China News Service, Taiyuan, August 8 (Reporter Hu Jian) The Shanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology released new archaeological discoveries on the 8th. Local archaeologists discovered the cultural remains of the prehistoric Longshan period at the Bicun site located on the bank of the Yellow River, and unveiled them. The changes in the form of prehistoric settlements on the banks of the Yellow River.
The Longshan period generally refers to a type of cultural remains of the late Neolithic Age in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River in China, dating from about 4350 to 3950 years ago. These remains are distributed in Shandong, Henan, Shanxi, Shaanxi and other places in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River.
The stone remains of the Bi Village site.
Photo courtesy of Shanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology
The site of Bicun is located in the north of Bicun Village, Gaojiacun Town, Xing County, Luliang City, Shanxi Province, where the Yellow River and its tributary Weifen River meet.
From 2015 to 2018, the Shanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology, together with the Department of Archaeology of the School of History and Culture of Shanxi University (now the School of Archaeology of Shanxi University), and the Xingxian Culture and Tourism Bureau, carried out continuous excavation work on the Xiaoyuliang platform of the Bicun site, basically clarifying the The overall layout of the mesa and the phased changes of its settlements.
According to the sorting out of the layer relationship in the northwest of Xiaoyuliang platform, combined with the stone row houses and slope retaining walls in the east-central part of the platform, as well as the stone buildings and north fence in the northeast, archaeologists have gradually confirmed that Xiaoyuliang platform was in the Longshan period. The settlement pattern has undergone three major changes.
Pillar Cave at Bi Village Ruins.
Photo courtesy of Shanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology
According to Wang Xiaoyi, the leader of the archaeological excavation project, the human activities in the Xiaoyuliang platform in the first phase are mainly distributed in the northwest of the platform, and this phase belongs to ordinary settlements.
The second phase is the white-grey surface house site above the cinnamon soil layer and below the stone-built house site. At this stage, the activity range of the ancients was mainly in the central and eastern part of the platform. Since no relics have been unearthed, it is temporarily impossible to determine its settlement characteristics.
The construction and use of stone masonry buildings in the third phase shows that the platform settlement form has undergone significant changes in this stage, reflecting the characteristics of high-grade settlement buildings.
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