addition to the spears and bows found previously, there was also a battle ax with a steel blade inlaid on the blade and two small axes with reliefs on them.

The reason why she is said to be rich is because the tomb was buried with horses and several pieces of exquisite silver-inlaid gemstone jewelry, but her status is not high because no sword was found in the tomb.

Compared with the spears and axes that everyone holds, a sword has a special meaning in the ancient Viking society. It can be seen as a symbol of command or even status.

"We have dug to the bottom, and we should expand to the surrounding area next." After removing the pelvis and digging twice with a small shovel, Liang En said, because at this time, he and Professor John dug out some rotten wood at the same time. , should be the floor of the tomb.

"Then let's take one side, and I'll start digging from that side." John nodded to Liang En, then carried the tools in his hands to the other side of the tomb.

And just 15 minutes after they started digging alone, Liang En felt the tip of the wooden shovel in his hand hit something hard and smooth.

"Is it shipped?" Considering that there are no stones in this place, the hard objects that can be touched are most likely the burial objects in the tomb. Thinking of this, he immediately squatted down and took out a small plastic shovel, and then cleaned it bit by bit. Get up, and at the same time reach out to signal.

After seeing Liang En waving, Joan of Arc, who was helping to look at things just now, immediately put aside the raven she was holding in her hand to warm her hands, then took the video camera and camera on the side and ran over.

In fact, when anything of value was unearthed in the past, this process was followed, that is, the entire unearthed cultural relics and the subsequent arrangement process were photographed in order to provide sufficient data for future research.

Soon, Liang En used a soft plastic shovel and a brush to clean up the soil attached to the hard object bit by bit, revealing a piece of white behind it.

"How is this possible?" Liang En's eyes widened, "Let me see - this thing should not be, no, it should be said that this thing should not be here."

"What are you talking about?" Because Liang En was so excited that he was incoherent and his voice was louder, Professor John, who was digging nearby, immediately came over and looked at the place he was digging. "What exactly did you find?"

"Please wait a moment, it will take some time to dig this thing out." Liang En quickly cleaned the ground under his hands. Fortunately, the size of the thing was not too big, so he quickly dug it out of the soft soil. come out.

This is a white porcelain. After simply cleaning off the surface soil and measuring it, we found that it is a round porcelain box with a lid that is 6.9cm high, 9.8cm in diameter, and 5.4cm in full diameter.

The whole box is round in shape, with upper and lower openings fastened together, straight walls, raised top, retracted lower abdomen, and circled feet. The tire wall is thicker and the tire quality is hard. White glaze is applied inside and outside, the glaze color is white and the glaze surface is shiny and moist.

"China!" Professor John also showed a shocked expression when he saw this thing, and accurately described the current situation in one word.

Judging from previous excavations, the overall preservation of this tomb is not very good due to early collapse and weathering, but it is a blessing in disguise that it has not been disturbed.

In other words, the palm-sized round porcelain box with a lid at the bottom of the tomb should have been something that originally existed in the tomb, and did not fall in at a later date.

But the problem is that this place is Ireland, which is considered a remote place in Europe, not China. So it is very interesting that such a small round porcelain box that obviously comes from China appears here.

Of course, considering that the jade road that has been opened since the Shang Dynasty has connected the hinterland of the Asian continent and continuously sent jade from the Western Regions to the Central Plains, it is not surprising to find things from the other side of the continent here. Not a difficult thing to understand.

After all, the years corresponding to the entire Viking Age happened to be from the late Tang Dynasty to the early Northern Song Dynasty in China, which was also a peak period for China's foreign exchanges.

Both the land Silk Road and the maritime Silk Road existed in that era, so it is not too unusual for items representing China to cross the ocean and reach Europe.

Soon, Liang En shone a flashlight around the box to complete a preliminary inspection. He found that the box was not sealed and there was no identifiable writing on it.

"Go to the car and open this box and take a look." Dr. John suggested next to him. "If the contents inside were to be weathered, they would have weathered by now, but if they could be preserved to this day, they should be able to be opened in the car."

"Okay, let's go take a look now." Liang En nodded and said, because this box is very valuable from an archaeological perspective, so it's not a bad thing to take a look inside early.