Xinzhou: A place found the remains of a human bone pit in the late Xia Dynasty!

Source: Taiyuan Daily

The site of Yin Village in Xinzhou has newly discovered the remains of human bone pits in the late Xia Dynasty

Aerial photograph of the ruins of Yin Village in Xinzhou.

From July to November this year, the Shanxi Provincial Archaeological Research Institute conducted another archaeological excavation of the yincun site in Xinzhou City, and newly discovered the remains of human bone pits in the late Xia Dynasty.

Located on a terrace on the north bank of the Yunzhong River in Xinfu District, Xinzhou City, Shanxi Province, the Yincun Ruins are one of the important sites from longshan to the Xia Shang period in Xinzhou. The site has a distribution area of about 500,000 square meters and is rich in surface relics, and in 2021, it was selected into the "Archaeological Chinese Xia Culture Research" project of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, which is of great significance to the study of the diversification of Chinese civilization.

In 1997, the School of Archaeology of Peking University and the Institute of Archaeology of Shanxi Province excavated the site, and the remains and relics in the site contain a small number of four discontinuous archaeological cultures such as the late Yangshao culture, the Erlitou period, the early Shang Dynasty and the Warring States period, especially the Erlitou period and the early Shang Dynasty. In 2021, the Shanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology, the Xinzhou Municipal Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, etc. re-excavated the Yincun site, excavating 46 ash pits, 1 housing site, and 9 tombs, of which 6 tombs in the Warring States period were excavated, all of which were pit vertical cave tombs, which were well preserved; 3 tomb excavations in the Jinyuan period were brick chamber tombs, and the damage was serious.

The excavation results are rich, especially the variety of pottery types, reflecting the multi-directional cultural exchanges between the east and west and north directions of the ancient Xinding Basin around 2000 BC. The layers in the excavation area of the Yincun site are simple and are roughly divided into three layers, one is the cultivated soil layer, the second layer is the soil disturbance layer of the Jinyuan period, and the third layer is the cultural layer of the Xia and Shang periods. The most important discovery in the excavations was ash pit 13, which found multiple human bones and died unnaturally. Human bones are arranged irregularly, similar to being discarded haphazardly in a ash pit. There are 12 human bones exposed, of which 9 human bones are stacked on the west side of the pit, two human bones are placed on the north side of the pit wall, and one is placed separately in the southeast corner of the pit wall. Although there are also human bone pits in the sites near the Xinding Basin, the number of human bones is small, which is significantly different from the human bones in the No. 13 ash pit. Reporter Chen Xinhua Taiyuan Evening News