巩县铁生沟汉代冶铸遗址再探讨

A RE-INVESTIGATION OF THE REMAINS OF THE IRON AND STEEL WORKS OF THE HAN DYNASTY AT TIESHENGGOU,HENAN

巩县铁生沟是一处经科学发掘的重要遗址,生产工艺项目较全,学术价值较大。本文作者之一的赵青云参加了全部发掘工作,并与赵国壁负责编写了《巩县铁生沟》报告,在学术界引起了较大反响。报告发表后的二十多年来,原发掘单位、郑州市博物馆、北京钢铁学院和其他科研单位,对汉代冶铁遗址又进行了一系列的发掘和研究,取得了许多新成果。

The iron and steel workshop at Tieshenggou (T'ieh Sheng Kou) in Gongxian,He-nan Province,was one of the official iron and steel works in the lat West Han and earlyEast Han periods,namely the period between the mid-2nd century B.C.and the 1st cen-tury A.D..Since the excavation of the site of the works in 1958—59 and the publicationof the report 'T’ IEH SHENG KOU,KUNG HSIEN' in 1962,which has been widelyquoted both in China and abroad,more archaeological excavations of systematical studiestrove been made,especially the excavations at Guying and Nanyang.The new knowledgeand experience have shown that some of the original interpretations on the remains of thesite of Tieshenggou require modification or even correction.In view of the importance ofthe cxcavation at this site to the understanding of the iron technology of ancient Chinaand of the role played by the iron production in economy and politics of the Han Dynasty,a re-examination of the original field records have been made and some important partsof the formerly excavated area have been re-exposed for examination and checking.The remains in the 2000m^2 area exposed include 8 iron-making blast furnaces,1 pu-dolling furnace,1 furnace for forging,1 annealing furnace of special design for uniformtemperature,probably for steelmaking by the decarburization of white iron castings,11baking furnaces for moulds,mainly for in-sita casting,5 multi-purpose heating furnaces,9 pits with more than 10 pieces of salamanders and blocks from semi-fused burden of theblast furnaces.18 iron- and steel-making furnaces were suggested in the original report.The other artefacts include 200 iron implements,233 pieces of pottery,an iron permanent mould insert,refractory pieces,and furnace lining and blast pipe fragments etc.The hearths of the blast furnaces diameters from 0.64 to 1.8 meters,among which 3are under 1 meter.Only charcoal was used at Tieshenggou for smelting iron in blast fur-naces.Coal was found on the site,but only used for heating in the annealing or mould-ba-king furnaces.Refractory mixed coal was used in the furnace foundation and grog wasused in blast pipes.These are the earliest evidence of the use of grog and refractory,mi-xed coal at least in China up to the present.So far,only 9 pieces of iron articles have beenfound with Chinese inseription ‘三河’.76 artifacts have been examined metallographical-ly.Chemical analyses have been given to 7 artefacts.The number of blast furnaces,the large salamandars,the large quantity of slag,ofwhich no less than 12000 tons remained and more was lost,and the shipment of productsas far as to Tonglushan,the presence of ancient copper mine in Daye,south of the Yang-tze River,all indicate the large scale of the iron production in the works of Tieshenggou.