Five new achievements in archaeological work released

National Cultural Heritage Administration released five new archaeology results on Thursday covering five different provinces across China.

The five new achievements in archaeological work are based in North China's Hebei Province, Shanxi Province, Northwest China's Shaanxi Province, East China's Zhejiang Province and Central China's Hubei Province, which mainly covered the research in tribe organization, beliefs and customs, animal and plant remains, unearthed relics, palace buildings and ruins of ancient city, according to a document that the administration sent to the Global Times on Thursday. 

The site in Hebei Province can be traced back to 8500 years ago, and it is an earlier settled settlement in northern China. The unearthed carbonized millet has a history of 7700 years, which is an important evidence for the origin of dry farming in northern China.

The site in Zhejiang Province mainly contains marine mollusk and shells with a burial depth of 5 to 10 meters, and covered a total area of about 20,000 square meters. The site's unearth has an important reference and enlightenment for the archaeological work of prehistoric sites in the marine sedimentary environment of China's coastal areas.

The site in Shanxi Province is about an ancient palace. It took five years to gradually confirm the existence of the palace with nearly 130,000 square meters at site. The latest excavation work from 2018 to 2019 was to fully expose the largest building of the palace whose total area of the excavation reached 2,880 square meters.

The site in Hubei Province is the largest scaled and highest leveled urban settlement in the Neolithic Age in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River. The unearthed relics from the site show that the culture and settlements of the site have experienced from its prosperity to decline changes during the period of about 5900 to 3800 years ago.

The site in Shaanxi Province has unearthed over 20 stone cities in ancient China, ranging from several thousand square meters to 4 million square meters, reflecting the hierarchical differentiation of settlements within the era. Meanwhile, about 21 ancient tombs from different classes are also been found which provide new materials for studying the process of Chinese civilization.