Chengziyuan Site

Chengziyuan Site

The Chengziyuan Site is a cultural heritage protection unit of Tonggu County.

Situated in Chengziyuan within Gǔqiáo Village, Dàchuàn Town (formerly Gǔqiáo Township), Tonggu County, Jiangxi Province, the site is 40 kilometers from the county seat. It is an uneven, red sandy-soil hill, with the “Shanbei Site” of Xiushui located 13 li to the northeast. To the northwest of the site there are some small grain fields, a small stream runs through the middle, and about 200 meters to the left flows the ancient Gǔqiáo River heading south, where it meets the Xiushui River. The site stands approximately 150 meters above the surrounding paddy fields, covering a total area of 90,000 square meters. As the site is situated on a slope and suffers from severe water erosion, many stone tools and a large quantity of pottery fragments are exposed on the surface and can be easily found.

From the two surveys conducted in June and July 1983, among the many collected pottery fragments and stone tool specimens, the stone tools include: two flat willow-leaf-shaped stone arrowheads made of hard stone and finely polished; three double-hole saddle-shaped stone knives and three knife blanks, as well as some other fragments of stone tools.

Observations of the site’s cross-section show that the cultural deposit layer is about 60 cm thick, containing finely polished double-hole saddle-shaped stone knives, flat willow-leaf-shaped stone arrowheads, as well as remnants of stone tools such as stone adzes and stone axes. There are also fragments of hard red sandy pottery tripod feet, southern-style jar-like vessels, deep-bellied basins, jars, large-mouthed zun vessels, and folded-shoulder jars. The decorative patterns on the pottery fragments mainly consist of large, medium, and fine grid patterns, along with field-patterns, thundercloud patterns, sawtooth-like stacked patterns, variant thunder patterns, combinations of grid patterns with thundercloud patterns, and combinations of grid patterns with blue patterns.

The Chengziyuan Site has not yet been excavated, so the cross-section remains inconclusive. Based on two surveys conducted in June and July 1982, provincial archaeological experts such as Li Jiahe and Liu Lin conducted on-site investigations and analysis, concluding that this site can be identified as a Western Zhou site, though it also contains elements from the late Shang Dynasty. The site was listed as one of the first batch of key cultural heritage protection units of Tonggu County in December 1983.