(Moon Hill Neolithic Cultural Site)
Text/Chen Xianshu
The Moon Mountain Neolithic Cultural Site is located on the alluvial plain on the north bank of the Liuyang River in Xianren City, Huangxing Town, Changsha County, on the terrace in the northwest corner of Luzhiling, and the Longxi River, a tributary of the Liuyang River, flows by.
Xianren City was a famous market in ancient times, and it was originally the seat of the Xianren City Township Government. It is located on the north bank of Liuyang River, 22 kilometers southeast of Changsha City District. The settlements are distributed along the river. It is named after the "Immortal Stone" in Lion Mountain on the bank of the Liuyang River. Qing Guangxu's "Records of Shanhua County" states that the immortal stone "Lion Mountain by the river, the stone is about seven feet square, like a chessboard" and "according to legend, there are immortals playing chess on it". There are ferry ports and wharves in the south, which are water and land transportation channels between Changsha and Liuyang. 4 kilometers northeast of Luzhiling, commonly known as the ancient city foundation, was the seat of Longxi County in the third year (950) of the fifth dynasty Han Qianyou.
The Moon Hill Neolithic site was discovered in 1972. The site is surrounded by large rice fields, and layers of cultural relics can be seen on the cross-section, which is about 5 meters above the surface of the Longxi River and covers an area of about 5,000 square meters. Partial excavations of the site were carried out in 1976, covering an area of 100 square meters and a depth of about 1 meter.
Its cultural accumulation can be divided into two periods: morning and evening. The cultural layer is about 0.7 meters thick, and the early strata are Neolithic cultural layers, and the excavated stone tools mainly include long stone axes, chisels, gongs, pestles, sickles, knives, etc.; The pottery mainly includes wide flat foot disc-shaped pottery, slender neck pouch-foot pottery, high-handled trumpet-foot pottery beans, etc. The cultural connotation of the early strata not only has the characteristics of Longshan culture in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, but also contains some elements of Jiangxi Shanbei culture, which is equivalent to the Longshan culture period.
(Partially excavated artifacts from Moon Hill)
The pottery is mainly sand-filled red pottery, followed by argillaceous gray pottery, argillaceous black pottery and argillaceous red-tire black leather pottery, and a small amount of hard pottery. Ornamentation: mainly checkered pattern, rope pattern, basket pattern and additional stacking pattern, a small number of convex and concave string patterns, engraved patterns, stamp patterns, and bending patterns of pat prints. Tao Ding has the largest number, as a pankou kettle, and there are many forms of dingzu, mainly tile-shaped, conical, flat-conical, chiseled and so on. There are often two longitudinal or even rows of fossa on the conical foot, and the upper part of the flat-conical pedestal foot has a transverse row of fossae. A pottery is a clay red pottery, which is used for long-neck pinching and flowing thin bag foot cupola style. Other utensils include beans, cups, jars, filters, basins, bowls, thick cylindrical supports, etc.
(Moon Hill excavated Shang Dynasty pottery)
The late strata is the Shang Dynasty cultural layer, and the topsoil layer finds sand-filled red pottery large-mouth cylinder pieces, with additional stacking patterns, circle patterns, stamp patterns and large cloud thunder patterns composed of cone points, etc., and its age may be as late as the Shang Zhou Dynasty. The excavated relics mainly include Jomon pottery with sand-filled gray pottery or sand-filled red pottery, pointed cone-footed pottery, pottery beans, stone arrows and a small number of jade ornaments.
"Wencui News" is excerpted from "Liuyang River Jiudao Bay", Hunan People's Publishing House