Guoxinhe Site

Guoxinhe Site

The Guoxinhe Site is a cultural heritage protection unit of Suzhou City.

In the mid-1970s, the Guoxiang People's Commune mobilized manpower, materials, and funds to excavate a major north-south trunk canal measuring 4.63 kilometers in length in the central area, naming it Guoxinhe Canal. During the excavation, a large number of cultural relics buried underground for thousands of years were unearthed, proving that this area was originally an ancient human cultural site. Later, this site was named the "Guoxinhe Site."

In 1987, through a comprehensive re-examination of the site, cultural heritage authorities discovered that the exposed cultural strata on both banks of the Guoxinhe Canal had a thickness of over 1.5 meters. They collected more than 200 stone and pottery artifacts and fragments, including stone axes and chisels, as well as pottery items such as tripods, pots, jars, bowls, and primitive porcelain lids and vessels. Based on the texture, decorative patterns, and shapes of the pottery, the authorities concluded that the cultural strata at the site could be traced back as early as the Songze Culture period, 5,300 years ago. On July 28, 1997, the Guoxinhe Site was designated as a cultural heritage protection unit of Wu County City (it later became a Suzhou municipal cultural heritage protection unit after Wu County was restructured into a district).

In October 1999, in conjunction with the construction of the Suzhou-Jiaxing-Hangzhou Expressway, the Suzhou Museum and the Wu County Cultural Relics Management Committee jointly conducted archaeological surveys and excavations at the site. Through a month of effort, archaeologists confirmed that the Guoxinhe Site stretches 1,500 meters from north to south and 400 meters from east to west, covering a total area of several hundred thousand square meters. Excavations within a 600-square-meter area in the southern part of the site confirmed that it was indeed originally a Songze Culture site.

In fact, the Guoxinhe Site is just one of the ancient human cultural sites in the Guoxiang area. As early as 1956, when the Nanjing Museum conducted an archaeological survey, the Yinshanqiao Huangnishan Site was discovered to the west of the Guoxinhe Site. In addition, the Guoxiang area once had numerous earthen mounds and hillocks. From the findings of excavations so far, it is believed that these mounds in our city may have been cultural sites or burial grounds, reflecting the ancient inhabitants’ practice of settling (or burying their dead) on higher ground within the wetland environment. Unfortunately, most of these mounds and hillocks in Guoxiang were never excavated and were later leveled one after another. It is said that in the 1990s, a contractor reportedly unearthed Liangzhu-period jade artifacts while digging into a hillock in Yincun Village.