Sanxingdui Ruins: Accidental Discovery Leads to Unearthing of Over 60,000 Relics
The Sanxingdui Ruins are located in Guanghan City, Sichuan Province, Southwest China. The site has been extensively explored over the years, yielding thousands of significant artifacts.
The discovery of the site can be traced back to 1929 when a farmer stumbled upon jade and stone artifacts while repairing a sewage ditch, as reported by Live Science. Official scientific excavations began in 1934, according to China Daily.
Research and discovery have continued at the site since the first excavation. During the 1980s, the excavation of two pits yielded over 1,000 artifacts, including figurines, human face masks, and more, according to China Daily.
Between 2019 and 2020, six more pits were excavated, uncovering over 500 artifacts, including seashells, silk, ritual bronze vessels, and gold masks, as reported by the source.
The vast collection of artifacts unearthed at the Sanxingdui Ruins has revealed numerous notable finds. Among the recent discoveries, gold masks have been particularly significant.
For example, in September 2022, China’s National Cultural Heritage Administration announced the discovery of a 3,000-year-old gold mask among royal tombs at the site.
This ancient mask, dating back to the Shang Dynasty, predated another gold mask found at the Sanxingdui Ruins the previous autumn, as reported by ARTNews.
In 2021, a complete gold mask weighing approximately 100 grams was unearthed at the site, according to China’s Xinhua News Agency. This gold mask was larger but lighter than another fragment of a gold mask discovered at the site earlier in 2021, as reported by the Sichuan Provincial Cultural Relics and Archaeology Research Institute.
Since 2022, over 4,000 artifacts have been discovered, including pottery, jadeware, and stoneware, according to China’s Xinhua News Agency.
To date, over 60,000 relics have been found at the site, according to the source.
The Sanxingdui Ruins are widely recognized as one of the “world’s greatest archaeological finds of the 20th century,” according to China’s Xinhua News Agency. Experts believe that the Sanxingdui Ruins are the remnants of the ancient Shu Kingdom.
The Sanxingdui Museum first opened its doors in 1997, and has since been expanded, providing visitors with the opportunity to view firsthand many of the artifacts discovered at the archaeological site over the years.