Trench Gold Pit Tomb No. 1

Trench Gold Pit Tomb No. 1

Trench Gold Pit Tomb No. 1 is a cultural tourism attraction.

Trench Gold Pit Tomb No. 1 is located at the southern foot of Trench Gold Pit Mountain, adjacent to the west of Overseas Chinese New Village. It is a burial site consisting of small and medium-sized tombs from the Nanyue Kingdom period. In 1973, when the Baiyun Hotel was constructed here, over 40 Nanyue tombs were discovered within a leveled area of 10,000 square meters. After rescue excavations, 22 tombs were unearthed, 21 of which were wooden-chambered tombs, while only this one was a vertical pit tomb. The tomb pit is long and narrow, measuring 3.1 meters in length and 0.86 meters in width. Its four walls were not dug very smoothly, but the bottom is level, and the pit is entirely filled with yellow sand. Burial objects were placed on one side, including 15 pottery pieces of 10 different types—apart from some remnants of lacquerware, these consist of jars, pots, steamers, cauldrons, tripods, boxes, vats, square wine vessels, double-handled small jars, and a five-linked jar. Aside from the burial items, a narrow section of the pit, 1.8 meters long, was just large enough to hold a coffin. It is inferred that this may have been the tomb of a child. Two of the pottery items found in this tomb are somewhat unique: First, the five-linked jar, of which only two small connected jars remain, as the other three small jars and the short legs at the base had been broken off before burial. This practice of burying broken vessels is more commonly seen in Guangzhou’s Jin and Southern Dynasties tombs (often involving the removal of the short legs of three-legged inkstones). Second, the double-handled jar, whose lid and shoulder bear a total of four square stamps—“Chang Yu” (often used) and “Di Liu” (No. 6)—arranged so that they can be read in pairs. A single pottery item bearing four stamped characters is an extremely rare find among pottery artifacts from the Nanyue Kingdom period discovered in Guangzhou.