About 8,000 years ago! Yuyao discovered the site of prehistoric shell mounds

Ningbo, 30 May (Reporter Shen Tingyu, Chen Drunk, Ying Lei, correspondent Xie Minjun) On 30 May, a press conference on the archaeological achievements of the Jingtou Mountain site was held in Yuyao, Ningbo. After archaeological excavations, the Jingtou Mountain site dates from 7800 to 8300 years ago, about 1000 years before the Hemudu culture, is the only prehistoric shell hill site found in Zhejiang so far, and is also the earliest shell hill site found in coastal China, which will push forward the history of the humanistic origin of Ningbo area by more than 1,000 years.

The Jingtou Mountain ruins are located in SanqiShi Village, Sanqi Town, Yuyao City, 1.5 kilometers east of the Tianluo Mountain Ruins, and were discovered at the end of 2013 due to factory construction piling. In September 2019, it officially moved to the stage of archaeological excavation. Since then, the Zhejiang Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, together with the Ningbo Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology and the Hemudu Site Museum, has jointly excavated archaeological excavations so far.

According to reports, the Jingtou Mountain site is buried at a depth of 5 meters to 10 meters, which is the largest known deepest buried site in China's coastal areas, breaking through the previous understanding of the spatiotemporal framework and distribution law of prehistoric sites in China's coastal areas. Its steel structure excavation foundation pit is 50 meters long from east to west, 15 meters wide from north to south, and the interior is arranged according to the specifications of 5 × 10 square meters, a total of 750 square meters.

The archaeological work at the Jingtou Mountain site has been carried out so far, and most of the excavation work of the main exploration parties in the foundation pit has been completed, and more than 10 remains such as ash pits, acorn storage pit treatment pits, burning mounds, burning earth pits, utensils processing and food processing points have been found, hundreds of various registerable relics have been unearthed, as well as a large number of shell remains and other animal and plant remains discarded after being eaten by ancestors. At present, preliminary research on shell species, animal species, plant remains (wood slice tree species identification, rice phytocillite extraction, unit quantity statistics), environmental change, carbon fourteen dating and other aspects have been preliminarily carried out.

Experts said that the Jingtoushan site can clearly restore the production, living conditions and natural environment characteristics of some ancestors in the southeast coastal area of China more than 8,000 years ago, which provides important research materials for studying the evolution process of the natural environment in the early and middle Holocene in China's coastal areas, the life mode of early human adaptation to the ocean and the development of the ocean, as well as exploring the source of the Hemudu culture and establishing the connotation of the Xianhemudu culture.

Experts believe that in addition to its own major historical and academic value, the excavation process of the Jingtou Mountain site is also quite meaningful. This is a steel structure enclosure pit project successfully applied to the archaeological excavation of large buried deep underground sites, and has carried out fruitful exploration of methods for the archaeological excavation of deep buried sites. As a result, the excavation of the Jingtou Mountain site, together with the excavation of the No. 1 shipwreck in nanhai and the excavation and cleaning of the Zhangxianzhong Shenyin site in Jiangkou, Sichuan, have become three classic examples of archaeological excavations of special objects for different environmental conditions in China, which is of pioneering significance in the archaeology of prehistoric sites in the domestic coastal environment.

In the next step, Yuyao will include Jingtou Mountain in the construction of Hemudu National Heritage Park and the protection and utilization of large sites.