Monday Ground Up: Sanxingdui Culture

When I first learned about this culture, it reminded me of the movie Exorcist: The Beginning. Don't ask me exactly why, but the first image that came to me was the cloth demon head that the priest was holding in the beginning of the movie. What does this have to do with the Sanxingdui Culture you ask? Maybe nothing, maybe something. It's a mystery.

This previously unknown Bronze Age culture was discovered in 1987 by archaeologists. The artifacts found were dated to the 12th and 11th century, although there are absolutely no records of the culture at all.

Sanxingdui is located near Guanghan in Chinese city in Deyang, the province of Sichuan. In 1929, some farmers unearthed some Jade relics that unfortunately fell into the hands of private collectors, so no information was really know about that culture at that time.

Archaeologists searched for years, and up until 1986, they had only found some broken artifacts in a sacrificial pit containing thousands of gold, bronze, jade, and pottery artifacts that had been broken (perhaps ritually disfigured), burned, and carefully buried.

Sanxingdui bronze heads with gold foil masks

The Sanxingdui Culture was highly advanced, using a type of bronze casting to construct the pieces found. Interestingly enough, and this is where the Exorcist comes in, the heads found had angular human features, protruding oblique eyes, and very large ears. Although my visions were from a movie, I do believe that there was a fight between good and evil and the depiction made in the movie was both alarming and had some truth.

Sanxingdui bronze head with characteristic large ears, protruding pupils and elaborate forehead ornament

Based upon the design of these heads, archeologists believe they were mounted on wooden supports or totems, perhaps dressed in clothing. Liu (2000:37) compares these masks with the shi 尸 "corpse; personator" ceremonial representative of a dead relative, and suggests, "It is likely the masks were used to impersonate and identify with certain supernatural beings in order to effect some communal good".

Sanxingdui bronze eagle head

So why was this culture never recorded during history and why was it covered up? The sacrificial pits were only hiding broken pottery, however they were burned. This in itself leads me to believe there was some type of cover-up that masked the truth of this secret culture.


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• Illustrious and Historical Legends, Tales, and Myths of The World
• More About the Finds at Sanxingdui, National Gallery of Art
• Treasures from a Lost Civilization: Ancient Chinese Art from Sichuan, Seattle Art Museum