In the verdant hills of East China’s Zhejiang Province lies a captivating link to the distant past – the Dushan site. This archaeological treasure trove in Yunhe County, Lishui, houses 38 ancient tombs thought to be resting places of the nobility from the Western Zhou Dynasty (1046 BC-771 BC). Unearthed during eight months of meticulous excavation, the site offers a priceless glimpse into an era long past, and the people who shaped it.
Over 100 varied artifacts have been painstakingly recovered from the site’s 37 pits, their antiquity and rarity adding to the significance of the find. Among the discoveries were 25 bronze items, such as swords and knives – an unprecedented find for Lishui, which had not previously seen an excavation yielding such an array of bronze artifacts.
The crowning jewel of the find is a beautifully decorated bronze spearhead, crafted in the likeness of a swallow’s tail. This artifact mirrors similar spearheads previously found in the Zhangjiapo Cemetery in Xi’an, Shaanxi Province, and in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River. The discovery in Yunhe broadens the known geographical range of these unique spearheads, yielding new insights into their origin and the intricacies of their production.
“These discoveries are significantly influential,” said Chen Minghui, Deputy Director of the Prehistoric Archaeology Department of the Zhejiang Cultural Relic Archaeology Institute. He further explained that the dominance of bronze items among the burial objects indicates that the tombs likely belonged to a high-ranking aristocratic family, suggesting the existence of social stratification in the Yunhe region during the Western Zhou period.
According to Chen, the findings at the Dushan site offer a wealth of material for research into the cultural, technological, and societal facets of the Western Zhou period in Zhejiang province. The bronze artifacts, in particular, are set to be the subject of rigorous technological and archaeological examination in the future.
The recent discovery follows the 2021-22 excavations at the Menqianshan site, also in Yunhe. Here, 15 early Western Zhou tombs were discovered, containing porcelain jars and bowls but conspicuously lacking bronze artifacts. Chen suggested that this absence of bronze could indicate that the Menqianshan site served as a burial ground for common families, further shedding light on the societal structures of the Western Zhou period.
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