Sanxingdui site is located in Guanghan City, Sichuan Province, which is the naming place of Sanxingdui culture, and is also the largest and highest-level central site found in the Xia and Shang periods in the Sichuan Basin, with the main age of about 3600-3000 years ago. In accordance with the deployment of the "Archaeological China" Sichuan-Chongqing Civilization Process Research Project, and with the approval of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, the Sichuan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology and other units have continued to carry out archaeological and cultural relics protection work since 2022 and have achieved important results.
One jade tool workshop, one artificial earth platform and one building foundation site were newly discovered in the Moon Bay Plateau in the north of the Sanxingdui site. The jade workshop is located in the middle of the Moon Bay Plateau, with an area of more than 1,000 square meters, and found piles of stored stones, billet pits, waste accumulations and finished stone axe pits, etc., unearthed more than 20 kinds of jade tools including jade statues, jade tooth zhang, stone cong, stone bucket hats, stone snakes, etc., and the dating results are from 1550 BC to 1250 BC.
The artificial earthen platform is located in the south of the jade workshop, with an area of more than 6,000 square meters, and the piling method is "slope stacking". The artificial earth platform can be divided into three levels, and a composite "wood (bamboo) bone mud wall" building foundation site was found on the surface, the plane is rectangular, the area of the cleaned part is more than 200 square meters, and the foundation groove of the site is filled with pottery plates. Archaeological exploration has found that there are large water networks, East Water Gate and Northeast Water Gate in the eastern part of the site and the southern plateau, all of which are dated no later than the middle of the Shang Dynasty.
The Sichuan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, together with 16 units, simultaneously promoted the Sanxingdui unearthed cultural relics protection and restoration project, completed the protection and restoration of 4,062 precious cultural relics such as gold masks and bird-shaped gold ornaments unearthed in the sacrificial area, and at the same time conducted research on the bronze casting process and origin, and found the earliest example of using bronze core bracing technology in China.
The discovery of important relics such as jade workshops, building foundations, and large-scale water networks has further deepened the understanding of the layout and functional zoning of Sanxingdui city site, and the unearthed cultural relics show that Sanxingdui culture has close interaction and exchanges with the Central Plains, Northwest China, and the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, which is an important witness to the pluralistic and integrated pattern of Chinese civilization.
Transferred from CCTV News
Source: Upstream News