Taosi Site

Taosi Site

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

The vast and fertile southern Shanxi region, situated in the middle reaches of the Yellow River, is surrounded by the rugged Zhongtiao Mountains to the east, the precipitous Lüliang Mountains to the west, and the steep cliffs of the Yellow River to the south, with the Fen River running through it. This area has fostered a long history and rich, diverse culture dating back to the Paleolithic-era Dingcun Man, along with legends such as “Yao’s Capital at Pingyang,” “Ruins of the Xia Dynasty,” and “Yu’s Brother Enfeoffed at Tang,” which have always drawn the attention of historians and archaeologists. Countless millennia have left behind numerous precious cultural heritage sites on the land of southern Shanxi. Among them, the Taosi city site stands out as the brightest star, attracting generations of archaeologists who tirelessly explore and study it.

I. Discoveries of the 20th Century

The Taosi Site in Xiangfen County, Shanxi Province, is located 7 kilometers northeast of the county seat and 7 kilometers east of the Fen River. It was discovered during a cultural relics survey in the 1950s and is an ultra-large site covering an area of over 3 million square meters. From 1978 to 1987, the Second Shanxi Work Team of the Institute of Archaeology at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, in collaboration with the Linfen Regional Culture Bureau, conducted large-scale excavations at the ordinary residential areas and early elite tombs of the Taosi Site in search of traces of the Xia Dynasty and to explore Xia culture. These efforts yielded remarkable results, establishing the Taosi Culture. Nine early elite tombs unearthed a batch of exquisite painted pottery, woodenware, and jade artifacts, including painted dragon plates, pottery drums, stone chimes, wooden storage vessels, wooden bean-shaped vessels, jade, jade qi (ge), jade bi, and jade cong—items that may have represented regal status. Additionally, a red copper bell and vermilion-painted inscriptions were discovered. These findings not only established the Taosi Culture and created its chronological framework but also made the dawn of its civilization shine even brighter. On January 13, 1988, the Taosi Site was designated a “National Key Cultural Relics Protection Unit” with approval from the State Council.

II. Recent Discoveries

As domestic academic discussions on Xia culture deepened, although research on the Taosi Site and Taosi Culture gradually moved away from the exploration of Xia culture, from 1999 to 2001, the Institute of Archaeology at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the Linfen Cultural Relics Bureau discovered the mid-period city site of the Taosi Culture (circa 2100–2000 BCE) at Taosi, drawing academic attention back to the site. The northern, eastern, and southern walls of the mid-period city site have been identified. The city site is oval-rectangular in shape, oriented at 315°, or 45° west of north. The length between the northern wall and the inner southern wall is approximately 1,800 meters, with a width of about 1,500 meters, covering an area of around 2.7 million square meters. Including the small mid-period city between the two southern walls, the total area of the mid-period Taosi Culture city site is approximately 2.8 million square meters.

From 2002 to 2003, the Ministry of Science and Technology launched the national “Tenth Five-Year Plan” key scientific and technological project “Pre-research on the Exploration of the Origins of Chinese Civilization.” Taosi, as a key settlement, was included in the sub-topic “Settlements Reflecting Social Organization.” The Shanxi Team of the Institute of Archaeology at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, in collaboration with the Shanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology and the Linfen Cultural Relics Bureau, excavated the Taosi city site to preliminarily explore its layout. In the northeastern part of the mid-period city site, we identified the early city site of the Taosi Culture (circa 2300–2100 BCE). The early city site is approximately 1,000 meters long from north to south and 560 meters wide from east to west (from Q4 to the eastern bank of Zhonglianggou), covering an area of about 560,000 square meters, with an orientation angle of 315°.

The southern western section of the early site is a residential area, covering a total area of about 16,000 square meters. Several larger rammed earth buildings have been identified, with simple structures, mostly square or rectangular. The buildings here are relatively densely clustered, surrounded by garbage pits and storage pits, indicating a relatively poor living environment and seemingly lower social status. However, evidence such as the construction method of larger-scale (300-square-meter) foundation pits, relatively refined white lime plastered surfaces on houses, the largest white lime-plastered shallow semi-subterranean single or double-room houses, and the rare discovery of precious rice grains in the garbage pits of the area all suggest that the residents here were not ordinary commoners but more likely upper-class elites.

The palace area of the early and mid-period Taosi city site is located in the central-southern part of the city, covering approximately 50,000 square meters. At the northern edge of the natural soil platform foundation in the core building area of the early and mid-period palace area, and on the southern bank of the moat IHG9, we cleared a rammed earth staircase IFJT2, an auxiliary building of the palace area, dating back to the early Taosi Culture. The rammed earth staircase IFJT2 is 7.9 meters wide, 7.5 meters deep, 5.8 meters high on the south side, and 0.6 meters high on the north side, with an orientation angle of 130 degrees. The top of the staircase is built with 12 rammed earth slabs of varying sizes. The surface of the staircase retains a zigzag ramp with a 20-degree slope, featuring well-preserved tread marks leading up from the gully bottom to the top of the staircase and into the core building area. The northern end of the IFJT2 foundation pit has a gap shaped like a “ㄈ,” opening to the northwest, corresponding to two east-west aligned rammed earth piers on the bottom interface of the northern moat IHG9, possibly used to support a small wooden plank bridge. The distance between the two bridge piers is 0.65 meters, with a height difference of about 0.7 meters from the bottom of the gap. Each pier is 0.3 meters square and 0.5 meters high, with a pot-bottom-shaped post hole on each surface for setting wooden posts. The early Taosi rammed earth staircase IFJT2 was abandoned in the early mid-period of the Taosi Culture, buried by palace construction waste, forming a ramp with a cleared pathway 7 meters long, 0.9–3 meters wide, and a tread thickness of 0.02 meters.

Below this, among the large amount of construction waste covering the rammed earth staircase IFJT2 at the northern opening, large pieces of decorated stamped white lime wall fragments and a large piece of blue-painted white lime wall plaster were unearthed. Additionally, some items rarely seen in ordinary residential areas were found, likely belonging to palace waste, such as a pottery steamer with a human figure.

Other items include washbasins, large jade huang pendants, pottery drum fragments, turquoise pieces, red-painted lacquerware, fragments of architectural material pottery tiles (possibly roof tiles?), zun-shaped gui vessels, and ring-shaped stoves. These luxurious artifacts prove that even the quality of construction and household waste here is the highest in the Taosi city site, indicating the highest architectural standards and the highest social status of the residents. The palace area of the Taosi city site is indeed located here.

Notably, during the late Taosi Culture period, the palace area no longer served as such but was occupied by ordinary artisans engaged in stone and bone tool production, while also showing signs of intense violence. In the no-longer-extant palace area, a late Taosi garbage pit IHG8 not only yielded a large number of stone blank flakes but also five layers of scattered human bones, totaling at least 32 individuals, mostly skulls, with fewer pelvises and limb bones. The human bones were clearly dismembered, with many skulls showing blunt blade chop marks, including six mask-like facial skulls artificially cleaved. According to on-site identification by our professionals, most of these bones belonged to young and middle-aged males. The same garbage pit also contained the complete skeleton of a woman around 35 years old, who had been brutally killed and sexually assaulted, with a cow horn inserted into her genital area. The pit also contained a large number of bone arrowheads, mostly triangular and highly lethal, many of them broken, along with some bone needles, bone awls, and grinding stones, likely related to bone tool production.

In the southeastern part outside the early city site and the eastern part within the mid-period city site, there is a relatively independent pit area. The pit area is about 100 meters long and over 10 meters wide, covering nearly 1,000 square meters. Within this area, the pits are densely distributed, mainly consisting of vertical round-cornered square or rectangular large pits, most with spiral ramps leading down to the bottom, which is pot-bottom-shaped, with some pits having several large stones at the bottom. The larger pits are about 10 meters square, 4–5 meters deep, with a volume of about 400 cubic meters; the smaller ones are about 5 meters square, 4–5 meters deep, with a volume of about 100 cubic meters.

In the northwest corner of the mid-period small city of Taosi, we explored a mid-to-late Taosi Culture cemetery, covering an area of about 10,000 square meters. Graves of all sizes—large, medium, and small—are densely distributed. Only small graves were found during the late Taosi period (circa 2000–1900 BCE).

The excavated mid-period large tomb M22 has a round-cornered rectangular pit, measuring 5 meters long and 3.65 meters wide at the opening, 5.2 meters long and 3.7 meters wide at the bottom, with the bottom 8.4 meters below the surface and the opening 1.4 meters below the surface, making the depth about 7 meters. At a depth of a few centimeters below the tomb opening, the fill soil contained the skeleton of a young man who had been cut in half at the waist, lying supine on the upper body and prone on the lower body. In the central part of Tomb II M22, there is a large disturbance pit from the late Taosi period, which directly damaged the wooden coffin, destroying most of the upper part of the coffin. The original coffin lid and red cloth coffin cover were both ruined by the disturbance pit. At the bottom of the disturbance pit, five randomly discarded human skulls were found, while the skull of the tomb owner remained on the coffin’s inner board and corpse bed. On the western slope of the bottom of the disturbance pit, the disturbed coffin lid was found, along with 20 or so disturbed funerary items from inside the coffin, including one piece of jade, one jade fragment, 20 or so jade ornaments and turquoise inlays. The coffin of Tomb II M22 was a boat-shaped coffin carved from a single log, measuring about 2.7 meters long, 1.2 meters wide, 0.16–0.3 meters high (with remaining height), and 0.03 meters thick. The funerary items around the coffin inside the tomb chamber showed no signs of disturbance, with 72 items (sets) unearthed, including eight painted pottery pieces, 18 sets of jade artifacts, eight sets of bone arrowheads, 25 lacquered wooden items (excluding six jade-handled lacquered wooden items), two red-painted straw-woven items, as well as 10 pigs and one boar’s lower jaw.

Further Reading:

· Third Batch of National Key Cultural Relics Protection Units