Stone Age · c. 3000 BC · Fanshan, Liangzhu, Zhejiang, China
Buildings beside Liangzhu's royal tombs may have been a hall for the dead
Post holes at Fanshan outline three wooden buildings next to China's highest-ranking Neolithic graves, built about 5,000 years ago.
Official announcement
Fanshan, Liangzhu, China Archaeologists in Hangzhou have found three wooden buildings east of the royal tombs at Fanshan, the richest burials of the Liangzhu culture found so far. They think the largest may have been a hall used for rituals for the dead. The team presented the work on 20 October at a Liangzhu Forum event, Xinhua reported.
Fanshan was discovered 40 years ago. Its Tomb 12 held the jade cong and jade axe often described as the finest of their kind. Fieldwork resumed in 2024 and found a rectangular wall around the cemetery. Radiocarbon dates from its east and south sections place it in the same period as Tomb 12, about 5,000 years ago.
Reconstructed from 120 post holes
The building traces came to light in 2025. Li Songyang, who studies ancient architecture at the Zhejiang provincial archaeology institute, said the reconstruction rests on 120 post holes. By measuring their width, depth and spacing, the team matched them to three houses. The largest, labelled F1, has an oval plan 25 metres east to west and 16 metres north to south. Of the two smaller buildings to the east, one is nearly round and one square.
The floor plan is only part of the work, and more than one design fits the evidence. The team drew on large timbers of oak and Altingia found at Zhongjiagang, inside the Liangzhu city, and on pictures of buildings scratched into Liangzhu pottery. Their model shows F1 raised on stilts with three rings of posts, a two-tiered roof and a height of about 15 metres. The two small buildings appear to have been simple thatched huts.
A tomb system 5,000 years ago?
Wang Ningyuan, who leads the project on the Liangzhu city and its water system, said the wall might mark a tomb garden and the buildings a hall used only for rituals. If that is right, Liangzhu already had an organised system of royal burial 5,000 years ago.
Liangzhu city and its dams and reservoirs were begun about 5,000 years ago by people from the lower and middle Yangtze and the central plains. Wang argues that kinship alone could not hold such a mixed population together, and that the jade ritual system grew up during the building work as a shared code around Taihu Lake. He sees that as a mark of an early state.
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