Center for Archaeological Science, Sichuan University, in collaboration with the Ningbo Municipal Institute of Cultural Heritage Management, etc., jointly published new findings and research on the late Hemudu Culture settlement in the southeast coast.

Recently, Center for Archaeological Science, Sichuan University, Ningbo Institute of Cultural Heritage Management, and the National Archaeological Research Center of the National Cultural Heritage Administration jointly published a paper titled "Residents of stilted houses and their burials in eastern China, 5500 BP: Excavation of the Gujiazhuang site on the southern shore of Hangzhou Bay" in the internationally renowned archaeological journal Archaeological Research in Asia. Ding Fengya from Ningbo Institute of Cultural Heritage Management and Du Zhanwei, Associate Professor from Center for Archaeological Science, are the co-first authors of the paper, and Ma Yongchao, Assistant Researcher from Center for Archaeological Science, is the corresponding author.

The lower reaches of the Yangtze River have always been a focal point for researchers studying the process of social complexity and subsistence economy in the Late Neolithic. However, previous studies have mostly focused on the construction and civilization characteristics of high-level settlements (such as the Liangzhu ancient city) north of Hangzhou Bay in the Taihu Lake area, with less research on the construction and environmental adaptation of ordinary settlements south of Hangzhou Bay during the same period. Based on this, from July to December 2022, Center for Archaeological Science, Sichuan University, together with Ningbo Institute of Cultural Heritage Management and the National Archaeological Research Center of the National Cultural Heritage Administration, jointly conducted a field excavation of the Gujiazhuang site in Fangqiao Street, Fenghua District, Ningbo City, Zhejiang Province. The excavation revealed abundant remains from five periods: the late Hemudu Culture, the late Liangzhu Culture, the Qianshanyang Culture, the Six Dynasties, and the Song and Yuan Dynasties, among which the remains of the late Hemudu Culture (5500-5000 BP) are the best preserved.

The main remains of the late Hemudu Culture include yellow soil platforms and stilted house foundations built on them, and small cemeteries. The former includes two irregularly shaped yellow soil platforms, both made of pure yellow soil. The latter is located in the northeast of the yellow soil platform, with only regularly arranged post holes, about 3/4 of which retain wooden stakes. The diameter of the wooden stakes is mostly around 10 cm, and the tree species are mainly Celtis sp.

The small cemetery, roughly contemporaneous with the stilted buildings, is distributed within the same range as the loess platform and breaks through the latter. The cemetery includes 12 tombs of the same shape, facing west. The burial objects are commonly pottery combinations of pots, dou, and fu, and stone tool combinations of yue and ben. The bottom of the tomb is paved with wooden boards, of which M12 is the best preserved. In the M12 tomb, a well-preserved wooden coffin made of two "U"-shaped wooden boards can be seen. The wooden boards are all Camphora sp., with one pottery dou and one pot buried inside the coffin, and one pottery fu buried outside the coffin.

From the above archaeological discoveries, it can be seen that the construction process of the Gujiazhuang site in the late Hemudu Culture can be divided into three major steps: laying yellow soil on the soft marine sediments, building stilted house foundations on the yellow soil platforms, and burying the ancestors who lived in them around the house foundations, eventually forming a core family-scale, "residential and burial integrated" settlement pattern. In addition, in the process of building house foundations, the ancestors of the Gujiazhuang site did not choose trees commonly found in natural vegetation - Quercus sp. and Pinus sp., which is also different from the preference of Lauraceae by the ancestors of the Tianluoshan site, which was contemporaneous or slightly earlier.

The layout and scale of the Gujiazhuang site in the late Hemudu Culture and the choice of building materials provide an example for the study of environmental adaptation of ordinary settlements in the southeastern coastal areas during the Late Neolithic period, and will also promote the comparative study of inter-regional settlement differences in the heyday of prehistoric civilization in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River.