A strange piece of metal that has remained hidden in the ground for thousands of years may now shed new light on one of ancient China’s most mysterious cultures.
The artifact of Sanxingduiapproximately 3,000 years old, appears to be an object similar to an ax made of iron – which, according to a new study, arrived on Earth from space in the form of a meteorite.
This discovery is disclosed in a study to be in the June issue of Archaeological Research in Asia and sheds light on both Sanxingdui culture and the use of iron to make precious objects long before iron smelting became widespread.
“How does the oldest Bronze Age meteoric iron artifact found in southwest Chinafills a critical gap in the region’s metallurgical records and provides new insights into the early use of iron both regionally and globally,” said the team at Sichuan University in China, cited by .
As the same magazine details, Sanxingdui is an important archaeological site in Southwest China, dated 2800 to 600 BC.
It reached its peak during the Shang Dynasty, between about 1600 and 1050 BC, and left behind iconic and unsettling art, as well as evidence of a strong emphasis on ritual.
A pit with treasure from another planet…
One type of deposit made by the Sanxingdui people is what archaeologists refer to as “sacrificial pits”, in the ritual enclosure of the walled city.
There are eight pits from which archaeologists have excavated around 17,000 extraordinary ritual objects, including bronze masks, figurines, ivory and jade tools.
A pit has now revealed a treasure of a kind unlike anything else in the complex.
“Among the many artifacts recovered at Sanxingdui, an unusual iron artifact (K7QW-TIE-1) was unearthed from Pit #7”, the researchers write.
“This artifact was found embedded vertically in the bottom of the southern section of the eastern wall. It is elongated in the shape of an axe-like tool or weapon,” they added.
O object measures approximately 20 centimeters long and 5 to 8 centimeters wide – and it is extremely unusual for that time.
X-ray fluorescence revealed that the object is composed of at least 90% iron by weight, with 7.41 percent nickel, and the remainder by trace elements.
Combined with its discovery in a ritual pit, the discovery raises the intriguing possibility that meteoric iron was not just a common material for the people of Sanxingdui, but precious enough to be included in any activity that involved accumulating treasures in a pit and setting them on fire.
