This is the site of the ancient capital of the late Shang Dynasty, located northwest of Anyang County City in Henan Province, China. The name “Ruins of Yin” is mentioned in the “Shiji” (History of the Shang Dynasty), and the site has long been known as an ancient site of the Shang Dynasty. The site began to attract renewed attention when armor engraved with characters was unearthed here in the late dynastic period, and various splendid relics, including bronze vessels, were unearthed through theft. In 1928, Chinese archaeologists such as Li Jie and Dong Chabin of the Institute of History and Language, Academia Sinica, began full-scale academic research at Yin Ruins, and since then systematic excavations have been conducted almost every year until 1937, achieving great results. The results have been published one after another in recent years. Even after the inauguration of the new China, the Chinese Academy of Sciences has continued to produce and publish results, such as the excavation of the Great Tomb of Wuguan Village in 1950. The Shang Ruins site is centered on Xiaotun Hill and extends east to Huogang, and north to northwest to Dashiku Village, Wuguan Village, Houjiazhuang, and Xibeigang. Of these, the Xiaotun area has been the most intensively surveyed, with many large and small building sites discovered, as well as a large number of tombs. The foundation stones were placed on slab foundations, the buildings were made of wood, the walls were slabs, and the roofs were thatched. A large number of tombs were also found in the Xiaotun area, most likely sacrifices, and a group of eleven large tombs were discovered and investigated in the area from Houjiazhuang to Wuguan Village, northwest of Xiaotun and north of Lanshui. These large tombs have all been robbed. For example, the 1004th large tomb is 13 meters deep, with a rectangular chamber measuring 17 meters by 19 meters, and has grave ways on all sides. In the chamber, there is a wooden burial chamber, which contains a wooden coffin and a large amount of gorgeous burial accessories, and dozens of martyrs and victims are buried in it. In addition to a large number of gorgeous and exquisite bronze and jade vessels decorated with iron patterns, the large tombs also contained earthenware in the form of white pottery such as vessels imitating bronze vessels, and small tombs were mainly made of muddy gray pottery and accompanied by ming vessels such as barons, cups, pens, vessels, and beans for burial. The research at Hengang, east of Xiaotun, revealed the stratigraphic sequence of colored pottery, black pottery, and gray pottery, and clarified the criteria for the development from the prehistoric period in Henan Province to the Shang and Zhou dynasties.
