Largest Hongshan jade dragon found in Neolithic tomb

The largest jade dragon from northern China’s Neolithic Hongshan Culture ever found was unearthed from a tomb in Chifeng, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. The jade dragon is 15.8 cm long, 9.5 cm wide and 3 cm thick (6.2 x 3.7 x 1.2 inches) and dates to the late Hongshan Culture, around 5,100 years ago.

An emergency excavation of the Yuanbaoshan stone mound tomb, the largest surviving circular piled stone tomb of the Hongshan culture, began this May after looters targeted it in November 2023. The outer wall of the circular mound is 23.5 meters (77 feet) in diameter and two meters (6.5 feet) high at the highest point. It is a stepped wall built in six or seven layers. Black cylindrical pottery vessels were placed on the northern wall and were still in situ when unearthed. Bowl-shaped vessels were found on the boundary wall of the inner circle mound.

The excavation revealed that this is the first Hongshan mound to combine both a funerary structure and a sacrificial altar. The tomb is on the north side of the structure and a square altar 2.35 meters (7.7 feet) wide is on the south side.

Inside the main body of the structure, archaeologists discovered human osteological remains, fire pits and cylindrical pits. A small number of burials with fragments of human bone have been found in the rubble of the tomb wall, outside the outer boundary wall, inside the tomb and outside the altar. The tombs are mostly vertical pit stone burials with some smaller cylindrical tombs. Almost all of them are secondary burials.

The cylindrical tombs are made of stones, some paved with slabs on the floor and ceiling. Small jade objects are buried inside of them. The larger vertical pit stone tombs have stepped tomb passages and contain more imposing jade offerings that refer to the identity of the deceased.

More than 100 jade and stone artifacts were found in the excavation, among them rings, bi disks, square bi disks, huang disks, axes, chisels, cones, silkworms, cicadas and dragons. The dragons are abstract in design, and while researchers have dubbed them dragons by way of convention, they may or may not be intended to depict the mythological creatures.

Other objects include stone tools, clams, shellfish and bone tools. Analysis of the jade objects found the objects intended as sacrificial offerings were made of poor-quality jade but there were more of them in a wider variety of shapes. The jade used in tombs is very high-quality, very heavy and of fine craftsmanship.

* This article was originally published here