Guandimiao Mountain Site

Guandimiao Mountain Site

The Guandimiao Mountain Site is a National Key Cultural Relics Protection Unit.

The Guandimiao Mountain Site is situated in Guandimiao Mountain Village, Wan'an Town, about 11.5 kilometers northeast of Zhijiang City. It contains a primitive village site from the Neolithic Age, spanning over 40,000 square meters with cultural layers more than one meter deep. Carbon-14 dating shows it dates back 5,000 to 6,000 years, and its cultural content displays the classic features of the Daxi Culture. Experts from the Institute of Archaeology at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences have named it the "Guandimiao Mountain Type" of the Daxi Culture. The site has been designated as a Key Cultural Relics Protection Unit by the People's Government of Hubei Province.

The Guandimiao Mountain Site was discovered in 1977 during the construction of a water conservancy project. It immediately attracted significant attention and great interest from the Hubei Team of the Institute of Archaeology at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and cultural relics departments at the provincial and municipal levels. Excavations were promptly carried out, and over 5,000 artifacts were unearthed from more than 2,000 square meters of excavation trenches.

These artifacts can be broadly divided into two categories: one consists of stone production tools, which are complete in variety and finely polished. Items include stone axes, adzes, shovels, chisels, and net sinkers. These not only served various production purposes at the time but also indicate that the lifestyle of the early inhabitants of Guandimiao Mountain had shifted from gathering and hunting to farming and animal husbandry. Notably, the discovery of stone pestles for grain processing, pottery winnowing baskets, and rice husks mixed in the soil further confirms that the people of Guandimiao Mountain cultivated a certain scale of japonica rice. The other category is pottery items, which are abundant. These include storage vessels such as cauldrons, jars, and vats; tools like winnowing baskets, net sinkers, and spinning whorls; as well as crafts such as turtles, balls, and bells for children’s play, and urn coffins used for burying deceased infants. These pottery items catered to all aspects of human life, with many everyday objects bearing shapes almost identical to modern counterparts. In particular, the painted pottery and eggshell-thin pottery are considered masterpieces—featuring unique designs, exquisite craftsmanship, natural colors, and simple yet elegant patterns. Some pottery pieces are as thin as eggshells, lightweight and delicate in the hand. This diverse range of pottery items, closely related to the staple diet of rice at the time, stands as a testament to the diligence and wisdom of the ancestors of the Chinese nation.

The site also yielded ten foundations of primitive tribal houses—some square, others rectangular; some ground-level structures, others semi-subterranean. The roofs were all four-sided sloped types resembling grasslands, with walls constructed using bamboo and wooden frameworks plastered with mud. Due to the high rainfall and groundwater level in the Zhijiang area, the early inhabitants of Guandimiao Mountain had already considered moisture-proofing in their architecture. They fired the house foundations and earthen walls and laid drainage slopes around the base of the walls. Though these techniques may seem rudimentary today, they were mastered by our ancestors through countless generations of struggle and exploration in harsh living conditions to ensure survival. Today’s archaeological experts highly praise the primitive house construction at Guandimiao Mountain, noting that the architectural techniques embody the fundamental characteristics of southern Chinese architecture. This reflects the tremendous contributions made by our ancestors in Zhijiang toward human development and societal progress, leaving behind a precious cultural heritage for our nation.

The site boasts extremely rich cultural content. In addition to belonging to the Daxi Culture, it also features layers of the Qujialing Culture and the Shijiahe Culture. It is a renowned primitive village site in the Yangtze River Basin and once again strongly proves that, like the Yellow River Basin, the Yangtze River Basin is also a cradle of the Chinese nation.

The archaeological findings of this site have been included in the "Encyclopedia of China" and "Archaeological Discoveries and Achievements of New China." A monograph titled "Zhijiang Guandimiao Mountain" is also forthcoming.

Further Reading:

· Third Batch of Hubei Provincial Cultural Relics Protection Units

· Fifth Batch of National Key Cultural Relics Protection Units