The ruins of Wangchenggang are located on the terrace where the Yinghe River and Wudu River meet between The Town of Gongcheng and Bafang Village in Dengfeng City, Henan Province, overlooking Jishan Mountain in the south and Songshan Mountain in the north. The total area of the site is about 500,000 square meters.
The Ruins of Wangchenggang have three large and small cities (two small cities) in the late Longshan period, of which the large city covers an area of 348,000 square meters, which is the largest area among the longshan city sites in Henan during the same period. The results of the carbon fourteen dating show that the absolute age of the city site is 2200 BC to 2020 BC, and the large and small cities of Wangchenggang are related to the "YuduYang City" and "Cangzuo City" recorded in the literature, which are important sites for studying the early Xia culture.
From 1976 to 1981, two small city sites in the late Longshan culture in Henan Were discovered, and foundation pits, bronze fragments, jade and writing were found, which some experts called "Yudu Yangcheng".
From 2002 to 2005, the School of Archaeology and Archaeology of Peking University and the Henan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology jointly conducted investigations, drilling and excavations, and discovered a new 348,000-square-meter late Longshan Ayutthaya, as well as important remains such as sacrificial pits, jade stones and white pottery, and several large-scale rammed earth foundation sites were found in the north-central part of the city. Drilling in 2020 found that there are more than 20,000 square meters of rammed earth groups distributed in the northern part of Ayutthaya, which is one of the largest rammed earth foundation sites in the Central Plains discovered from the late Longshan to the Erlitou period. The confirmation of a large-scale rammed earth foundation site proves, on the one hand, that the northern part of the city is a living area, and most likely a living area for the nobility; on the other hand, it proves the central position of Wangchenggang Dacheng in the Yinghe River Valley and the emergence of a "rudimentary state organization" in the Songshan area.
"Huaiyang "Longshan City" and Dengfeng Small Castle"
Li Shaolian, Zhongzhou Academic Journal, No. 4, 1984, pp. 125-128
This article expresses personal views on the characteristics, ages and nature of the two Longshan cultural city sites in Huaiyang, "Longshan City" and Dengfeng Small Castle. The author believes that although the area of Huaiyang "Longshan City" is not as large as the city site of the Longshan Cultural Period in Chengziya, Shandong, it is one of the well-preserved and advanced architectural methods among the early city sites discovered so far; The "Little Castle" of Dengfeng is the smallest and the earliest site of the original construction method. The site of Wangchenggang Is between the first and third phases of Wangwan and close to the former, while the "Longshan City" in Huaiyang is much earlier than the "Small Castle" of Dengfeng, so that it is not at all within the xia dynasty that is generally calculated. Regarding the nature of these two sites, the article argues that they were in an era of late military democracy, frequent wars, and the use of the city walls as defensive facilities were necessary and possible, so the nature of these two sites was that of a defensive castle at the center of the tribal alliance.
The article concludes by pointing out that the discovery of these two city sites is of great significance for the study of the origin of mainland cities and the history of housing architecture.
"On the Site of Longshan Cultural City and Xia Dai Yang City"
An Jinhuai, Proceedings of the Fourth Annual Meeting of the Chinese Archaeological Society, pages 1-6 - Cultural Relics Publishing House, 1985, based on ancient documents and legends and archaeological excavation materials, discusses that the site of Longshan Cultural City in Dengfeng Wangcheng may be the site of Yangcheng City in Xia Dynasty. The site of Wangchenggang Is in the middle and late Longshan culture, which should belong to the category of Xia culture. From the development stage of the middle and late Longshan cultural type in Western Henan, the social nature of the middle and late Longshan culture in western Henan, and its relationship with the early culture of the Shang Dynasty, it is explained that the mid- and late-term Longshan culture site of Wangchenggang should belong to the Xia Dynasty City Site. The discovery of the ruins of Yangcheng City Wall in the Spring and Autumn Period, the Warring States to the Han Dynasty provided extremely important circumstantial evidence to determine that Yangcheng City in the Xia Dynasty was near the town of Gongcheng. These materials indicate that the name of Yangcheng in the Western Zhou and Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods near the town should have been handed down from the Xia Dynasty. In this way, the site of the middle and late Wangcheng Ganglongshan culture, about 1 km west of Dengfeng Town, is likely to be the site of Xia Dynasty Yangcheng.
"On the Concept of "Cities" in The Early Days of China"
Zhang Guangzhi - Cultural Relics, No. 61-67, 1985
Starting from some characteristics of cities in early China, this paper discusses how cities should be conceptually addressed in the study of the staging of ancient Chinese history. The authors point out that the earliest cities in China differ significantly from the earliest cities in the West in many ways. China's early cities were not the product of economic take-off, but tools in the political sphere, tools used by the ruling class to gain and maintain power. This is reflected in the regularity of the migration of the capital city of the Xia and Shang dynasties. For three generations of royals, bronze was not a luxury or ornament in the court, but a necessary means of political power struggle. Without bronzes, the three generations of the imperial court would not be able to beat the world. The migration of the capital of Xia, Shang and Zhou was to facilitate the mining of copper and tin mines. It can be seen that the ancient capital city had the nature of a tool for engaging in political power struggles for the service of the royal family. The author believes that both the early cities of the Chinese type and the early cities of the Near East type appeared when a series of related phenomena such as class society, civilization, and the state first appeared. At a certain stage of dynamic development of ancient settlements in the Near East, the types of settlements evolved from earlier forms to later forms, which we call "cities". At a certain stage in the development of ancient Chinese settlement forms, the type of settlement also presented this new form, which we also called "city". The point made in this article is precisely to illustrate that the early forms of Chinese cities had their own characteristics. That is to say, the evolution process from primitive society to civilized society in the early stage of Chinese history has its own characteristics.