Several earthenware cooking pots were recently unearthed from the Xiaohewan Ruins in Pengyang County, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region where the cultural relics were mainly made in the Qin and Han dynasties. This is the first time that ancient earthenware cooking pots were discovered in Ningxia, archaeologists told Xinhua News Agency on Sept. 16.
Due to the launch of the second west-east gas pipeline project, the Ningxia Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology and Pengyang Cultural Relics Protection Bureau have to jointly salvage a large number of cultural relics, including earthenware, copperware, ironware and bone objects, from the damaged ditches, roads, houses, wells, pits, burial plots and other parts of the Xiaohewan Ruins.
In addition, the total area unearthed is more than 3,000 square meters, according to archaeologists who are currently working in the Xiaohewan Ruins,
The top of the underground ruins is 0.8 meter from the ground, and the bottom is 3.2 meters from the ground. The ruins have four layers. The first layer is a soil layer. The second layer was where the people used to live in the Song Dynasty.
There are many fragments of cord-marked plate tiles and semicircular tiles, grey pottery and tiles with symmetrical patterns, as well as animal bones. Archaeologists did not find any cultural relics made in the Song Dynasty expect for a few copper coins, ceramic tiles and the foundations of some houses.
The third and fourth layers have a large number of animal bones, fragments of earthenware, tiles and other relics. Archaeologists said that the cultural relics in the third and fourth layers were made during the mid-Warring States Period to the early Western Han Dynasty.
Archaeologists believe that the Xiaohewan Ruins are of great importance to the study of the distribution of the northern grassland culture as well as of the relations between the grassland culture and the agricultural culture developed in the central plains of ancient China.
Source: People's Daily Online [September 17, 2010]
