More than 800 years ago, was the Southern Song imperial street paved with fragrant cake bricks or stone slabs as recorded in documents? The excavation of "Zhongshan Road Southern Song Imperial Street" by Hangzhou Cultural Relics and Archaeology Institute may reveal this long-standing issue that has puzzled the archaeology community: the institute discovered for the first time the coexistence of fragrant cake bricks and stone slabs on the Southern Song imperial street and "imperial ditch", which is also the most complete Southern Song imperial street site discovered so far.
The Southern Song imperial street was a dedicated road used by the emperor during the "Four Meng" (beginning of spring, summer, autumn, and winter) to worship ancestors at the Jingling Palace.
In 2004, Hangzhou Cultural Relics and Archaeology Institute discovered part of the Southern Song imperial street site for the first time, and the "Yanguan Alley Southern Song Site" was rated as one of the "Top Ten Archaeological New Discoveries" of that year. At this location, archaeologists found that the imperial street pavement was made of fragrant cake bricks, rather than the "old auxiliary stones laid horizontally and vertically in 35,300 planks, replacing those broken ones totaling 20,000" as recorded in many documents, meaning that the Southern Song imperial street was paved with stone slabs.
Recently, Hangzhou Cultural Relics and Archaeology Institute excavated a 60-square-meter, over 2-meter-deep archaeological pit near Zhongshan Road and Huimin Road. In sequence from bottom to top, pavements from the Southern Song, Yuan, Ming, Qing dynasties, and the Republic of China era were found, including two sections of fragrant cake brick roads - one laid horizontally for even force distribution; another laid diagonally as a road base, with stone slabs laid on top of the fragrant cake bricks.
"From the excavation situation, it can be judged that the original imperial street was paved with fragrant cake bricks, and stone slabs were added in the later period of the Southern Song dynasty - because the fragrant cake bricks were not hard enough and prone to damage," said Tang Junjie, deputy director of Hangzhou Cultural Relics and Archaeology Institute. He introduced that on the east side of the archaeological pit, the drainage ditch of the Southern Song imperial street - the "imperial ditch" - was discovered for the first time, which was over 30 centimeters wide and more than 1 meter deep. Finding it means finding the eastern boundary of the imperial street, "However, compared to the 200-step-wide Kaifeng Northern Song imperial street, due to weakened financial resources, the scale of the Southern Song imperial street has become much smaller."