Treasure hunt begins in England

Chapter 254 Porcelain Box
As we all know, the excavation of cultural relics and historic sites is not a simple matter.This is especially true when thorough excavation is used instead of Liang En's previous simple excavation samples for verification and identification.

To give the simplest example, it took three months to clean Tutankhamun's tomb, and another ten months to transport all the unearthed cultural relics to Cairo!
But then again, the long tossing time in the tomb with only tens of square meters is 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 for those people back then was that half of the funds dug out according to the standard process were used up, so they had to temporarily give up digging and run to get sponsors.

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

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

Fortunately, compared with Tutankhamun's tomb, the cemetery belonging to the Vikings is much smaller, and it is not so difficult to clean it up.

So on the third day after discovering the cemetery, they cleared 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 accompanying burial pit, which contains the bones of a horse, which is regarded as a burial object for the tomb owner, and the other side is the main burial chamber.

However, unlike the tombs in China or Egypt, this cemetery belonging to the Vikings in the Middle Ages is very small, and the two tombs can only hold corpses, not even a coffin.

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

"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 was idle during the Christmas holiday, Liang En simply joined in the excavation work.And with his current status in the archaeological world, he can naturally dig into the core of the tomb like Professor John.

"That's right, this samurai may not be at the top, but overall he is relatively rich." Professor John said looking at the things in the box that was placed aside to isolate the air.

They unearthed several weapons from this cemetery. In addition to the previously discovered spears and bows and arrows, there is also a battle ax with a steel blade inlaid on the blade and two small axes with reliefs on it.

The reason why she is said to be rich is because there are horses and several exquisitely crafted silver and gemstone jewelry buried in the tomb, but her status is not high because no sword was found in the tomb.

Compared with the spear and ax that everyone held, a sword had a special meaning in the ancient Viking society.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." After removing the pelvis and digging twice with a small shovel, Liang En said, because at this time he and Professor John dug some rotten wood at the same time , should be the floor of the tomb.

"Let's go to one side. I'll start digging from that side." John nodded to Liang En, and then went to the other side of the tomb with the tools in his hand.

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

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

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

In fact, when any valuable things were unearthed, this process was followed, that is, to take pictures of the entire unearthed cultural relics and the subsequent finishing process, so as to provide sufficient information for future research.

Soon, Liang En used a soft plastic shovel and brush to clean up the dirt adhering to the hard object little by little, revealing a piece of white behind.

"How is this possible?" Liang En stared wide-eyed, "Let me see—this thing shouldn't be, no, it should be said that this thing shouldn't appear here."

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

"Please wait a moment, it will take some time to dig out this thing." Liang En quickly cleaned up 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 cleaning off the dirt on the surface and measuring it, it is found to be a round porcelain box with a cover, 6.9cm high, 9.8cm in diameter, and 5.4cm in foot diameter.

The whole box is round, with the upper and lower mouths fastened together, straight walls, raised lid, lower abdomen retracted, and circled feet.The tire wall is thick and the tire quality is hard.White glaze is applied inside and outside, the glaze color is white, and the glaze surface is shiny.

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

Judging from the previous excavations, the overall preservation of this tomb is not good due to the collapse and weathering in the early years, but it was a blessing in disguise and was not disturbed by robbers.

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

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 obviously from China appears here.

Of course, considering that the jade road that has been opened since the Shang Dynasty has communicated with 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 mainland here. Not a difficult thing to understand.

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

Both the Silk Road on land and the Silk Road on the sea existed in that era, so it is not too unusual for an item like this that represents China to travel across the ocean to Europe.

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

"Go to the car and open this box." Dr. John next to him suggested. "If the contents inside were to be weathered, they would have been weathered long ago, but if they can be preserved until today, they should be able to be opened in the car."

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

(End of this chapter)