Shimao Site 石峁遗址

About Shimao Site

Shimao Site (石峁遗址) is a prehistoric stone-walled city on the hills above the Tuwei River (秃尾河) at Gaojiabao town (高家堡镇), Shenmu (神木), in Yulin (榆林) in northern Shaanxi. Xinhua dates its building to about 4,300 years ago and its abandonment to about 3,800 years ago.

The city lies in the northern Loess Plateau on the southern edge of the Mu Us Desert (毛乌素沙漠), on ridges where the Tuwei River, a tributary of the Yellow River, meets the Dongchuan Gully (洞川沟). Chinese Wikipedia places it a little over 10 km south of the Great Wall and more than 20 km west of the Yellow River. Because it lies close to the Ming wall at Gaojiabao, the site was long taken to be part of the Great Wall.

Shimao was discovered in 1976 and became a nationally protected heritage site in 2006. Systematic fieldwork began in 2011, and in 2012 archaeologists confirmed three largely complete stone enclosures: the Huangchengtai (皇城台) palace platform, an inner city and an outer city. That year's excavation of the walls made the national top-ten list of new archaeological finds. Xinhua gives the outer city an area of about 4.25 square kilometres and calls Shimao the largest prehistoric walled city known in China, bigger than the roughly contemporary Liangzhu and Taosi sites. In 2021 it was the only Chinese entry in Archaeology magazine's list of the world's top ten discoveries of the previous decade. No written record mentions the city.

Huangchengtai, the oldest part, is a high platform with a 70-metre vertical rise, faced with stone retaining walls and topped by palace foundations; in 2022 excavators found a cemetery of 15 high-ranking shaft tombs on its western summit, walled off from the palace area. The ramparts mostly follow the ridgelines and stand about 3 m high and 2.5 m wide. The outer east gate, on the highest ground, combines outer and inner barbicans, two stone-faced rammed-earth towers and gatehouses, and faces where the sun rose at the summer solstice over 4,000 years ago; Xinhua counts Shimao's bastions and barbicans as the first known in Chinese city building. Diamond-shaped eye motifs are carved on the Huangchengtai walls, and nearly 200 fragments of geometric wall paintings came from the east gate. Pits by the wall foundations held the skulls of young women, interpreted as human sacrifice. At Hanjiagedan (韩家圪旦) in the inner city, elite tombs held sacrificed young women with their hands tied behind them, along with jade tubes, jade birds and more than 20 pieces of ostrich eggshell. Shimao is also known for jade: Xinhua says public museums worldwide hold five to six thousand Shimao jades.

What to look for

• Huangchengtai (皇城台), the stone-faced palace platform at the core of the city
• The outer city's east gate with its barbicans, stone-faced towers and gatehouses
• Stone ramparts about 3 metres high running along the ridgelines
• Diamond-shaped eye carvings on the Huangchengtai walls
• The Hanjiagedan (韩家圪旦) excavation area with houses and elite tombs in the inner city

Location & getting there

Getting to Shimao Site

• Search for 石峁遗址 with 榆林市 and 神木市.