Sanxingdui - Sanxingdui Culture

Sanxingdui Culture

The Sanxingdui archaeological site is located about 4 km northeast of Nanxing Township, Guanghan County, Chengdu Prefecture, Sichuan Province. The site is a walled city belonging to the Sanxingdui Culture founded c 1,600 BCE. The trapizoidal city has an east wall 2,000 m, south wall 2,000 m, west wall 1,600 m enclosing 3.6 km2. The city was built on the banks of the Yazi River (Chinese: 涧河; pinyin: Jiān Hé), and enclosed part of its tributary, Mamu River, within the city walls. The city is equal to the Shang capital Ao (Chinese: 隞; pinyin: Aó) in scale and development. The city wall were 40 m at the base and 20 m at the top and varied in height from 8–10 m. There was a smaller set of inner walls. The walls were surrounded by canals 25–20 m wide and 2–3 m deep. These canals were used for irrigation, inland navigation, defense, and flood control. The city was divided into residential, industrial and religious districts organized around a dominant central axis. It is along this axis that most of the pit burial have been found on four terraces. The structures were timber framed adobe rectangular halls. The largest was a meeting hall about 200 m2.

The culture of the Sanxingdui site is thought to be divided into several phases. The Sanxingdui Culture which corresponds to periods II-III of the site, was a mysterious civilization in southern China. This culture is contemporaneous with the Shang Dynasty, however they developed a different method of bronze-making from the Shang. The first phase which corresponds to period I of the site belongs to the Baodun, and the final phase (period IV) the culture merged with Ba and Chu cultures. The Sanxingdui culture ended, possibly either as a result of natural disasters (evidence of massive flooding were found), or invasion by a different culture.

The culture was a strong central theocracy with trade links to bronze from Yin and Ivory from Southeast Asia. Such evidence of independent cultures in different regions of China defies the traditional theory that the Yellow River was the sole "cradle of Chinese civilization."