Tonglin Site

Tonglin Site

The Tonglin Site is a National Key Cultural Relics Protection Unit.

The Tonglin Site is located between Tonglin and Tianwang villages on the western side of Lushan Mountain, 10 kilometers west of the ancient city of Qi in Linzi District, Zibo City, Shandong Province. It is a late Neolithic Longshan Culture site.

Centered around the Tonglin city ruins, the area contains numerous other archaeological sites. The site is a plateau ruin, covering a total area of approximately 310,000 square meters. Surrounded by water on all sides, with the central terrain rising to a height of 7 meters, a Longshan Culture city site has been discovered here. In the middle of the city site, a semi-subterranean storage pit was found, yielding dozens of pottery ritual vessels, including pottery drums, tripods, basins, and an extra-large pottery vessel (1.13 meters high). Fragments of eggshell-thin high-stemmed cups, as thin as paper, were also unearthed. Unused stone tools were found in the strata, indicating that there was a stone tool processing workshop within the city.

The Tonglin Site is a central settlement in the Zibo River basin during the Longshan era and holds significant academic value for the study of the origins of Chinese civilization and early urban development. (National Cultural Heritage Administration)

Further Reading:

· Fifth Batch of National Key Cultural Relics Protection Units