Shang Dynasty ruins in Western Taiwan

Taixi Shang Dynasty site is located in Taixi village, Gaocheng City, 10 kilometers away from the urban area. There are three large earthen platforms 200 meters northeast of the village: Xitai, Nantai and Beitai. Excavation in 1965 confirmed that this is a mid Shang Dynasty site and tomb group. The total area is about 100000 square meters. The excavation of Xitai in 1973 and 1974 yielded significant results. In addition to house sites, water wells, ash pits, tombs and memorial pits, more than 3000 pieces of bronzes, gold, jade, pottery (including white and glazed pottery), stone tools, bone horn ware, clam ware, wood ware, lacquerware, silk fabrics, hemp fabrics, plant seeds, oracle bones for divination, carved pottery pieces and medical instruments were unearthed. The site of Shang Dynasty, with its large scale, rich unearthed cultural relics and high cultural value, not only occupies an important position in the city, but also is one of the major archaeological discoveries in China since the founding of the people's Republic of China. The artifacts unearthed here, such as ironware, iron slag, silk fabrics, degummed linen fabrics, Bian sickle, wool and Jiuqu, are the earliest objects of the same kind found in the world and occupy an important position in the history of world civilization. The unearthed bronzes, wine making workshops, water wells, wooden barrels, and plant species have a great influence in China. In 1988, it was listed as a national key cultural relics protection unit.

Taixi Shang Dynasty site in Gaocheng

synonym

Taixi Shang Dynasty site generally refers to Gaocheng Taixi Shang Dynasty site

Taixi Shang Dynasty site is located 10 kilometers west of Gaocheng. The surrounding Shang Dynasty cultural layer is also widely distributed. It extends southward to the northeast side of Taixi village and westward to the ancient city road, about 130 meters long. Taixi site mainly includes residential remains and tombs of the middle Shang Dynasty. At the same time, two wells were found here. The cultural relics unearthed from the Shang Dynasty site in Western Taiwan include the remains of the wine making workshop site, hemp fabrics woven by artificial degumming technology, stone Bian sickle, etc.

essential information

Taixi Shang Dynasty site is located 10 kilometers west of Gaocheng, in the northeast of Taixi village, between Taixi, Zhuanghe, Gucheng and neizu villages. It centers on the three tall "taigeda" (south, West and North). "Nantai" is about 200 meters to the east of Taixi village, which has been leveled out.

The existing cultural layer of "western Taiwan" and "Northern Taiwan" covers an area of more than 100000 square meters.

The North platform is about 400 meters north of the South platform. It is about 100 meters long from east to west, 60 meters wide from north to south, and 6-7 meters high. High at both ends, low in the middle, saddle shaped.

From the cliff on the north side of "Beitai", the upper layer (except the top layer) belongs to the cultural layer from the Warring States period to the Han Dynasty, and the lower layer to the bottom are all cultural relics of the Shang Dynasty.

"Xitai" is about 260 meters northeast of Taixi village, 100 meters long from north to south, 80 meters wide from east to west and 6 meters high.

The cultural layer of Shang Dynasty is also widely distributed around, extending to the northeast side of Taixi village in the South and to the ancient city road in the west, about 130 meters long.

Discovery and excavation

According to the local people, before the liberation of Ibaraki, many bronzes were excavated in the west "taigeda".

From 1965 to 1972, when the villagers of Taixi collected soil from the south side of Xitai, they found groups of bronze ritual vessels and a jade dagger with a length of 39 cm, as well as bronze tripod, Ryukyu, halo, covet, dagger, spear, squat, stone mill, etc. It is a cultural relic of the middle Shang Dynasty (about 14th century B.C.) studied and identified by the State Administration of cultural relics and Hebei Institute of cultural relics. In particular, the iron edged bronze locks unearthed here have attracted extensive attention of the academic circles at home and abroad.

In 1973, the Hebei Provincial Office of cultural administration formed an ancient research team to excavate the Shang Dynasty site in Western Taiwan. A total area of 1889.75 square meters has been revealed, including 14 house sites, two wells, 134 ash pits and 112 tombs (including 10 tombs where slaves died). More than 3000 pieces of pottery, stone, jade and bronze were unearthed. According to the inference of scientific workers, the first people who worked here were the people of Yangshao culture.

Taixi site mainly includes residential remains and tombs of the middle Shang Dynasty.

The 14 Shang Dynasty houses excavated here can be divided into early stage and late stage according to the relationship of strata superimposition and the comparison of soil products.

In the early days, two houses were cleared, which were half crypt. In the late period, 12 houses were cleared out, most of which were floor buildings with wooden beams, including hard top type, flat top type and sloping top type.

The shape, structure and construction technology of the house are much better than those of the early buildings. Take the second house as an example, it is a double room building with a north-south direction of 30 square meters. It is 1035m long from north to South and 3.8m wide from east to west. The middle partition wall divides a room into two rooms. The walls of the houses have also been separated from the stage of using "wooden bone mud wall" in Yangshao, Longshan and early Shang Dynasty. The lower part of the house was built with rammed earth, and the upper part was built with adobe.

It is worth noting that there is a "wind window" on the gable of the house, which creates a precedent of moisture proof equipment in the history of housing construction. The building of this house also used human sacrifice, not only cattle, sheep and pigs, but also living men and women.

The site contains house sites, artifacts and tombs. Most of the rooms are built on the ground, and there are also two half caverns. There are stoves and pits in the room. The house is built with rammed earth, and the partition walls are made of straw and mud and mixed with adobe, and the inside and outside are smeared with straw and mud. In the process of construction, people and three animals were used as sacrifice.

There are many ash pits, which are subordinate to rooms and tombs. They are mainly round or oval in shape. There are different numbers of human and animal skeletons unearthed in the pits.

At the same time, two wells were found in this site, belonging to the early and late period. There are wooden buckets in the well, which can be extracted by hand.

Cultural relics include pottery, stone tools, bone horn ware, mussel ware, lacquerware, oracle bone, textile, plant seed kernel and pottery symbols.

Most of the pottery is gray pottery with sand and mud, as well as other colored pottery. There are many decorative patterns, including household utensils and production tools.

Stone tools are generally polished, with the most knives, shovels and sickles. The bony horn is finely processed with glossy surface.

There are sickles, knives, shovels, hooks, arrowheads, rings and so on.

The surface of lacquerware shows relief pattern, which is carved first and then painted.

All the oracle bones were drilled, chiseled and burned at the same time.

The textile products were mainly linen and silk, which proved that the textile technology had reached a high level at that time, including sericulture, silk weaving and linen weaving.

Through the identification of the plant seeds, they are all medicinal Taoren and yuliren. In connection with the medical instrument biansickle unearthed at the same site, it can be considered that the medical cause of the society at that time had developed to a certain extent.

The former is characters, the latter is numbers and other symbols, which has important reference value for understanding the evolution of the whole society at that time.

Another major part of the Taixi site is the tomb. The 112 tombs were also divided into two phases. The largest one is 3.4 meters long and 1.5 meters wide.

There are coffins for adults, but there are no coffins for children. Slaves were buried. Most of the basic burials were straight burials on the back or on the side, and the second was straight burials on the back.

The funerary objects include pottery, bronze, bone horn, jade, clam shell, divination bone, lacquer and silk.

From the investigation of the relics obtained, some scholars believe that there are many similarities between the Shang Dynasty sites in Taixi and those in Anyang and Zhengzhou in the Central Plains, but they also show their own characteristics; however, there are some cultural connections between them and several important Shang Dynasty sites in the south of the Yangtze River.

This shows that the cultures of Jiangnan and the Central Plains of Shang Dynasty influenced each other. Another view is that it is also related to the culture of Jinzhong and the northern Great Wall area.

In a word, Taixi culture lies between the Central Plains culture and the northern Great Wall area, with the dual characteristics of two regional cultures.

Seven of the best in the world

The earliest iron ware

The bronze Yue with iron blade unearthed from the Shang Dynasty site in Taixi, Gaocheng, in 1972 is the earliest iron ware found in China, and also the earliest iron ware used and made by human beings;

The earliest iron slag

The iron ore discovered in Taixi and the iron slag smelted proved that the ancestors of Shijiazhuang had mastered the iron smelting technology more than 3400 years ago.

The earliest surgical instruments

The stone Bian sickle unearthed in Taixi is the earliest scalpel in the world.

The earliest textiles

The discovery of this kind of textile in Taixi proves that as early as the 14th century BC, the Chinese people had mastered the textile technology of twisting and weaving silk yarn to make it slow and wrinkle.

The earliest linen fabrics

The fragments of hemp cloth unearthed in Taixi are the first hemp fabrics to be spun by artificial degumming technology.

Wine making workshop site

Forty six pieces of wine making pottery were unearthed from a well preserved wine making workshop site in Western Taiwan, including wine containers such as pots and beans, general helmets for cooking grain, pottery shells and wine filling funnels.

The earliest kind of Daqu

8.5 kg of yeast remains were unearthed from the remains of the Taixi distillery site. Experts from the Chinese Academy of Sciences identified it as artificially cultivated yeast. Although similar white sediments have been found in other Shang Dynasty sites in China before, they can not be identified as Jiuqu because they have not been scientifically identified. Therefore, Taixi Jiuqu is the oldest one in the world.

Address: Taixi village, Gaocheng City, Shijiazhuang City, Hebei Province

Longitude: 114.7203

Latitude: 38.041805

Chinese PinYin : Tai Xi Shang Dai Yi Zhi