The Lingjiatan site is located in Tongzha Town, Hanshan County, Anhui Province. It is backed by Taihu Mountain, known as ‘Little Jiuhua in northern Jiangsu’, and reaches the Yu River, a tributary of the Yangtze River in the south. It is a central settlement site dating from 5800 to 5300 years ago in the late Neolithic Age, with a total area of more than 2.2 million square meters. Since its excavation in 1987, the total excavation area is 4780 square meters.
One altar, 68 tombs, two ring ditches, one well built with pottery blocks, and one large burnt earth block relic have been discovered. More than 2200 cultural relics have been unearthed, including more than 1100 precious cultural relics such as jade wares. More than 100 cultural relics such as jade turtles, jade tablets, jade figures, and jade spoons are now treasured in the Palace Museum.In 1998, the Lingjiatan site was named one of the top ten archaeological discoveries in China. On June 25, 2001, it was listed as a national key cultural relic protection unit in the fifth batch. Since 2006, it has been included in the important major site protection plans of the country’s ’11th Five-Year Plan’, ’12th Five-Year Plan’ and ’13th Five-Year Plan’ respectively. In December 2013, the Lingjiatan National Archaeological Site Park was approved and established by the State Administration of Cultural Heritage.
Due to its own uniqueness and representativeness, the cultural value of the Lingjiatan site has become a relatively independent archaeological culture in the Yangtze River Basin. In 2012, it was named Lingjiatan culture. Together with Hongshan culture in Liaoning and Liangzhu culture in Zhejiang, it is known as ‘the three major jade culture centers in prehistoric China’. The research of the ‘Project to Trace the Origin of Chinese Civilization’ believes that Lingjiatan has a landmark position in the origin and formation process of Chinese civilization and provides physical evidence for studying 5,000 years of Chinese civilization.
In December 2013, the Lingjiatan National Archaeological Site Park was approved and established by the State Administration of Cultural Heritage. The planned area of the site park is 3.35 square kilometers, with a total of 47 projects and a planned total investment of 1.47 billion yuan. It will be implemented in three phases. At present, an investment of about 450 million yuan has been completed. The first phase plans to implement 18 projects.
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