A preliminary research report on hairpins unearthed at the Deshou Palace of the Southern Song Dynasty

The Deshou Palace site of the Southern Song Dynasty is located in Hangzhou. On this site, a collection of bone and wooden hairpins was unearthed from the early cultural layers of the Southern Song Dynasty. This is the only collection of bone and wooden hairpins unearthed from the imperial palace site in China. As material evidence, these hairpins demonstrate that, despite political turmoil during the initial phase of the Southern Song regime, people across various social strata persistently adhered to traditional grooming customs through the use of hairpins. The hairpin etiquette formed in China since the pre-Qin period has always held an important position in Chinese traditional culture. The hairpins unearthed from the Deshou Palace site are of diverse shapes and sizes, with significant differences in manufacturing quality. It reflects that there were a large number of participants and a complex structure of members in the imperial palace of the Southern Song Dynasty. It not only included noble royal blood relatives and various officials involved in state affairs, but also lower-status attendants, artisans, and laborers. Historical records show that in the early Southern Song Dynasty, in addition to the royal family and nobles, there were also soldiers, craftsmen, artists, hired workers, and other groups of people who worked in the palace (participating in construction, labor, and performing arts, etc.). The bone and wooden hairpins unearthed from Deshou Palace provide archaeological remains to confirm the historical documents. From the analysis of the blanks and semi-finished products found in the hairpins, there were also handicraft workshops for making hairpins in the imperial palace, which provides physical evidence for the study of the court management and the economy of hired workers of the Southern Song Dynasty. In terms of the processing techniques of hairpins unearthed from the Deshou Palace site, in addition to the various processes known from previous archaeological discoveries, such as sawing, cutting, scraping, and grinding, the waxing process of bone hairpins and the hot processing (baking) process of wooden hairpins were also discovered for the first time in Chinese history. Waxing and hot working techniques are traditional industrial technologies that originated in the pre-Qin period in China. Their application in the hairpins of the Deshou Palace site provides important reference materials for the study of ancient Chinese industrial production technology and the history of craftsmanship.