Xishan Ancient City Site

Xishan Ancient City Site

The Xishan Ancient City Site is a National Key Cultural Relics Protection Unit.

The Xishan Ancient City Site is located on a second-level terrace on the north bank of the Ku River in Guxing Town, Huiji District, Zhengzhou City. It is a rammed-earth architectural city site from the late Yangshao Culture period. The site is roughly circular in layout, covering an existing area of 170,000 square meters. It is surrounded by a moat outside the city walls, while inside the city there are remains such as roads, building foundations, storage pits, and tombs. The cultural layers at the Xishan site can be divided into three phases: the first phase remains are roughly equivalent to the Hougang I Culture; the second phase remains are the most abundant and belong to the Miaodigou type of the Yangshao Culture; the third phase corresponds to the Qinwangzhai type of the late Yangshao Culture. The Xishan Ancient City was built during the early part of this third phase and abandoned in its later part, with an absolute date range of 5,300 to 4,800 years ago.

The city walls were constructed using the square-block ramming method, laying the technical foundation for later civil engineering projects such as city walls and elevated structures. The Xishan Ancient City is the earliest known rammed-earth city site discovered in northern China and an important origin of Chinese urban civilization.

Source: Zhengzhou Municipal Bureau of Cultural Relics