The Buyao Village Site

The Buyao Village Site

The Buyao Village Site is a National Key Cultural Relics Protection Unit.

The Buyao Village Site is located in the farmland on both the north and south sides of the Zhenlou Highway, which runs east-west through the fields southeast of Buyao Village and the eastern part of Lincheng Town in Lincheng County.

The highway cuts through the site, creating a 3–5 meter high cliff face. The southern section of the site, located south of the road, extends east to an earthen path within Buyao Village, is bordered on the west by the village’s production bridge, and reaches south to a small river at the village’s edge. It stretches approximately 250 meters from east to west and about 90 meters from north to south. The area within the South-to-North Water Diversion main canal covers about 8,000 square meters. The northern section of the site has a straight north-south distance of over 200 meters and is about 250 meters wide from east to west, with the area within the South-to-North Water Diversion canal covering approximately 28,000 square meters. The part of the site with richer cultural deposits is located in the southeastern section north of the road, most of which lies within the canal. Preliminary surveys indicate that the total area of the site is around 60,000 square meters, with cultural layers ranging from 0.5 to 3.2 meters in thickness. Through excavation and analysis, more than 300 ash pits, 37 tombs, 4 house foundations, 19 ash ditches, 5 kilns, and 1 surface bronze casting site have been discovered. Preliminary sorting has allowed for the restoration of more than 200 ceramic artifacts from various periods, along with over a thousand stone, bone, wood, horn, shell, and small bronze items.

Several major discoveries have also been made at Buyao Village: first are oracle bones, then sacrificial pits, as well as a Tang Dynasty tomb, “from which Tang tri-color pottery was unearthed.”

The academic community believes that, according to a widely accepted view, although the “Xing” of the Shang Dynasty was not located within the territory of Lincheng, the rich remains from the late Early Shang and Late Shang periods at the Buyao Site can provide new materials and perspectives for understanding the political structure and social life in the areas surrounding the Shang royal domain during the middle and late Shang Dynasty. At the same time, for remains from the Yangshao period, apart from a small number of sites, Hebei Province has few instances of purely Yangshao-period remains with rich accumulations and intact stratigraphic sequences, with only sporadic units—or even just scattered Yangshao pottery shards—found across many sites. Within the broader context of Yangshao culture, how the cultures of central and southern Hebei during the same period looked has long been a major issue puzzling the academic world. The discovery of Yangshao-period remains at the Buyao Village Site provides new clues for exploring this question.

Further Reading:

· Fifth Batch of Hebei Provincial Cultural Relics Protection Units

· Seventh Batch of National Key Cultural Relics Protection Units