sacrificial pits

Splendours of Sanxingdui

I have already described here the new discoveries at Sanxingdui, the great city that commanded the Sichuan Plain in China from 1200 BC (CWA 110). However, I cannot refrain from returning to it, because a couple of months ago a most welcome and unexpected email arrived.

World news

Earliest archaeological evidence of silk in China Mineralised fabric remnants found in pits at a Bronze Age burial site in the Sichuan Basin, south-western China, have undergone specialist analysis which has identified them as silk. The Sanxingdui settlement is believed…

Silk at Sanxingdui

A specialised analytical approach has identified the first archaeological evidence for silk at the Bronze Age site of Sanxingdui. The settlement, which lies in the Sichuan Basin in south-western China, is believed to have been the capital of the ancient…

Sanxingdui

The Fifth Shanghai Archaeology Forum

I was delighted to be invited to the fifth Shanghai Archaeology Forum last December, happily revived after the COVID closedowns. This meeting is becoming a major fixture in the archaeological calendar, for every two years the advisory committee is asked to adjudicate all the nominations for field discovery and research awards.