Hougaolao Site

Hougaolao Site

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

The Hougaolao Site is located 100 meters northwest of Hougaolao Village in Gaosi Town. It is a Peiligang culture site. Shaped like an ellipse, it is slightly elevated above the surrounding land and is currently farmland. The cultural layer stretches 225 meters from north to south, 180 meters from east to west, with a thickness of 18 meters, covering an area of 4.05 million square meters. It was designated as a county-level cultural relics protection unit in 1978, making it the earliest discovered cultural site within the county. Archaeologists from the province, region, and county have conducted multiple surveys here, collecting a large number of pottery fragments, providing extremely important data for studying the distribution range of the Peiligang culture and the interrelationships among various cultures.

The site is slightly elevated above the surrounding land, with a cultural layer 1.8 to 5 meters thick. A path ditch running east-west through the middle divides the site into northern and southern sections. The site is 370 meters long from north to south, 184 meters wide from east to west, with a total area of 68,080 square meters. In 1956, during an archaeological survey conducted by the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, stone grinding plates and fragmented pottery were discovered here. Following the excavation of the Peiligang Site in Xinzheng, Henan in 1977, Mr. An Zhimin confirmed in 1979 that this site belonged to the Peiligang culture. In 1977, 1991, and 2000, municipal and county cultural relics departments carried out multiple cultural heritage surveys and thematic investigations. Different cultural layers from various periods were found on the exposed cliff by the roadside — the upper layer belonging to the Yangshao culture and the lower layer to the Peiligang culture. The site also contains numerous remains from the Longshan, Dawenkou, and Qujialing cultures. Exposed features and artifacts include irregular circular ash pits and a large number of red burned earth blocks. Within the ash pits, bone arrowheads, stone axes, bone awls, boot-shaped implements, stone tools, and a large quantity of pottery fragments were found, indicating a relatively rich collection of relics.

The Hougaolao Site represents the easternmost extent of the Peiligang culture in China. The surrounding area of the site contains distributions of contemporaneous remains, especially several that postdate it. Of particular importance, boot-shaped implements discovered at the site bear a striking resemblance to those unearthed at the Luantai Site in Luyi, and contain elements of the Shuangdun culture from Anhui. This provides valuable material for studying the relationship between the Peiligang and Shuangdun cultures, as well as for researching the cultural inheritance, the development sequence of Neolithic cultures in eastern Henan, and the origin of the Yangshao culture.

In 2019, the Hougaolao Site was included in the eighth batch of National Key Cultural Relics Protection Units.

Gaosi Town: Located in the central part of the city, Gaosi Town borders Guanhui Town and Xinqiao Town to the east, Fanji Township to the west, Laocheng Township to the south, and Dingji Town and Yongfeng Township to the north. It covers an area of 64.7 square kilometers, with 59,610 mu of arable land, 26 administrative villages, 106 natural villages, and a population of 66,000. The town government is located in Gaosi.

In ancient times, there was a high mound here called Gaoyang Qiu (Gaoyang Mound). According to the "Taiping Huanyu Ji" (Taiping Imperial Geography Record): “Ying and Nandun, both renowned brothers, compared themselves to the talented sons of the Gaoyang clan, hence the mound was named Gaoyang Qiu.” Later, a temple was built on the mound, known as Gaoyang Temple. Subsequently, during the first year of the Tongzhi reign in the Qing Dynasty, a fortified settlement was constructed here and named Gaoyang Temple Fort... More detailed information about Gaosi Town ++

Further Reading:

· Third Batch of Henan Provincial Cultural Relics Protection Units

· Eighth Batch of National Key Cultural Relics Protection Units