History

In the spring of 1986, workers digging an irrigation ditch near Guanghan accidentally struck a cache of jade and bronze objects. Archaeologists from the Sichuan Provincial Institute of Archaeology arrived quickly and identified two large rectangular sacrificial pits (Pit 1 and Pit 2), clearly the result of deliberate ritual burning and burial. The objects retrieved over the following weeks included bronze heads, elephant tusks, jade and stone tools, and bronze vessels — but also items with no precedent in known Chinese Bronze Age material culture: standing human figures with elongated hands, mask faces with disproportionately large eyes, and a ceremonial bronze tree of extraordinary complexity.

The civilization that produced these objects — now termed the Shu culture — left no written records and bears no relationship to the Shang dynasty oracle-bone script or the artistic conventions of the Yellow River cultural sphere. Its origins and the nature of its contact (if any) with other Bronze Age civilizations remain debated. Chinese sources from later periods include mythological references to ancient kingdoms of Shu, but these were long regarded as legends; Sanxingdui proved a major Bronze Age culture had indeed existed independently in the Sichuan basin.

From 2020 to 2023, a major excavation campaign opened six new pits (numbered 3 through 8). Conducted under climate-controlled conditions with live-streamed excavation, the campaign produced thousands of additional objects including a near-complete gold face mask, a bronze altar depicting cosmological scenes, and extraordinary examples of bronze vessels that combine Shu iconography with forms familiar from Shang dynasty metallurgy — suggesting at least some degree of exchange between the two cultures. Excavation at Sanxingdui continues.