The artifacts unearthed at the Sanxingdui Ruins site, so different to others excavated from Bronze Age sites in China, have mystified archaeologists as much as they have delighted visitors. Archaeologists hope that among the new finds at Sanxingdui Ruins will be more clues to the origin of the Bronze Age civilization that could rewrite ancient Chinese history
By Wang Yan
Chinese archaeologists revealed the startling new discoveries of over 500 cultural relics on March 20 during their ongoing excavation at the Sanxingdui Ruins site in Guanghan city, Southwest China’s Sichuan Province. Some of the highlights include rare bronze ware with designs not seen elsewhere, gold items such as a large gold mask, items in the shape of birds, hundreds of ivory tusks, a jade seal and silk remnants.
The dig, which started in August 2019, uncovered relics from six pits, from the ancient Shu state which dates back some 4,800 years to 3,100 years ago.
Exciting Find
The Sanxingdui Ruins site is located on the south bank of the Yazi River in the city of Guanghan, Sichuan Province, some 60 kilometers to the northeast of provincial capital Chengdu.
Interest in the 12-square kilometer area was first piqued in the late 1920s after a farmer dug up jade artifacts. Archaeological excavations formally started in the early 1960s and continued in the 1980s when the first two sacrificial pits were discovered, revealing a stunning collection of over 1,000 relics including bronze figures, bronze trees, gold masks, jade and elephant tusks. But since then, while archaeologists agreed that the discoveries had turned understanding of Bronze Age Chinese civilizations upside down, no major excavation was undertaken at the site for almost four decades.
Only recently did new excavations break the silence.
Chen Xiandan, a researcher at the Sichuan Provincial Cultural Relics and Archaeology Research Institute who participated in a dig in 1986 told Vision Chine that in fact, work at Sanxingdui had never stopped. For a long time, the work focused on other functional areas such as delineating features like walls and palaces inside the site rather than the sacrificial pits. “The principle stipulated in China’s Law on the Protection of Cultural Relics states protection is the priority, and salvage excavation [if the artifacts or site are at risk of destruction] comes first, and no active excavation is allowed despite advanced technologies. If an excavation must be conducted, it should be for scientific research purposes and approved by the State Administration of Cultural Heritage,” Chen said.
The incomplete gold mask unearthed from No.5 sacrificial pit, Sanxingdui
Among the six new pits, No.3 is particularly rich in findings. Within an area of less than 15 square meters, archaeologists have found 109 bronze ware pieces, 127 ivory tusks and eight jade objects. Two square zun, bronze wine vessels used in rituals, decorated with dragon and ox patterns, are unique with nothing similar found in the 1980s exploration. This pit, just as No.2 pit which was unearthed in the 1980s, was covered with a layer of ivory tusks.
There are two main sites where a large number of tusks have been found. Apart from the Sanxingdui Ruins, tusks were found at the Jinsha Ruins in Chengdu, capital of Sichuan Province. This site dates back to 3,200-2,600 BCE, later than Sanxingdui, where experts found a jade carving of a square-eared human figure wearing a crown and robes with a tusk on his shoulder. It is similar to a jade carving found at Sanxingdui, which some experts posit depicts a sacrificial ceremony of the ancient Shu people to whom ivory was important. But no one knows where the tusks came from.
On March 16, No.3 pit was fully exposed after several months of careful excavation. Archaeologists were shocked by the sheer number of bronze artifacts and tusks. There were around 100 tusks in a layer atop the artifacts. A significant find was a bronze figure with an elongated body, long curved arms and extended fingers, topped by a bronze zun vessel. Xu told Vision Chine that the bronze figure is 1.15 meters tall. “Having a human as the main body of a bronze ware is not in the cultural tradition of the bronze age civilization in Central China, but it is a common feature of finds at Sanxingdui,” said archaeologist Lei Yu who is working on the dig. He described the piece as a national treasure.
In No.4 pit, silk remnants extracted from ash due to carbonization of the silk are another remarkable discovery. Experts believe it is evidence that the ancient Shu state is the origin of Chinese silk making. With assistance and support from the Chinese Silk Museum in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, material analysis and preservation of the silk remnants are underway, as well as efforts to understand their use. “Many of the things unearthed in the sacrificial pits recently are unique. This fully demonstrates the wisdom of the ancient Shu people, the wealth of the state, as well as their unique aesthetic and religious perceptions,” Lei said.
A bronze figurine unearthed from Sanxingdui is displayed at Sanxingdui Museum, Guanghan, Sichuan Province, April 8, 2021
An incomplete gold mask was unearthed from No.5 sacrificial pit. Although the smallest pit at 3 square meters, it is where most gold pieces were unearthed. The size of the gold mask is astonishing, even though it is not whole, at 23 centimeters wide and 28 centimeters high. “Based on the near-half of the gold mask we found, it should weigh over 500 grams in total,” Lei said. The earlobe of the mask has a hole, a characteristic found in similar artifacts from the pits, which implies that ear piercing was significant to the Shu people, he added.
Another mysterious object from No.6 pit is a 1.7-meter-long and 60-centimeter-wide wooden box with the inside covered in cinnabar, an extremely toxic mineral derived from mercury, although its red color meant it was often used as a pigment or in ornamentation. Part of the wood has been carbonized and a plan to open it is yet to be formalized.
Gold Trove
The gold mask was excavated on February 2. Its square face, large hollowed-out eyes, triangular-shaped nose and wide ears make it similar to gold masks unearthed in the 1980s in Sanxingdui and later at Jinsha. “Early discoveries at Sanxingdui included gold masks, a gold scepter, gold foil ornaments, gold blocks and various gold foil fragments, rich in both variety and quantity. Gold items, as a symbol of power and used in sacrificial ceremonies, indicate the ancient Shu people worshipped gold,” Lei said.
With the discovery of the six new pits, through analyzing the soil characteristics, location distribution and the information depicted on the excavated objects, academics are finding new references to judge the age and usage of the pits. “Previous depictions and explanations were based on two pits, and now we’ve discovered six new ones, which will challenge some of the existing views,” Lei said.
Sun Hua, professor of archaeology at Peking University said that rather than using radiocarbon dating as it did for the first two pits, this time there is a more accurate and sensitive method with the use of Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS). The new method has a margin of error of 25 years.
Since many of the items found were smashed and burned before being buried at Sanxingdui, the existing theory of these pits being used for sacrificial purposes was reaffirmed by most experts.
A bronze vessel is excavated from No. 3 sacrificial pit, Sanxingdui
A dragon-shaped detail on a bronze vessel unearthed from No.3 sacrificial pit, Sanxingdui
Civilization Twilight
The Mayan culture was a fleeting historical moment over 5,000 years ago when the Sanxingdui civilization was at its peak. What’s more, scientists noticed that the Mayan pyramids, the Egyptian pyramids, and Mesopotamia cultural remains in the fertile crescent, together with the Sanxingdui Ruins, are all located along the 30th parallel north, a sub-tropical latitude currently a third of the way between the equator and the North Pole. Some of the wilder theories posit there is a mystery as to why these ancient civilizations are along the same latitude, although there are no proven connections.
But academics agree that the Sanxingdui civilization made unique contributions to the origin and formation of Chinese civilization.
According to Huo Wei, Dean of Archaeology at Sichuan University and curator of Sichuan University Museum, the Chinese Bronze Age civilization represented by the Xia, Shang and Zhou dynasties ranging from around 2,000- 1,000 BCE is characterized by bronze ware rituals and a set of rituals to manifest state power and hierarchical order. Different levels of power were represented by a ritual system involving a type of bronze ware known as the ding, a cooking vessel. The more ding someone has, the higher their status.
For example, the king could have nine ding, the maximum number in the hierarchical system, while his subordinates could only have seven, five, three or one ding according to rank. Both archaeological discovery and literature records have proved the existence of a ritual system involving bronze ware which had a profound influence upon the formation of both early Chinese civilization as well as early civilizations in the wider East Asian region.
The discovery of Sanxingdui shows that the ritual system formed in Central China affected the ancient Shu state. Among the 112 bronze artifacts unearthed in 1986 in the first two sacrificial pits, there are ritual vessels, similar to bronzes found in Central China in both shape and ornamentation.
But as Huo pointed out: “We should not ignore the existence of another power and ranking system indicated by the gold scepter, and symbolized by objects including bronze figures, statues and gold masks found in Sanxingdui.”
This significantly enriches the cultural connotation of the origin and formation of Chinese civilization, which allows people to realize that apart from the ritual system popular in Central China, there is another way of expressing social power, hierarchy and communication between humans and deities and human worship of the universe, which is similar to the Bronze Age on the Eurasian continent.
Overview of the Sanxingdui excavation site
“I believe archaeologists and historians should expand their views and put the Sanxingdui civilization into the overall world context. Only in that way will it be possible to find the real answer to the perplexing question,” Huo Wei told the Beijing Daily in late March, referring to the true origin of the Sanxingdui civilization, whether it comes from the Middle East, say Egypt, or from other origins inside China or elsewhere.
Claiming Sanxingdui as one of the world’s greatest archaeological discoveries, Huo also quoted late Chinese historian Li Xueqin, who said: “The significant value discovered at Sanxingdui has not been fully recognized. In fact, the academic significance is comparable to that of the ancient cities of Troy or Nineveh.”
There are several theories about the enigma of Sanxingdui, where no human remains have been found.
According to a book titled Exploration of Ancient Shu Kingdom (2011) by Liu Xingshi, an expert in geology and prehistoric archaeology based in Hubei Province, some believe that the Shu people are “an exotic ethnic group from the Caucasus; migrants from eastern Asia; a unique group with protruding eyes; or even an alien species from another part of the universe.”
Others have suggested that the bronze figure with the protruding eyes is a representation of the god worshipped by the Shu, or it is a divine guardian with supernatural powers like paranormal perception or extraordinary hearing.
All these are mere hypotheses or romanticized views of Sanxingdui.
Many mysteries surrounding Sanxingdui are unsolved, and even the reasons for the destruction of objects before their burial remain controversial among archaeologists. Different from the widely accepted idea of these objects being used as sacrifices during a religious ritual ceremony, other experts, including Lothar von Falkenhausen, professor of Chinese archaeology and art history at the University of California Los Angeles, have speculated the destruction of the objects is because of invasions of outside forces, or the result of relocating the concentrations of political power.
“We use the term ‘sacrificial pit’ often to explain anything that’s not a tomb or a religious site for offerings, but what if there are other possibilities?” Sun Hua asked. In his opinion, these pits and objects were not buried for common sacrificial purposes, but rather for some kind of extraordinary event.
Many insiders interviewed by Vision Chine including Chen Xiandan have hope that some of the mysteries of Sanxingdui can be cleared up if any record of written language or ancient pictographs is found as the dig continues. The ongoing dig and research is expected to take another three to five years to complete, including laboratory testing, restoration and cleaning.
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