Shanbei Culture

2020-11-12

The Shanbei Site is located in Shanbei Village, Shangfeng Town, Xiushui County, upstream of Lushan Lake. It comprises 43 archaeological sites, including Paomaling and Yangjiaping. The upper layer dates to the Shang Dynasty, while the lower layer dates to the Late Neolithic period. Excavations conducted in the early 1960s uncovered a large number of production tools and daily-use objects, as well as evidence of early human settlements. The cultural relics at the Shanbei Site are well-preserved and richly diverse. Among the stone artifacts unearthed are adzes, axes, arrowheads, spades, chisels, net sinkers, sickles, spheres, eggs, and grinding stones. The pottery finds include tripods, gui-shaped cauldrons, dou vessels, pots, jars, and gui bowls.

The Discovery of the Shanbei Cultural Site

The discovery of the Shanbei cultural site is shrouded in a legendary tale. In the early 1950s, villagers living around Paomaling in Shanbei Village often suffered from mysterious swellings and pains. Some villagers would go up the mountain to gather herbs and apply them to boils and abscesses. One day, villagers found numerous triangular stones of various sizes buried in the earth on the hillside—stones that resembled arrowheads. They picked up a few of these stones and brought them back to the village, calling them "yin jian" (literally "shadow arrows"). In the summer of 1961, a villager with some knowledge of cultural relics specifically went up to Paomaling Hill and collected a triangular stone, then presented it to a staff member of the cultural relics department for identification. After examining the stone, the staff member was unable to identify its nature, so they sent it to the Archaeological Identification Group of the Jiangxi Provincial Cultural Administration Committee at the time for further examination. As a result, experts unanimously concluded that the "yin jian" the villagers had referred to were actually cultural relics dating from the Late Neolithic period!

In 1961, archaeological personnel from Jiangxi Province conducted excavations here and confirmed that the Shanbei cultural site is a late Neolithic site dating back more than 2,800 years BCE. This cultural remains, found in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River and the Poyang Lake region, is characterized primarily by segment-shaped stone adzes and red sand pottery. The Shanbei culture, together with the Shixia culture and the Tanjishan culture, ranks among the three representative late Neolithic cultures of southeastern China. The late Neolithic cultural remains represented by the Shanbei site share numerous similarities with Neolithic cultures from such sites as Qujialing in the Jianghan Plain, Liangzhu in Zhejiang, and Shixia in Lingnan. This suggests that the early inhabitants of these regions engaged in cultural exchanges with or were influenced by the people living in the Shanbei area.

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