Xiaohe Cemetery

Xiaohe Cemetery

Xiaohe Cemetery is a National Key Cultural Relics Protection Unit.

The Xiaohe Cemetery is situated in the Lop Desert, about 60 kilometers south of the lower reaches of the Kongque River valley, and roughly 175 kilometers east of the ruins of the ancient Loulan city. The site consists of several layers of burial sites and other remains stacked on top of each other, presenting as an oval sand dune that rises prominently from the otherwise gently undulating desert. The first striking impression of the Xiaohe Cemetery is the dense array of over 140 wooden stakes—polygonal, round, and paddle-shaped—made of Populus euphratica, all standing more than four meters tall and quite thick, many of which were cut into seven to eleven facets. The Xiaohe Cemetery was named one of China’s Top Ten Archaeological Discoveries of 2004.

The Xiaohe Cemetery is regarded by the global archaeological community as one of the most perplexing and enduring mysteries of the buried civilizations in Central Asian history and archaeology. It was first discovered in the early 20th century by a Lop Nur hunter named Oerdeke.

In 1934, Swedish archaeologist F. Bergman discovered what he believed to be “the world’s best-preserved mummies” at the Xiaohe Cemetery. These mummies were later identified as belonging to the “Indo-European race.” In 1939, he published the book Archaeological Research in Xinjiang in Stockholm, providing a detailed account of his archaeological surveys and excavations in the Xiaohe River basin. The grand scale, unique burial customs, and the wealth of information about the early civilization of Lop Nur contained within Tomb No. 5 at Xiaohe drew widespread attention from scholars around the world.

Since then, the Xiaohe Cemetery mysteriously vanished from the desert until Chinese scholars made relentless efforts to locate this ancient treasure for over half a century. It wasn’t until December 11, 2000, that it reappeared before the eyes of renowned Xinjiang archaeologists such as Researcher Wang Binghua. The astonishing rediscovery of the Xiaohe Cemetery was hailed as the “latest discovery of Chinese archaeologists ushering in the new century.”

In late 2002, archaeologists in Xinjiang conducted trial excavations at the Xiaohe Cemetery. In October 2003, the full-scale excavation project of the Xiaohe Cemetery was officially launched with approval from the National Cultural Heritage Administration. A Xiaohe excavation team was formed by the Xinjiang Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, led by Director Idiris Abdurusul, and carried out over three months of fieldwork.

The cemetery as a whole consists of several layers of burial sites and other remains stacked on top of one another, forming an oval sand dune that abruptly rises from the flat desert. The dune stands 7.75 meters above the ground surface and covers an area of 2,500 square meters. Before excavation, there were 140 wooden stakes of various types standing on the surface of the dune. There is a row of relatively well-preserved wooden fence walls on the central and western parts of the cemetery, both roughly oriented in a north-south direction. The central fence wall divides the cemetery into eastern and western sections. The entire site resembles a steamed bun stuck full of chopsticks.

Thirty-three tombs were excavated, including 25 adult graves and 8 children's graves. Among the finds were 15 well-preserved mummified corpses with clothing, 1 male wooden corpse, and 1 rare composite of mummified and wooden remains. Two significant ritual remains were also discovered, along with the excavation and collection of nearly a thousand artifacts, many of which are extremely rare in the world.

At the site, archaeologists also found standing wooden poles symbolizing male and female genitalia, large wooden carved human figures, smaller wooden carved human face masks, patterned wooden arrows, ritual bows, wooden phalluses, bundles of ephedra, painted cow heads, serpentine wooden poles, wooden structures inlaid with copper pieces, and carved decorative patterns in matching numbers on wooden objects—these findings immerse visitors in a mysterious world filled with primitive religious atmosphere. A culture of fertility worship.

One of the strongest first impressions visitors get of the Xiaohe Cemetery is the dense array of wooden poles standing on the sand dunes. There are 140 of these poles, varying according to the gender of the deceased. In front of female coffins are mostly polygonal, thicker-at-the-bottom and thinner-at-the-top wooden poles, generally about 1.3–1.5 meters tall, with their upper parts painted red, wrapped with ropes, and tied with grass bundles. In front of male coffins stand wooden poles shaped like paddles, varying greatly in size—the larger ones reaching up to two meters in height and about 0.8 meters in width. These are painted black with red handles.

Why were so many wooden poles erected on the sand dunes? What were they used for? In 1934, when Swedish archaeologist Bergman arrived here, he speculated that there might have been roofs above the poles, which had long since been blown away by the wind.

The Xiaohe excavation team from the Xinjiang Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology overturned the hypothesis that there might have been roofs above the poles following last winter and this spring’s excavations, and came to a startling conclusion—that all the wooden poles were memorial objects belonging to the deceased. “The polygonal, thicker-at-the-bottom and thinner-at-the-top wooden poles may symbolize male genitalia, while the paddle-shaped poles symbolize female genitalia,” the archaeologists said. The large, tall pole with a pointed top in the center of the cemetery has finally been assigned an identity—it belonged to an elderly woman. This is currently the largest “male genital” pole excavated; it was painted entirely red, with a rounded upper line and a nine-faceted middle section, and stood at the head end of the elderly woman’s coffin.

Just like the “male genital” poles, the “female genital” poles also display their uniqueness in exaggerated proportions. Together with the robust “male genital” poles, they form the mysterious and startlingly bold fertility worship cultural landscape of the Xiaohe Cemetery. One historian remarked that while the worship of fertility in early human cultures has been found in the remains of many ethnic groups, the extreme form of worship seen at the Xiaohe Cemetery is exceptionally rare in the world.

Further reading:

· Seventh Batch of National Key Cultural Relics Protection Units