Tanshishan Site Museum 昙石山遗址博物馆

About Tanshishan Site Museum

Tanshishan Site Museum (昙石山遗址博物馆) stands on the Tanshishan archaeological site (昙石山遗址) in Ganzhe Subdistrict (甘蔗街道), Minhou County (闽侯县), on the north bank of the lower Min River (闽江), 21 km from the centre of Fuzhou (福州).

Tanshishan is an isolated hill inside the Minhou county town, long and narrow on a northeast to southwest line and rising to 26.7 metres above sea level. On 7 January 1954 villagers taking soil from it to build a Min River flood dike found pottery, stone and bone objects and shells. Ten excavations have since uncovered about 2,000 square metres. The deposits fall into at least four phases, from about 5,500 to 2,700 years ago. The second phase defines the Tanshishan culture (昙石山文化), the first archaeological culture recognised in Fujian, which is regarded as a cradle of the pre-Qin Min (闽) people and has been proposed as an origin of the Austronesian-speaking peoples. The State Council placed the site on the fifth list of national key cultural relics protection units in 2001, and in 2021 it was chosen among China's hundred major archaeological discoveries of the past century.

The museum was founded in 1998 as Fujian's first museum built on a prehistoric site, and its new exhibition building opened for trial operation on 14 June 2008. The main hall has a plain folded-plate form that complements the hillside cut away by digging, and its outer walls are faced with bush-hammered stone modelled on stone adzes and axes. Its gallery route runs about 220 metres through 1,460 square metres, using sculpture, reconstructed scenes and multimedia to show how people at Tanshishan lived some 5,000 years ago. The museum was named a national second-grade museum in the third group, announced on 18 September 2018, and by 2024 held 1,675 items or sets.

West of the main hall, on its upper level, the site hall uses a long-span steel frame without columns to cover part of the 1996 to 1997 dig, the largest of all the excavations. It shows 19 partly restored graves, two moats, five pottery kilns, an altar and a pit of sacrificed dogs. Graves at the site are mostly single burials of young adults laid on their backs, in pits often filled with clam shells. In 2010 six canoeists sailed from Papeete in Tahiti by way of the Cook Islands, Fiji and the Philippines, reversing a proposed Austronesian migration route, and ended their four-month voyage at the museum.

What to look for

• The site hall's excavation floor, with 19 partly restored graves, two moats and five pottery kilns
• The dog-sacrifice pit and the altar inside the site hall
• The permanent Tanshishan culture exhibition, in four sections: 'Min in the Sea' (闽在海中), 'Living toward the Sea' (向海而生), 'Eating by the Sea' (食在海边) and 'Sailing the Open Sea' (浮海远洋)
• The main hall's walls of bush-hammered stone modelled on Neolithic stone adzes and axes
• The 2004 stone at the main gate inscribed 'Tanshishan Culture Site' (昙石山文化遗址) by Jiang Zemin (江泽民)

Location & getting there

Getting to Tanshishan Site Museum

• Search for 昙石山遗址博物馆 with 福州市 and 闽侯县.