Chengziya National Archaeological Site Park

Chengziya National Archaeological Site Park
城子崖国家考古遗址公园

Address: Longshan town, Zhangqiu district, Jinan city, Shandong province
Hours: 9am - 5pm (Tuesday-Thursday)
General admission: Free
Tel: (+86-531)83621031

Chengziya is an archaeological site located on the right banks of the lower Yellow River in Shandong, China, and the place where the Longshan culture of the Neolithic Age was first discovered in 1928. It is believed to have been a walled human settlement dating from about 2500 BC to 1900 BC, and is 530 meters long and 430 meters wide, covering an area of about 200,000 square meters.

A large number of Neolithic stone tools, bone utensils, and pottery have been unearthed from the lower layer of the Chengziya site. Among them, the most distinctive are some special black pottery ware with a uniform black color, metallic luster, and a very delicate structure like eggshell or paper.

Located in the town of Longshan and completely different from the Yangshao Culture, which was characterized by its red, painted pottery, these discoveries from Chengziya were named "Longshan Culture".

The unique visual effect of the Longshan Culture pottery comes from the sophisticated pottery-making techniques used at the time, including the closed carburizing technique, the precise use of a pottery wheel, and the technique used for polishing the surface, etc.

In addition to highlighting the cultural diversity of ancient China, the excavation of the Chengziya site is of great significance to Chinese archaeology. In 1934, a collection of the excavation results of the Chengziya site was published in the book Chengziya: Black Pottery Culture Site in Longshan Town, Licheng County, Shandong, which was the first such report on field archaeology in China.

The Chengziya National Archaeological Site Park has not yet completed its second phase of construction, which is expected to be finished in 2025. As part of the future national archaeological site park development, the Longshan Culture Museum (formerly Chengziya Site Museum), which displays various cultural relics from the Chengziya site, is currently open to the public free of charge.