Chengziya, also spelled Chengziyai, is a Chinese archaeological site and the location of the first discovery of the

neolithic The Neolithic period, or New Stone Age, is an Old World archaeological period and the final division of the Stone Age. It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several p ...

Longshan culture The Longshan (or Lung-shan) culture, also sometimes referred to as the Black Pottery Culture, was a late Neolithic culture in the middle and lower Yellow River valley areas of northern China from about 3000 to 1900 BC. The first archaeological fi ...

in 1928. The discovery of the Longshan culture at Chengziya was a significant step towards understanding the origins of Chinese civilization. Chengziya remains the largest prehistorical settlement found to date.Alfred Schinz (1996): "The Magic Square: Cities in Ancient China", Edition Axel Menges
/ref> The site is located in Shandong province, about to the east of the provincial capital Jinan. It is protected and made accessible by the Chengziya Ruins Museum ().

Location

Chengziya is located about west of Longshan Town () under the administration of

Zhangqiu Zhangqiu () is one of 10 urban districts of the prefecture-level city of Jinan, the capital of Shandong Province, East China. The district has an area of 1721.29 square kilometers, 20 towns, 908 villages and the permanent resident populati ...

City and about east of the provincial capital of Jinan. The site is located immediately to the north of provincial road S102 and less than to the south of the Dragon Lake. Other landmarks in the area are Dongping Mausoleum (less than to the east) and the ruins of the old city wall.

Neolithic settlement

left, 250px, Building protecting the excavation site The ancient settlement of Chengziya was constructed around 2600 BC"The Formation of Chinese Civilization: An Archaeological Perspective"
Kwang-chih Chang, Pingfang Xu, Liancheng Lu,

Sarah Allan Sarah Allan (; born 1945) is an American paleographer and scholar of ancient China. She was a Burlington Northern Foundation Professor of Asian Studies in the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Languages and Literatures at Dartmouth College; ...

(2005), Yale University Press and was located on a tableland near the old Guanlu and Wuyuan rivers."Chengziya Ruins Museum" by the Jinan Municipal Government
The name Chengziya, literally "city cliff" refers to this location and the wall that encloses the settlement. The Wuyan River flows in the north-south direction to the west of the settlement. The Chengziya settlement had rectangular layout (400 by 500 meters, 1300 by 1600 feet) with edges oriented along the north-south and east-west directions. While the western, southern, and eastern walls are straight, the northern wall juts outward following the terrain. The settlement hence covered an area of about 200,000 square meters and was enclosed by a ''

hangtu Rammed earth is a technique for constructing foundations, floors, and walls using compacted natural raw materials such as earth, chalk, lime, or gravel. It is an ancient method that has been revived recently as a sustainable building method. ...

'' (rammed earth) wall that stood about tall, was wide at the base and tapered off to a width at the top."Chengziya" by About.com
/ref> The technique for erecting the walls from pounded earth was a new innovation at the time. Successive layers ranging between 12 and in thickness were each compacted before the next layer was added. On the outside of the walls was a deep moat that was fed by water from a nearby river. As there are no major walls inside the settlement, the layout conforms to the style of a "platform city" (). Chenziya is at the center of a cluster of more than 40 sites belonging to the Longshan Culture. These sites come in three size classes: sites covering from a few thousand up to 10,000 square meters are thought to belong to the ''ju'' () referred to in ancient documents. Larger sites up to 50,000 square meters are believed to be ''yi'' (central towns) and finally Chengziya itself has been identified as a ''du'' (, capital). Based on thick deposits found at the site (from 3–4 up to 5–6 meters deep), the population of the Chengziya has been estimated to be in the tens of thousands.

Other settlements

After the decline of the Longshan culture, the Chengziya site was occupied by two more walled settlements. One belonging to the

Yueshi culture The Yueshi culture () was an archaeological culture in the Shandong region of eastern China, dated from 1900 to 1500 BC. It spanned the period from the Late Neolithic to the early Bronze Age. In the Shandong area, it followed the Longshan cultu ...

1900–1500 BC) and the other dated to the time of the

Zhou dynasty The Zhou dynasty ( ; Old Chinese ( B&S): *''tiw'') was a royal dynasty of China that followed the Shang dynasty. Having lasted 789 years, the Zhou dynasty was the longest dynastic regime in Chinese history. The military control of China by ...

(1100–256 BC).

Archaeological study

The site was discovered in 1928 by the archaeologist Wu Jinding (, 1901–1948)biography of Wu Jinding (in Chinese)
It was the first discovery of relics from the Longshan Culture which was named for the nearby Longshan (, literally "Dragon Hill") and the village of the same name. The first excavations on the site were carried out in the years 1930 and 1931. This was the first time that such field research was carried out exclusively by Chinese archaeologists using modern methods. Additional excavations were carried out in 1990 by the Archaeological Institute of Shandong Province on the southern side of the provincial road. The cultural layer of the site is divided into upper and lower layers. The cultural accumulation is about 3 meters. The upper layer is the cultural remains of several different periods from the Zhou Dynasty to the Han Dynasty; the lower cultural layer is the first discovery of a Neolithic cultural relic with polished black pottery as the main feature, including part of the Yueshi cultural relic. In fact, it is a site containing three different periods of Longshan culture,

and

Zhou Dynasty The Zhou dynasty ( ; Old Chinese ( B&S): *''tiw'') was a royal dynasty of China that followed the Shang dynasty. Having lasted 789 years, the Zhou dynasty was the longest dynastic regime in Chinese history. The military control of China by ...

. Excavations at the site have unearthed the foundations of houses, pottery kilns and wells as well as pottery items (e.g., tripod cauldrons, cups, jars), stone tools, oracle bones, and weapons. According to the survey and excavation, most of the city walls were dug with foundation grooves, and some parts were rammed on the ditch and silt, and repaired many times. The rammed earth structure of the city wall is divided into two types, one is rammed with stones, and the other is rammed with single sticks. It shows that the city wall is divided into morning and evening, reflecting the development process of ramming technology during the Longshan culture period. Several wells were found in the excavation area of more than 1,000 square meters, with high repairing and chiseling techniques and extremely regular shapes. One of the wells is oval in shape, with a diameter of about 1.5 meters long, a width of about 1.1 meters, and a depth of more than 7 meters. Such wells have also been found in Longshan cultural sites such as Xiwu Temple in Yanzhou and Fenghuangtai in Qingzhou, indicating that wells were widely used during the Longshan culture period in Shandong. Characteristic items found at the site include fine black polished pottery, in particular wheel-turned vessels with an angular outline, abundant gray pottery, as well as rectangular polished stone axes.Longshan culture. (2008). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved October 31, 2008, from Encyclopædia Britannica Online
/ref> Some of the pottery found features inscriptions. The objects found inside the Chengziya settlement were in general of higher quality than those of the surrounding areas, which is taken as an indication that Chengziya as a regional capital received tribute from the surrounding smaller settlements. Chengziya is one of the few neolithic sites at which horse bones have been found. However, the recovered material does not allow it to be determined whether horses had already been domesticated at the time.

Museum

250px, Entrance building to the museum The Chengziya Ruins Museum is located 100 m to the east of the neolithic settlement. It covers an area of 20,000 square meters of which 4,000 square meters are occupied by the main building. The museum building was designed by

Yang Hongxun Yang Hongxun (; 4 December 1931 – 17 April 2016) was a Chinese architect, architectural historian, and archaeologist. He was a professor at the Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and a founder of the field of architect ...

, an expert on historical buildings. The building is shaped like a mythical bird with the wings containing the exhibition halls and the body conference facilities. The museum was opened in September 1994, the total construction cost was 6 million

Chinese Yuan The renminbi (; symbol: ¥; ISO code: CNY; abbreviation: RMB) is the official currency of the People's Republic of China and one of the world's most traded currencies, ranking as the fifth most traded currency in the world as of April 2022. ...

. The museum complex also houses the Jinan Longshan Culture Research Institute. Since its opening, the museum has received more than 500,000 visitors.

Archaeological significance

The excavation of the Chengziya site revealed a black pottery culture that is different from the red pottery culture, indicating that the black pottery culture represents a cultural system. It ushered in a new era of field archaeology in China, effectively overturned the fallacy of "Western Origin", and brought a major turning point in the discussion of the "Native Origin" of Chinese culture. The appearance of Longshan culture can be different from the known

Yangshao culture The Yangshao culture (仰韶文化, pinyin: Yǎngsháo wénhuà) was a Neolithic culture that existed extensively along the middle reaches of the Yellow River in China from around 5000 BC to 3000 BC. The culture is named after the Yangsh ...

, but there is a profound connection between it and the Shang culture represented by Yin Ruins, such as oracle bone inscriptions, so it is a key to exploring the origin of Chinese civilization. Beginning in the 1990s, the Shandong Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology once again excavated the Chengziya site. It is preliminarily determined that the Chengziya settlement is the central settlement of the Zhangqiu settlement group with the Longshan culture and Yueshi culture for more than 1,000 years. This discovery is of great significance for studying the development of ancient Chinese cities and the origin of Chinese civilization.

Political significance

The remains of the Longshan Culture at Chengziya are cultivated by the government as a source of national pride in the long history of Chinese civilization. The Chengziya site was among the first historical and cultural sites to be placed under government protection in 1961 (

State Council State Council may refer to: Government * State Council of the Republic of Korea, the national cabinet of South Korea, headed by the President * State Council of the People's Republic of China, the national cabinet and chief administrative auth ...

resolution number 1-140)."Chengziya Relics Museum" by the Jinan Tourism Administration
/ref> Furthermore, it has since been declared a first-tier "patriotism education" site by the municipal and provincial government. Its political importance has been stressed by visits of political leaders.

References

External links

Blog entry with many photos (Part I)

{{authority control Neolithic cultures of China Museums in Shandong Former populated places in China National archaeological parks of China Archaeological museums in China Major National Historical and Cultural Sites in Shandong Tourist attractions in Jinan