Jiangning Dianjiangtai Site

Jiangning Dianjiangtai Site

The Dianjiangtai Site is located south of Xigang Village, Tangshan Township, Jiangning County. The site spans 60 meters from north to south and 50 meters from east to west, covering an area of 3,000 square meters, and stands about 2.5 meters above the surrounding ground. It was discovered in 1972, and excavated in 1973 by the second training class for cultural relics and museum cadres in Jiangsu Province. The excavation covered an area of 130 square meters, with cultural layers up to about 2.5 meters thick. The deposits are divided into upper, middle, and lower layers.

The remains in the lower cultural layer include stone production tools, most of which were polished, primarily adzes, as well as axes, knives, dagger-axes, and arrowheads. Pottery items consist of ding, tripods, dou, jars, cups, urns, gui, plates, bowls, zun, and three-legged plates. Common decorative patterns include basketry, cord, and squared-checkered motifs, along with the appearance of thinly walled polished black pottery. Items such as plain-waisted, yáng-rǔ (sheep’s milk bag)-shaped, three-legged ding, and stone adzes as the main production tools are regionally distinctive. Some artifacts also show influences from the Wangyoutang type of eastern Henan, Longshan Culture, and Liangzhu Culture, suggesting it may be a regional variant of Longshan Culture. Others propose that due to its unique characteristics, it could be independently named as the “Dianjiangtai Culture.”

The middle and upper layers of the site belong to the early and late phases of the Hushu Culture in the Ningzhen area, respectively. Early artifacts mainly include thick-bodied jars, grinding basins, taotie-patterned gui, circle-patterned bu, ladder-patterned basins, and bowl-shaped dou, dating back to the Shang Dynasty in the Central Plains. Late artifacts mainly consist of li, ding, jars, dou, gui, and bu, featuring both locally distinctive items such as crescent-shaped stone knives, diamond-shaped stone arrowheads, plain arc-rimmed bag-shaped leg dou, and densely finger-printed ding, as well as elements influenced by Central Plains culture such as twin-winged bronze arrowheads, wide-mouthed thick-lipped gui, and rectangular solid-eared pottery bu, dating to approximately the Western Zhou Dynasty in the Central Plains.