A Site Concerned with Human’s Prehistory - By: Grace Fan

Banpo Site is located on the east bank of Chanhe River in the east of Xi’an. The Yellow River basin has been regarded as the birthplace of the Chinese civilization. Banpo was a matrilineal society and a settled agricultural community. This primitive site with the history of about 5600 or 6700 years reflects the prehistoric agricultural civilization of China. Covering an area of about 50,000 square meters, Banpo Site was discovered in the spring of 1953. Archeology Department, Society Science Institute of China organized two hundreds of archaeologists to excavate this site for five times from September, 1954 to the summer of 1957. And Banpo Neolithic Museum was built in 1957 and officially opened in 1958. Now, about10,000 square meters has been excavated and archaeologists gain lands of precious material for scientific research. The village can be divided into three main parts: the residential part, the pottery-making part and burial part. The discoveries include 45 houses remains, 2 pigsties, 6 cellars, 250 graves and tens of thousands of daily articles and tools.

With an area of 4,500 square meters, Banpo Museum is separated into three sections; the first exhibition room mainly displays the tools including stone tools, fishing tools, weaving heels, harpoon, etc. The second exhibition room mainly displays the articles concerned with the social life such as various kinds of potteries. These potteries can divided into two main kinds. The first kind of potteries was carved with the animals and plants’ pictures; the second one was carved with geometrical lines on the utensils, such as pottery basins, pottery mortars, narrow-necked jar, etc. The painted pottery was first discovered in Yangshao village in Mianchi county of Henan Province, therefore, Banpo is typical of Yangshao Neolithic culture, famous for its beautiful and lively pottery designs with animal motifs painted in red or black with manganese oxide. The third exhibition room also is called auxiliary exhibition hall where special topical exhibition related to prehistory is staged.

In May of 2001, the some deadwood of roof in the old exhibition room ignited spontaneously. In the next few days, the same also happened in other exhibition rooms. A report about renovating the halls was submitted to State Administration of Cultural Heritage and was approved in November of 2001. In 2003, backfilling was employed to protect the relics in Banpo site before the reconstruction of museum. In 2006, Banpo Site was reopened to visitors.

About the Author

As an English editor, Grace Fan and her colleagues work hard to provide the detailed information about tours in China including top 20 China travel cities, scenic beauties and others. If you are interested in know more about China, click here.

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