Leiguzhai Site

Leiguzhai Site

The Leiguzhai Site is a cultural heritage preservation unit of Sichuan Province.

The Leiguzhai Site is located in Leiguzhai Village, Chunchai Township, approximately 20 kilometers southeast of Tongjiang County. Its geographical coordinates are 107°17′ east longitude and 31°51′ north latitude, with an elevation of 740 meters. Situated on the southern foothills of the eastern section of the Micang Mountains in Northeastern Sichuan, this area belongs to the low mountainous and hilly region. The Tongjiang–Dachuan Highway runs from west to east along the northern side of the site, and nearby flow the Tonghe River, part of the Yangtze River watershed, and some of its tributaries from east to southwest.

Leiguzhai is a standalone hill in a triangular shape, surrounded by cliffs on three sides. The site is situated on gentle slopes beneath the cliffs on the northwest and south sides of the hill, divided into a northern district and a southern district. The northern district is approximately 50 meters long from north to south and about 10 meters wide from east to west, covering an area of around 500 square meters; the southern district is roughly 60 meters long from east to west and about 10 meters wide from north to south, with an approximate area of 600 square meters. The surface of the site is currently used as farmland.

The Leiguzhai Site was discovered in the spring of 1984 by schoolteacher Zhao Minghao from Chunchai Township who was compiling the Chunchai Township Annals. It was confirmed during the cultural relics survey in 1987. In 1990, a scientific excavation was carried out. The cultural strata are 3 meters deep and are divided into nine layers in total, yielding a total of 20,685 pieces (or fragments) of stone tools, pottery, and other artifacts. Among these, there were 812 stone tools and semi-finished stone tools, and 19,873 pottery pieces (or fragments). The culture represented at the site is relatively complex. The pottery unearthed is predominantly made of sandy clay, and black pottery is most common, followed by orange-yellow, brown, red, and relatively rare gray pottery. Decorative patterns on the artifacts were more elaborate in the first cultural layer; on a single artifact, it was rare to find only one type of decoration, while combinations of two or more decorative techniques were common. The types of decorations mainly include incised lines, checkered patterns, cord marks, wavy patterns, appliqué ridges, convex-concave string patterns, punctate impressions, stab marks, and perforations. From the second layer onward, plain pottery accounted for over 71%, and decorative patterns mostly continued from those seen in the first layer. The practice of decorating vessel rims with sawtooth or wavy flanges was popular at that time. Common types of vessels included jars, zun-shaped vessels (wine or ritual vessels), bottles, basins, bowls, cups, bowls, and lids. Most of the vessels had flat bottoms, with ring-foot and tripod bases being rare, and tripods or dou-type vessels entirely absent. The manufacturing technique involved handcrafting plus wheel-finishing, and many of the pottery items had low firing temperatures.

The site also yielded a large number of stone tools and semi-finished stone products. Most were polished, and the main types included axes, adzes, chisels, arrowheads, spears, stone balls, and discoid tools. There were fewer chipped stone tools, which mainly included shoulder-adze style stone spades, shoulder-adze style stone axes, scrapers, chopping tools, and pointed implements. A total of four microliths were also discovered, all of which were scrapers.

Protected Area: Centered around the excavation zone on the eastern side of Leiguzhai, extending 800 meters outward in all four directions: southeast, southwest, northwest, and northeast.

Construction Control Zone: An additional 300-meter extension beyond the Protected Area.