Through the comprehensive study of traditional model casting technology and historical documents, we find that from the Spring and Autumn Period when Fan Tao made money, Fan Shi became the mainstream in the early Western Han Dynasty. The copper mold coinage in the period of Emperor Wu of Han Dynasty and the overlapping casting after Wang Mang are not only related to the change of coin shape and alloy, but also the inevitable result of social, political and economic development and scientific and technological progress.
Key words: Ancient Coin Casting Technology The method of casting molds and soft molds made of molding sand for Fan Tao Fan Shi Fantong die casting is usually called sand casting. After Sui and Tang Dynasties, the technology of sand casting money prevailed. Prior to this, in different historical stages, casting techniques such as ceramic mold, stone mold, copper mold and stack casting were adopted. We call all kinds of coin casting techniques used before sand casting as model casting process, and no matter which model is used, it belongs to dry and hard type. What this paper is going to discuss is the development and substitution of Zhu Fan technology and the internal relationship between them.
In many sites of the Western Han Dynasty, many stone statues and bronze statues casting half a tael of money and five baht were unearthed. From the perspective of model casting technology, if most of the money cavities on the surface of the model have black-gray levels, it shows that these stone models and copper models are all cast with money. Accumulated ceramic models are often unearthed in the ruins of casting money from Wangmang to the Eastern Han Dynasty. We have made a special study on whether the stone model and the copper model can be directly used for coinage, and passed the expert appraisal. The answer is yes, 1, and related research results have been published separately. This paper mainly discusses why stone molds and copper molds were used in the Western Han Dynasty, and why Wang Mang used the overlapping casting technology of ceramic molds in the future. As early as the Bronze Age, China invented various model casting techniques, resulting in countless exquisite bronzes. In bronze fan casting, ceramic fans are the majority, but there are also stone fans and metal fans. According to the data unearthed in various places, in addition to the pottery pattern technology, stone patterns and copper patterns have been cast in the pre-Qin period.
1. Stone Fan Zhu Qian
Since the last century, many stone models have been unearthed in various places, including the Warring States, the Western Zhou Dynasty and the Shang Dynasty, indicating that stone model castings were made in the Shang Dynasty at the latest. Among the remains of the Han Dynasty, stone models of casting money have been unearthed in Shandong, Shanxi, Henan, Shaanxi and other provinces, with an unprecedented number (mostly in professional magazines). This shows that the Western Han Dynasty inherited the previous generation and widely used stone mold technology to cast money.
2. Copper coins
1982 In February, cultural relics workers in Fanchang County, Anhui Province collected two bronze models of ant nose money in Hengshan Town of this county, which were discovered by farmers while digging the foundation of houses. One of them is 27 in length, 10.7 in width, 0.95 cm in thickness and 1055g in weight, and there are 64 ant-nose cavities on its surface, while the other has 65 ant-nose cavities. These coins are mainly divided into four rows, with a gate in the middle communicating with each money cavity. Fan Qianqiang has raised orthography and raised dots under the characters, which are consistent with the concave dots on the unearthed ant nose money. Shanghai Museum and Wuhan Museum also have similar bronze models of ant nose money, which shows that Chu State used bronze models to cast ant nose money.
3. Die casting model package casting money
Up to now, there are a large number of overlapping modules and pieces unearthed in archaeology, but none of them predate the Han Dynasty. Judging from the casting sites excavated in various places, the real overlapping casting technology has not been found in the pre-Qin period, and the semi-Liang Qian 3 in the early Western Han Dynasty was the first to adopt overlapping casting technology.
4. About the coin casting process
To sum up, although the stone and bronze sculptures of the Western Han Dynasty inherited the model of the Pre-Qin Dynasty. However, the application of stone mold and copper mold technology was not universal in the pre-Qin period, and it was only in the Western Han Dynasty that stone mold and copper mold technology were widely used in the coin-making industry. Unearthed data show that the coin casting process in the pre-Qin period was complicated. During the Spring and Autumn Period, the empty coins of Jin, Zheng and other countries were all minted. During the Warring States period, Qin Banliang's money was cast in both stone molds and copper molds. Chu's ant nose money is made of copper. Coins are cast in different ways because the size, shape and alloy of coins in different countries are different, which is determined by the physical and chemical properties of substances. We can only choose the appropriate casting method according to the comprehensive requirements of the shape and alloy composition of various coins, otherwise it will cause a lot of waste products. If we study the relationship between various coin shapes and various crafts according to various coins, it is not difficult to find some laws.
1. Why did the hollow cloth in the pre-Qin period adopt Tao Zhu?
In the bronze casting site of Eastern Zhou Dynasty in Houma, Shanxi Province, the hollow cloth cast by Fan Tao and others was unearthed, and many hollow cloths were also unearthed in Shanxi. These coins are large in size, with a pointed shoulder, a head of 5.5, a shoulder length of 9.5, a shoulder width of 6 cm and a thickness of less than 0.4 cm. From the casting point of view, this geometric casting requires not only high lead content in the alloy, but also good heat insulation performance of the template. The poor thermal insulation performance of materials such as stone template or copper template makes the copper liquid solidify too fast and even not fill the cavity. Therefore, stone formwork or copper formwork is not suitable for casting thin castings like hollow cloth. According to the chemical composition analysis of 2 1 piece of hollow cloth, the average content of lead is 24.30%. Although the lead content is high, the hollow cloth is very thin after all. Therefore, only ceramic molds with good thermal insulation can be used for casting, while stone molds and copper molds can not cast coins with geometric shapes such as hollow cloth, and are only suitable for casting castings with larger diameters. Regarding the concrete pouring method of hollow cloth, we will publish a special simulation experiment research report.
2. Why did the Western Han Dynasty adopt stone mold casting?
In Shandong, Shaanxi, Shanxi and other places, some stone models casting the Western Han Dynasty have been unearthed. Half a tael of money in the Western Han Dynasty is thin and thick, and the thickness is less than 0.05cm. It may be Tao Zhu. Generally, the thickness is about 0.2 cm, which is about 5 times of the thickness of shoulders and toes. According to the chemical composition analysis of 13 pieces of Cynanchum komarovii, the average lead content is 19.42%5, of which the lowest is 8.0 1% and the highest is 29.74%. If this lead-containing alloy liquid is poured into the ceramic cavity, it will not solidify or completely solidify for at least half an hour or more after casting. We did a simulation experiment in 1996, using ceramic mold vertical casting, that is, double-mode vertical series casting. The lead content of copper liquid is 30%. After casting 1 hour, the cavity was opened and the money blank was not completely solidified. Touch it with a small stick and the liquid will be squeezed out at once. This simulation experiment illustrates a problem, that is, Fan Tao is not suitable for casting castings with high lead content and thick volume, because Fan Tao has good heat insulation performance. At the same time, we also realize that it is not suitable to use ceramic mold when casting large diameter castings with copper alloy liquid with high lead content. In 2002, we carried out the simulation experiment of stone casting money 6. Experiments show that when casting a casting with a thickness of 0. 15-0.2 cm with copper alloy liquid containing more than 20% lead, the alloy liquid poured into the stone model cavity solidifies normally. This shows technically that it is very reasonable to use Fan Shi to cast money from the early years of the Western Han Dynasty to the unified casting of money by Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty.
3. Why did the three officials and five baht in Shanglin adopt copper mold casting?
Before the reign of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, coins were miscellaneous and could be cast by both the people and the county. Naturally, their scale cannot be compared with that of the National Mint. Most people use simple stone models to make coins, while counties and countries use copper models to make coins because their financial and technical strength far exceeds that of the people. Because people and counties and countries cast money for the benefit, the money is often smaller and smaller. As a country, in order to unify the form of currency, besides enacting strict laws and regulations, it is also necessary to unify the form technically. Although the stone sculpture process is simple to operate, it is made of soft and slippery stone, which is easy to be damaged in the process of casting money. If a lot of money is cast, the stone model must be updated frequently, so it is difficult to unify the shape of money. Therefore, only by using durable copper molds can a large number of coins with the same shape and quality be cast.
4. Why did Wang Mang and later coins all be stacked and cast?
The so-called stacked casting is a process in which the sub-clay molds punched from the clay in the copper mold box (mold mother) are stacked one by one, then wrapped with grass mixed with the clay and cast by the main channel. Compared with the traditional vertical pottery model, stone model and copper model, this technology has obvious advantages, which not only facilitates the unification of currency types, ensures the quality, but also greatly improves the labor efficiency. In the early years of the Western Han Dynasty before Wang Mang, there was already a process of stacking coins, but it was primitive, and it was only a layer of bare half-penny stacking. Unearthed data show that by the time of Wang Mang, the heap casting technology was quite mature and the scale of heap casting was unprecedented. The coins in Wang Mang's period were changed several times, such as rhubarb thousand and ping five thousand, which broke the round square hole shape since Qin Dynasty. Although Wang Mang also used the copper mold direct casting technology to make coins, in contrast, the ceramic mold stacked casting technology showed its superiority. Judging from the chemical composition of Daquan 50, Huoquan, Dabu Huang Qian and Koizumi's first-class 7 1 coin, the average lead content is only 7.07%. If the copper liquid with this lead content is used to cast coins on the copper mold, its survival rate is obviously not as high as that of the ceramic mold, and the stacking process cost of the ceramic mold is lower. Therefore, the coin casting process in Wangmang period gradually changed from direct casting of copper mold to overlapping casting of ceramic mold, which should be said to be a great progress in coin casting technology. Every big move in history must have its social background. As a kind of coin widely circulated all over the world, there are many related factors in its casting, and the most direct factor is also documented.
1 Records of Historical Records on the Social and Economic Situation in the Early Han Dynasty
"The prosperity of the Han dynasty, the disadvantages of the Qin dynasty, the husband joined the army, the old and the weak, the homework and wealth, since the son of heaven can't have it both ways, and the ministers still rely on oxen to pull carts, and people are uncovered. Therefore, Qin money is difficult to use, and it is even harder for the people to cast money. " "... when I was in filial piety, I had a lot of money, but I cast it in four baht, which was written as' half two', so that the people could cast their own money. "
It can be seen that in the early years of the Western Han Dynasty, most young men went out to war, and the old and the weak were paid. Years of war cost so much money that it is difficult for the emperor to have four carriages of the same color when traveling, so the generals can only take ox carts. Emperor Wen practiced the policy of "listening to the people and casting the people", and soon officials such as Dr. Deng Tong made a fortune by casting money. In history, "the rule of culture and scenery" has made the social economy develop rapidly, and one of its most important measures is to let the people invest money. Copper coins in Han Dynasty still belong to weight currency, that is, the weight of money is equal to the weight of metal material itself, but they are cast into a fixed shape and size for the convenience of circulation, which involves the problem of casting technology.
The varieties of coins in the pre-Qin period varied from country to country. Judging from the discovered coin-casting sites, they are generally together with large-scale copper-casting sites. This phenomenon shows that coins in the pre-Qin period were cast in bronze workshops all over the world, and no professional coin casting workshops were formed in all countries, and their modeling and casting techniques were also cast by craftsmen who cast bronze wares. Because casting coins is simpler than casting bronzes, there is no technical problem. After the Western Han Dynasty, the world was unified. Although the monetary system inherited the Qin system, it listened to the people. For non-professional foundry workers, it is the simplest and most feasible to cast coins with stone molds, which saves the complicated molding process in traditional ceramic mold casting methods. Casting money directly from stone molds is the most sensible choice for craftsmen who have not engaged in professional copper mold casting technology in the early Western Han Dynasty.
2 Records of Lin Sanguan casting money in Historical Records
"Many counties and countries rape and plunder and cast money, and how light the money is, and or please make the capital cast clock officer red, one when five, and officials are not allowed to use red. Platinum is a little cheap, and no one needs it. It's no use if the county magistrate forbids it. After 40, platinum will never be abolished. Zhang Tang died at the age of 18, but the people didn't remember. Then when he was two years old, he was rich and cheap, and the people used it skillfully, which was inconvenient and wasteful. So I learned that the forbidden county did not cast money, so I ordered Lin Sanguan to cast it. Since there is a lot of money, it is impossible to make money without the three officials in the world. Counties and countries cast money, all waste, lost to three officials. However, the people invested less money and the cost was not comparable. Only real works are thieves. "
As can be seen from the above records, due to the simple casting process of stone model coins, both the people and counties can successfully cast money. In the early years of the Western Han Dynasty, folk coin casting promoted the rapid development of social economy, but its disadvantage was that the shape of coins was always difficult to be unified because there were too many coin casters. In order to solve this problem to the greatest extent, Liang Wudi ordered Shangsanguan to cast five baht. Shanglin Sanguan adopted a copper mold coin-making process with great technical difficulty, and cast five baht with a unified shape. Due to the rules, technical requirements, casting cost and strict laws of Shanglin five baht coins, the stolen coins were effectively controlled after Emperor Wu. Although there were stone models in the Warring States period and before, most of them still used ceramic models. Why do most of the coins cast after the Western Han Dynasty use stone models? In addition to the above factors, technical problems and social background need to be considered.
1 after the end of the bronze age, the bronze model casting technology lasted for thousands of years, and only two long-term mass-produced castings, coin casting and mirror casting, were inherited. The casting technology and alloy technology of casting money and casting mirror are completely different, and they are constantly improved and innovated according to their own development needs. Pre-Qin bronze model casting technology was passed down from generation to generation from Xia Dynasty (around 2000), through the continuous improvement of traditional model casting technology, and there was no fault in the middle, but this model casting technology gradually died out with the end of the bronze age in the late Warring States period. A phenomenon can be seen from the unearthed bronzes, that is, most bronzes with casting patterns are from the Warring States period and before, while most bronzes after the Western Han Dynasty have no casting patterns. Is this because the county kings and even the emperors of the Western Han Dynasty were unwilling to cast bronze wares with casting patterns? We don't think so. After the Western Han Dynasty, there were no casting patterns in bronzes for the following reasons. First, the culture of the Zhou Dynasty declined, and bronze ornamentation was its representative. Second, the popularity of decorative techniques such as gilding, gold and silver; Thirdly, influenced by the trend of simplicity in the early Han Dynasty, during the 65,438+00 years from the end of the Warring States to the beginning of the Western Han Dynasty, some techniques of bronze model casting broke, which is the main reason why bronzes with exquisite casting patterns can no longer be made after the Western Han Dynasty.
Judging from the unearthed bronze castings of the Western Han Dynasty, we have every reason to believe that the bronze model casting craftsmen in the early Western Han Dynasty no longer have the decorative modeling skills in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period. During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, craftsmen can copy many patterns with a small pattern mold, thus casting a bronze ware with exactly the same small pattern, but the Western Han Dynasty could not. Although there were some ground patterns on the back of bronze mirrors in the early Western Han Dynasty, most of them were carved as a whole. There were no ground patterns on the back of bronze mirrors in the Warring States period, but they were made up of many small pieces. Later, in the Wenjing period, the whole engraving no longer existed, and some kinds of mirrors without engraving appeared, such as sunglass, mirror and grass mirror. This shows that the bronze mold casting craftsmen in the Western Han Dynasty are no longer slave-like technical craftsmen handed down from generation to generation in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, but ordinary people who only work to adapt to the market economy.
In recent years, led by China Coin Museum, several research groups have been formed with Ezhou Museum, University of Science and Technology Beijing and University of Science and Technology China. , and made a special study on six aspects, such as the Spring and Autumn Shoubu, the Western Han Dynasty stone fan casting half a tael of money 10, the early Western Han Dynasty original die casting, the copper fan casting money, the mold box for die casting, and the Six Dynasties double-sided cavity die casting technology, and all of them carried out simulation experiments. Through the simulation experiment, we realized that almost all the first molds of various model casting technologies from the Spring and Autumn Period to the Six Dynasties were carved in stone, 1 1.
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To sum up, we think that in the pre-Qin period, different countries had different money shapes and different coin-making techniques. After entering the Western Han Dynasty, in order to restore the social economy as soon as possible, the state implemented an open policy of casting money, allowing people to cast money. For complicated pottery and plastic arts, it is easiest to cast money with stone plastic arts. So in the early years of the Western Han Dynasty, most people used stone models to cast money. During the period of Liang Wudi, when the state reclaimed the right to coin, it really realized the unification of coins because of the unified use of copper mold coin-making technology. After Wang Mang, due to the change of currency form and alloy composition, it is also the best choice to adopt and improve the stacking casting technology invented by Fan Tao in the early Western Han Dynasty. Since then, Fan Tao's technology of overlapping coinage has been used until sand coinage was invented.
In the past, some scholars thought that neither stone nor bronze sculptures in the Western Han Dynasty could make money. In our opinion, it is not a problem whether stone models and copper models can cast money. The key is that only stone models can be used to cast money in the early Western Han Dynasty, so that the social economy in the early Western Han Dynasty can develop rapidly. In order to realize the real unification of the national currency, it is necessary to use the copper coin model to cast currency in Shanglin Sanguan. In Wang Mang's period, the wide application and continuous improvement of stacked casting technology was the concrete embodiment of the scientific and technological development of coin casting industry at that time. Wang Mang has been using ceramic model stacking technology since the Six Dynasties for two main reasons. One is that he is getting farther and farther away from the traditional ceramic modeling technology in the pre-Qin bronze age; Second, the metal mold box used in the die casting model can be directly cast into 12 on Shi Zufan, which is much simpler than the traditional molding process in Fan Tao. Therefore, it is not only labor-saving, material-saving and time-saving, but also the quality of casting money is easy to control. Therefore, from Wang Mang to the emergence of sand casting technology, the mainstream technology of casting money is Fan Tao's overlapping casting. 1 Wang Chu-dong, Dong, Zhou,: Simulation Experimental Research on Ancient Stone Fan Coin Casting in China, China Coin 1, 2003, p. 32.
2. Dong, Zhou,: Coin-making Technology of Copper Fan in Han Dynasty and Its Simulation Experiment, China Coin, No.2, 2005.
3 weeks: History of Coin Metallurgy, p. 177, Copper Mould and Stacking Technology, Zhonghua Book Company, June 5438+00, 2002.
4 weeks "Study on the Alloy Composition of Ancient Coins in Pre-Qin Period in China", page 6, table 22 1 1-2, Zhonghua Book Company, April 2004.
Week 5: Study on Alloy Composition of Ancient Coins in Qin and Han Dynasties in China, page 30, Table 222- 1 Qin Banliang Alloy Composition, Zhonghua Book Company, April 2004.
6. Zhou: A Preliminary Study on the Reasons of Stone Fan Casting Money in the Western Han Dynasty, China Coin,No. 1 2003, p. 25.
Week 7: Study on the Alloy Composition of Ancient Coins before New Busy in China, Page 40, Table 222-4, Alloy Composition before New Busy, Zhonghua Book Company, April 2004.
8 Historical Records of Pinghuai Book, Yuelu Bookstore, 1988, 1 edition, 1995, 10 printing.
9 Dong: On the Three Processes of Ancient Bronze Mirror Modeling Technology, Collectors, No.2, 2004.
10,,, Zhou: A preliminary study on the causes of stone fans casting money in the Western Han Dynasty, China coins, 1, 2003, p. 25.
1 1 the research group of Zhu Qian, a copper fan in the Western Han Dynasty, conducted a simulation experiment on the copper mold box used to make the laminated fan in the Han Dynasty, and it passed the ministerial appraisal in Ezhou from June 5438 to February 65438. The research group confirmed that this copper mould box is also the earliest stone-making process, and related papers will be published one after another.
12 die casting die box research group conducted a simulation experiment on the production of die casting die box used in Han dynasty, and passed the ministerial appraisal in Ezhou city, Hubei province in 2004 12+08, and related papers will be published one after another.