Xianshuiyan Cliff Tomb Cluster

Xianshuiyan Cliff Tomb Cluster

The Xianshuiyan Cliff Tomb Cluster is a National Key Cultural Relics Protection Unit.

The Xianshuiyan Cliff Tomb Cluster is located 18 kilometers southwest of Yingtan City, Jiangxi Province, dating back to the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods (770 BC – 221 BC). A total of 205 cliff tombs have been surveyed and identified, making it one of the areas with the highest concentration of surviving cliff tombs in China.

Most of the cliff tombs were created by utilizing natural caves. The sizes of the caves vary significantly, with some as narrow as 2 meters and others as wide as 58.3 meters. The cave entrances all face the southeast. There are two types of tomb door structures: one is the clapboard-style tomb door, and the other is the horizontal string-style tomb door. Based on burial customs, they can be broadly divided into three types: single-cave single burial, single-cave group burial, and connected-cave group burial. Forty-one coffins have been excavated, varying in form and all finely crafted from high-quality wood. Among the burial objects, a 13-stringed guzheng is the earliest known wooden string instrument in China; textile tools represent a major archaeological discovery in China and even the world. The discovery of oblique loom components pushes their earliest known date from the Eastern Han Dynasty back to the Warring States period.

The Xianshuiyan Cliff Tomb Cluster provides rich material for studying the customs, economic activities, and cultural characteristics of the ancient Yue people. It also offers important insights into the origins, transmission routes, ethnic migrations, and cultural integration of hanging coffin burials in Southeast Asia. (National Cultural Heritage Administration)

Further Reading:

· Fifth Batch of National Key Cultural Relics Protection Units