Hushu Town Cultural Ruins

Hushu Town Cultural Ruins

Hushu Town, located 26 kilometers southeast of Zhonghua Gate in Nanjing, belongs to Jiangning County. The Hushu Town cultural ruins are distributed on the highlands along both banks of the Qinhuai River. In 1951, the Nanjing Museum discovered over ten ancient sites here and also conducted trial excavations at two locations: Laoshudun and Qiangang. Qiangang is the earliest Neolithic site excavated in Jiangsu Province, with unearthed artifacts similar to those from the lower layer culture of the Beiyinyangying site in Nanjing. Laoshudun is a Bronze Age site dating roughly to the Shang and Zhou dynasties in Central China. This type of site has since been found in more than 200 locations across the Ningzhen Hills area. As Hushu Town was the first place where this type of site was discovered and excavated in the Ningzhen region, archaeologists have named this distinctive local Bronze Age culture, which corresponds to the Shang and Zhou periods in Central China, the "Hushu Culture." The main production tools were small, long stone adzes and half-moon-shaped stone knives, with fewer stone axes, as well as bronze knives and arrowheads. The pottery was primarily red ware, followed by gray ware, with an increase in geometric-patterned pottery in the later period. The main vessel types included li tripods, ding tripods, zun vessels, basins, and jars.