Page 119 - The Golden Age of Chinese Archaeology: Celebrated Discoveries from the People’s Republic of China

Cat. 323, detail showing
a human face rendered
in profile and wearing a
feathered headdress.

dam lay between the river and the houses — probably to control flooding during the rainy
season. Farther away, excavators found the remains of a small pier, constructed of wooden posts
and boards, extending onto the shore. Excavations at other sites have uncovered fragments of
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a boat and oars, providing further evidence of water transportation. Finds from Qianshanyang
suggest that Liangzhu residents may also have built their houses on stilts — a very common
form of domestic architecture in the marshy areas of southern China.
Since the mid-Kj/os, archaeologists have excavated hundreds of Liangzhu burials, ranging
from small graves that contain few (if any) burial goods to large, lavishly furnished tombs. The
most extravagant of these, presumably those of the social elite, were found in Middle Liangzhu
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sites at Fanshan and Yaoshan in northern Zhejiang province. Excavations at the Fanshan site
— a man-made earthen mound approximately 82 meters long, 27.5 meters wide, and 3.5 meters
high — revealed eleven tombs, which together yielded more than three thousand jades as well
as fine pottery vessels and stone implements. A mound of similar dimensions at Yaoshan was
more elaborately structured than the Fanshan site: it comprised a central, square platform of
red earth encircled by a six-foot-wide ditch filled with loose gray soil and surrounded by a

U-shaped platform of yellowish brown earth; the entire structure was covered with gravel.
Twelve tombs arranged in two rows were found on top of the mound, eleven of them miracu-
lously intact at the time of excavation. All yielded a large quantity of burial goods, including
several hundred jades, and some tombs apparently held double coffins that included a storage
compartment between the inner and outer coffins. The absence of either architectural remains
or traces of human habitation has led scholars to speculate that this had once been an impor-
tant and sacred site (probably reserved for public meetings or religious rituals), subsequently
abandoned and turned into a cemetery.

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