Xima Village Site

Xima Village Site

The Xima Village Site is a cultural heritage site protected at the provincial level in Shanxi Province.

Xima Village Site (Fifth Batch of Provincial-Level Protected Sites)

Era: Paleolithic Age

Address: Northeast of Ximazhuang Village, Jiaoshan Township, and north of Shangen Village, Jiadou Township, Guangling County, Datong City

The site is situated on a terrace on the western bank of Dashagou, commonly known as "Huashitou Gully," which marks the boundary between Shanxi and Hebei provinces. It extends about 872 meters from east to west and around 679 meters from north to south, covering a total area of approximately 592,000 square meters. The site contains a wealth of artifacts. Surface finds include scrapers, pointed tools, stone flakes, and other implements made from banded flint in red and white hues, dating to the late Paleolithic Age. In 1975, Mr. Chen Zheying from the Shanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology conducted a survey here and discovered pottery shards from the late Neolithic Age, Eastern Zhou Dynasty, and ceramics from the Song and Jin Dynasties onward. However, the primary cultural remains consist of a large quantity of stone artifacts. Nearly a thousand stone tools have been collected, mostly made from siliceous acidic volcanic rocks, with very few quartzites. These materials are brittle and hard, and include types such as cores, flakes, points, scrapers, arrowheads, and awls. In 1985, during construction work for a chemical plant near the site in Guangling County, a fossilized elephant was unearthed.

This site covers a relatively large area, nearly 600,000 square meters. Within the Datong Basin, remnants from the late Paleolithic Age are quite rare, and this site helps fill that gap to some extent. The unearthed artifacts are typical, including scrapers, pointed tools, and stone flakes, and they are well-preserved. The cultural characteristics of the late Paleolithic Age in northern Shanxi remain unclear, and the relationship between this site and the Paleolithic culture of the Nihewan Basin in northwestern Hebei also requires further study. The discovery and in-depth research of this site will provide important physical evidence for studying the late Paleolithic culture of northern Shanxi.

In 2016, the Xima Village Site was included in the Fifth Batch of Provincial-Level Cultural Heritage Protected Sites in Shanxi Province.

Source: Shanxi Provincial Bureau of Cultural Relics

Further Reading:

· Fifth Batch of Provincial-Level Cultural Heritage Protected Sites in Shanxi Province