An aerial view of parts of the Liangzhu Archaeological Site in Yuhang District, Hangzhou City, Zhejiang Province Photo: UNESCO

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The initial excavation of the Liangzhu sites started in the winter of 1936, conducted by Shi Xingeng, an employee of the West Lake Museum in Hangzhou. The next year he invited experts to the sites and they were recognized by China’s fledging archaeology field as new discoveries. In 1938, Shi Xingeng joined in China’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, but he didn’t give up his research on the Liangzhu sites. Through his efforts, a 50,000-word report about the Liangzhu archaeological sites was published in Shanghai. Shi Xingeng died at 28, not long after his discovery. Thanks to his reports, which identified black pottery and stone tools that date back to Neolithic China, Liangzhu attracted the attention of Chinese academia.

In 1973, the archaeological excavation in Caoxie Mountain in Suzhou surprised archaeologists with evidence showing that the jade artifacts collected in the palaces of the Qing Dynasty (1644–1911), which had been mistaken by the Qing emperors as antiques of the Han Dynasty (202 BCE–220), actually belonged to the Liangzhu society of the Neolithic period. Subsequent archaeological excavations found a large number of jade tools and artifacts, making jade a symbol of Liangzhu culture.

In 1986, discoveries of burial sites for the elite castes of society  impressed archaeologists again with their wealth of highly sophisticated jade sculptures and artifacts. Tomb 12 at the Fanshan site within Liangzhu City, from which the 5,300-year-old “King of Cong” (a 6.5-kilogram jade object featuring a tubular vessel contained within a rectangular body) was excavated, was considered the King’s Tomb, the highest ranked tomb in the Liangzhu culture. After this point, the ruins of the palace complex, city wall and a hydraulic system were identified. Many small-scale archaeological sites scattered around Liangzhu had been unearthed by the late 1980s. Generations of Chinese archaeologists and scholars have made great efforts to explore the Liangzhu Archaeological Site and protect its heritage.

 

A city spanning a 5,000-year history
Spanning about 14 square kilometers on the plain of river networks at the north foot of southeast China’s coastal hilly region, the site is divided into three sections, including the area of city site, the hydraulic engineering project and burials differentiated by social hierarchy. The area of city site consists of the palace site, the interior and the exterior of the city and an ancient hydraulic system. The hydraulic engineering projects outside the city include the high dam at the mouth of the valley, the low dam on the plain and the levees.

People who were able to identify jade and produce jadeware began to migrate to Liangzhu around 5,300 years ago. As their jade craft developed, the Yaoshan burial was built into the highest ranked burial, and functioned as an altar for special ritual activities and graves for elite members of society. The culture of Liangzhu was hierarchical with stratified social classes, as evidenced by the goods found in graves, particularly various jade pieces found in the Yaoshan burial site. The class differentiation of Liangzhu society is seen in the strict hierarchical uses of jade products.

The palace site and the outer hydraulic engineering projects were built around 5,000 years before present (BP), an area where the Mojiao Hill Platform existed, the earliest palace site that has ever been found in China. The Mojiao Hill Platform was the largest artificial platform in prehistory, measuring nearly 300,000 square meters, as large as the area of 40 standard football fields.

Foundations of three large structures have been found on this massive platform, namely Da Mojiao Hill, Xiao Mojiao Hill and Wugui Hill. The Da Mojiao Hill is the largest one of the three, measuring 15,000 square meters, as large as the area of 6.3 halls of Supreme Harmony in the Forbidden City. Archaeologists assumed that the palace located on the base of the Da Mojiao Hill was the kings’ palace.

Kings’ burials were excavated in 1986, known as the Fanshan burial complex. The “King of Cong” and “King of Yue” (jade yue refers to jade axes for ritual use only) were excavated from the Tomb 12 at the northwestern corner of the Fanshan burial complex. There were more than 600 pieces of burial goods unearthed from this tomb, almost all of which were jadeware. Obviously, elaborate jadeware symbolized supreme power at that time.

The huge ancient hydraulic system in the northwest of Liangzhu City was constructed roughly at the same time as the Mojiao Hill palace site and the Fanshan burial complex. Archaeological excavations show that there were 11 ruins of dams among the hydraulic system. Scientists said more than 2,880 cubic meters of earth were moved to build the dams, forming the largest hydraulic project in the world at the time.

Why did people living 5,000 years ago make so much effort to build a hydraulic project like this? Based on the research on ancient environments and the planning of the city, experts inferred that the dams were built to create reservoirs to not only suppress floods but also provide water for activities such as irrigation and navigation. Heavy rain in summer easily caused flooding from the Tianmu Mountain, posing a major threat to Liangzhu City. The high-dam system formed a flood-control reservoir, the flood storage capacity of which was over 45 million cubic meters.

Liangzhu society reached its peak approximately 5,000 years ago. A massive palace complex, high-status burials and sophisticated hydraulic systems were built up. Fine jade crafting industries flourished. But that was not enough. About 200 years after the construction of the palace complex, a larger city centered on Mojiao Hill Platform was planned and built. This city spanning over three million square meters was the largest one in China at that time.

 

“An early regional state”
British archeologist Colin Renfrew said that the complexity of society in Liangzhu was on par with that of a country. On the evidence of the prosperity of the Liangzhu society and its large population, agriculture in Liangzhu was probably quite advanced at that time. For example, within the Maoshan site in Yuhang District of Hangzhou, which used to be a common village dating to the Liangzhu period, the unearthed ruins of rice paddies span over 5,600 square meters, a scale and size of fields on par with that of traditional farming in historic times.

Since the 1980s, more than 600 sites of the Liangzhu culture have been discovered around Lake Tai, the core area of the culture. These excavations provide rich material for the study of the planning and social structure of Liangzhu society. Relatively independent minor centers of Liangzhu culture were also found in Zhejiang Province, Shanghai, Suzhou and Changzhou. Compared with other sites of Liangzhu culture, the ancient city of Liangzhu was characterized by its impressive size, various ruins and complexity in function. The influence of the Liangzhu City was also found from its comparison with other high-ranked burials. Jadeware representing high social status, which could only be obtained from Liangzhu City, were excavated from those high-ranked burials. However, Liangzhu did not seem to be importers of objects from the minor centers; they only exported fine jadeware extensively. It indicates that Liangzhu City had an overwhelming impact upon the minor centers of Liangzhu culture. Furthermore, the artifacts unearthed from the other regions of the Liangzhu culture, such as jadeware, pottery and lacquerware, were all designed in the same way as that of Liangzhu City. This indicates that the city was the center of power and belief in the Liangzhu culture.

Liangzhu City was also the economic center of the Liangzhu culture. The massive hydraulic system built outside the ancient city is the only water management project  that has been found in the Liangzhu culture. Dams, the Mojiao Hill Platform and the city wall required immense human resources to build and manage. There was no definite evidence of rice paddies in and outside the city, and farming tools were rare in the excavations of the city. However, archaeologists found many relics of jade workshops in the city. This pushes back the date of the urban-rural divide within China to the period of Liangzhu culture.

The article was edited and translated from Guangming Daily. Qin Ling is a PhD supervisor from the Archaeology and Museology College at Peking University.