Qishuyan Weidun Site

Qishuyan Weidun Site

The Qishuyan Weidun Site is a protected cultural heritage site of Jiangsu Province.

Situated on the south bank of the Grand Canal in Qishuyan Town, just forty to fifty meters from the canal, there is a raised earthen mound — this is the Weidun Village Neolithic Site, one of the earliest known settlements of ancient inhabitants in the urban area of Changzhou discovered to date.

Between 1960 and 1961, the Nanjing Museum discovered the site during an archaeological survey in southern Jiangsu. In 1972, 1974, 1978, 1985, and 1992, the Nanjing Museum, Changzhou Museum, and other institutions conducted five excavations at the site, uncovering a total area of 1,900.25 square meters and clearing 191 tombs. Originally a prominent earthen mound above ground, the site spanned over 100,000 square meters. However, due to years of soil extraction for land leveling and damage from construction projects, it has been largely flattened, with most of it now lying beneath modern buildings.

The Weidun Site is a Majiabang culture relic located in the western part of the Taihu Lake Basin, featuring relatively rich cultural deposits. Through five archaeological excavations, the cultural remains are mainly categorized into two types: Majiabang culture and Songze culture. Among them, the Majiabang culture strata are thicker and of longer duration. Based on the characteristics of unearthed artifacts, they can be divided into early and late phases. The Songze culture strata are thinner, with only tombs excavated.

The unearthed artifacts at the Weidun Site are predominantly pottery, supplemented by stone tools, jade artifacts, bone and wooden objects, with relatively simple varieties. Most of the pottery pieces are fragments, mainly sandy brown pottery, followed by clay red pottery. The decorations are mostly plain, with a few items coated in a red slip. Common decorative techniques include perforations, string patterns, raised ridges, dimples, appliqué, and scalloped edges.

In the early Majiabang culture remains at Weidun, all pottery was handmade, with vessel shapes primarily including cauldrons, jars, and bean-shaped vessels. Typical items include wide round-bottomed cylindrical cauldrons, double-ring-handled jars, open shallow flat-bottomed thick-walled jars, and deep-bellied bean pots coated entirely in red slip on the exterior. Wooden and bone/antler tools were used during this phase, while stone implements were relatively rare. Wooden tools included arrowheads, hoes, oars, paddles, pins, and spinning tops, while bone/antler tools included awls, arrowheads, knives, needles, and tubes. In the later period, pottery was still mostly handmade, but the variety of vessel shapes increased significantly, mainly including jars, bean pots, cauldrons, tripods, cups, ewers, basins, bowls, and plates. Jars came in diverse forms and were generally smaller in size. The early red-slip bean pots disappeared, replaced by clay gray bean pots with gradually shallower bowls. Cauldrons evolved from early wide-rimmed deep-bellied forms to narrow-rimmed shallow-bellied ones. Flat-bottomed cauldrons, ring-footed small jars, handled cups, three-legged plates, and ring-footed bowls were all newly introduced in this phase. Stone tools became noticeably more numerous, with larger tools such as axes and hammers appearing alongside small items like adzes and spinning whorls, while wooden and bone/antler tools became relatively less common.

The primitive hoe-farming at the Weidun Site primarily focused on growing grain, supplemented by hunting, fishing, and gathering wild plants for other necessities. In the early phase, the climate here was warmer and more humid than it is today. The vegetation near the site consisted of mixed evergreen and deciduous broadleaf forests, surrounded by a network of lakes and marshes with abundant rainfall — an environment highly conducive to the growth and reproduction of flora and fauna, as well as ideal natural conditions for cultivating crops like rice. Animal remains excavated and identified mainly included pigs, sika deer, moose, river deer, turtles, tortoises, clams, and snails. Coupled with the abundance of wooden and bone tools such as arrowheads, spears, awls, and knives found in the same strata, this indicates that gathering and hunting-fishing played a significant role in the economy at the time. Charred rice grains unearthed from the fifth layer in the 1985 excavation prove that the Weidun inhabitants had mastered primitive rice cultivation techniques, with rice becoming one of their main food sources. Analysis revealed that 72.69% of the rice was indica and 27.31% was japonica, reflecting a mixed variety dominated by indica — quite different from the uniformity of modern rice varieties and characteristic of primitive rice farming. According to spore-pollen analysis at the Weidun Site: herbaceous plant spores were mainly from the Poaceae family (likely rice). Therefore, the layer of carbonized crust resembling burnt rice found at the bottom of pottery cauldrons may have been residue from cooking.

Notably, the widespread use of wooden tools is a distinct feature of the early Majiabang culture phase at the Weidun Site. Judging by their uses, wooden tools were extensively employed in agriculture, hunting, fishing, transportation, and daily life, becoming indispensable implements in people’s production and livelihoods. The craftsmanship of wooden tools was also relatively advanced, with flat and smooth cutting surfaces, neatly bored holes, and smooth hole walls. The shapes and functions of seafaring tools such as oars and paddles closely resemble those of modern counterparts, indicating that wooden tool-making had reached a fairly mature stage. Additionally, three broken wooden artifacts unearthed at the Weidun Site may have been primitive lacquerware coated with black pigment, suggesting that techniques for preserving and utilizing wooden tools had made considerable progress under the conditions of the time.

The burial customs of the Weidun inhabitants reveal that from the early stages of the cultural remains, clans had their own communal cemeteries. Judging from the overall excavation area, these served as clan cemeteries throughout, covering a total area of over 20,000 square meters. Within a dense 20-square-meter burial area, 25 tombs were found (during the first excavation in 1972). The orientation of the tombs was quite consistent, with heads mostly facing north — in the early burials, typically between 5° and 36°, i.e., slightly northeast; in the later phase, tomb orientations shifted to due north or northwest. Most tombs lacked formal burial pits, except for one rectangular shallow pit discovered during the fifth excavation. It is likely that the dead were commonly laid on the ground and covered with earth. Early burials mainly featured single supine extended burials with few grave goods. Tombs were arranged in an orderly fashion, showing relatively unified burial practices. By the later phase, supine extended burials appeared, distributed more sparsely. Grave goods increased significantly, including both tools and everyday items, and some male burials included production tools and animal bones, indicating varying degrees of change in men’s social status in production and daily life.

The Songze culture tombs at the Weidun Site had poorer preservation of human skeletons but richer grave goods, including production tools, utensils, and ornaments, with Tomb M122 alone containing up to 33 items.

The human skeletons unearthed from the Majiabang culture tombs at the Weidun Site were relatively well preserved, providing physical evidence for paleoanthropological studies of the Taihu Lake Basin. Moreover, based on intact skulls, it was common practice to extract certain teeth — usually the central and lateral incisors. For example, in one excavation unit during the third dig, seven out of ten skeletons had their central and lateral incisors removed, indicating that tooth extraction was prevalent at the time and offering additional material evidence for the study of prehistoric tooth-extraction customs in China.

The residents of the Neolithic Weidun Site were part of the early inhabitants of the Taihu Lake Basin. Archaeological excavations show that the site was initially in the matrilineal clan stage and gradually transitioned to the patrilineal clan stage in the later period. Based on radiocarbon dating data, the earliest sample from the early Majiabang culture phase at Weidun — Layer ③ of T7801 from the third excavation (tree-ring calibrated to 6,210±180 years ago) — is the oldest value, though not from the lowest stratum, likely near the upper limit of the early phase. The lower limit of the late phase is close to Layer T1310 from the second excavation (tree-ring calibrated to 5,940±135 years ago), estimated to be around 5,900 years ago. Thus, the time span of the Majiabang culture remains at the Weidun Site is approximately 6,200–5,900 years ago.

The typical artifacts and artifact assemblages in the Songze culture tombs at the Weidun Site are comparable to those found in the middle layer of the Songze Site tombs in Qingpu, Shanghai. Based on radiocarbon dating of human bones from M87 and M90 at the Shanghai Songze Site, the absolute age ranges between 5,100 and 5,800 years ago. Therefore, the Songze culture at the Weidun Site is estimated to date back to about 5,100 years ago.

Based on stratigraphic deposits and dating data, the Neolithic inhabitants of Weidun lived in this area for approximately one thousand years. During the same period, similar Neolithic cultures existed around the Taihu Lake region, such as in Jiaxing and Wuxing in Zhejiang, Qingpu and Wujiang in Shanghai, Wuxian and Wujiang in Suzhou, and other parts of Changzhou. Archaeologically, these are referred to as “Majiabang culture” and “Songze culture.” The Weidun Site, located in the northwest of the Taihu Lake Basin, marks the western edge of this archaeological cultural zone. Compared to similar Majiabang culture remains, it shows certain regional differences. Therefore, the Weidun Site provides valuable physical evidence for in-depth research on the primitive cultures of the Taihu Lake Basin and for establishing the chronology and developmental sequence of the Neolithic cultures in the Changzhou area.

Further Reading:

· Third Batch of Protected Cultural Heritage Sites of Jiangsu Province