Chinese archaeologists announced on Saturday that some significant finds had again been discovered in the legendary Sanxingdui ruins in southwest China, providing further important insights into the cultural origins of the Chinese nation.
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Archaeologists have found six other sacrificial pits in the ruins of Sanxingdui in Sichuan province and unearthed more than 500 objects around 3,000 years old, according to the Chinese national office for cultural heritage in the provincial capital Chengdu.
More than 500 valuable cultural objects discovered
The six rectangular sacrificial pits, which were discovered between November 2019 and May 2020, are 3.5 to 19 square meters in size, according to the Office for Cultural Heritage. Pits No. 3, No. 4, No. 5 and No. 6 have so far been excavated up to the layer with offerings. Pits 7 and 8 are currently being backfilled.
Together they form an area in which the people of the ancient Shu civilization made sacrifices to heaven, earth and their ancestors and prayed for prosperity and peace, according to Tang Fei, head of the excavation team in Sanxingdui and director of the Research Institute for Cultural Property and Archeology of the Sichuan Province.
The finds indicate the outstanding importance of the Shu civilization and the diversity of Chinese civilization, according to Ran Honglin, another researcher at the institute.
In addition, over 500 important cultural objects were discovered in the six pits, including fragments of gold masks, gold jewelry in the shape of a bird, gold leaf, painted bronze busts, huge bronze masks, a sacred tree made of bronze, ivory, fragments of ornate tusk carvings, tubular jade vessels (so-called Curved) as well as tools made of jade.
A gold mask was unearthed from sacrificial pit no. According to the archaeologists, most of the gold objects were found in this pit, which is the smallest with an area of around three square meters.
For the excavations, the archaeologists made full use of the most modern scientific and technical means to create an archaeological excavation building, an integrated excavation platform and a multifunctional excavation system.
With the support of teams of experts from various disciplines and institutions, the archaeologists have created an integrated way of working that combines traditional archeology, laboratory archeology, technical archeology and monument protection. This combination ensures the high quality and the high level of the archaeological work, said representatives of the Office for Cultural Heritage during the conference.
Meanwhile, the Office for Cultural Heritage has classified the “Research into the civilization process of Bashu in the Sichuan-Chongqing region” as an important program of the “Archeology in China” project. It aims to examine in detail the development of civilization in the region and its integration into the overall cultural landscape of the pluralistic unity of the Chinese nation.
The Sanxingdui Ruins are located in Guanghan City, about 40 kilometers from Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan Province. It is considered to be one of the most important archaeological discoveries of the 20th century. Since its discovery in the late 1920s, excavation work has continued for nearly 100 years to this day.
In 1986 archaeologists discovered two large sacrificial pits that go back to the Shang Dynasty (1600-1046 BC). Thousands of rare, precious objects were found in the two pits.
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