Landscape, chronology and function of Bronze Age terrace-shaped settlements: A case study from the Youzhashan site in Yangxin County, Hubei Province, China

Abstract

The Middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, constituting a region rich in metal resources, played an important role in the formation and early development of the Bronze Age civilization in China, mainly including mainly the southeastern part of Hubei Province, the northern part of Jiangxi Province and the southern part of Anhui Province. Geological surveys have revealed that this region, which stretches for 500 km along the Yangtze River, is rich in mines, and archaeological institutions have discovered a large number of Bronze Age mining and metallurgical sites in the region over the past three decades. This region is an important area for studying the rise and prosperity of the Chinese Bronze Age civilization. Therefore, exploring the production pattern of the bronze industry in the copper mining area in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, as well as the resource circulation network between this region and the northern part of China, has become a hot issue in Chinese archaeological research in recent years.From March to July 2023, Wuhan University and the Cultural Relics Bureau of Yangxin County formed a joint archaeological team to carry out an archaeological survey of mining and metallurgical sites in an independent geographic unit in the northern part of Yangxin County, Hubei Province, covering an area of 120 km², and a total of 60 mining and metallurgical sites were discovered during the survey, and approximately two-thirds of the 60 sites exhibited the landscape with a more typical terrace-shaped site. In this study, we have carried out systematic archaeological exploration and drone mapping of the Youzhashan site, a typical terrace-shaped site in this region, and reconstructed the process of terrace-shaped site accumulation formation using materials from archaeological excavation, exploration and survey. In addition, scientific and technological tests were conducted on the metallurgical relics collected from the Youzhashan site, which revealed the occurrence e of copper smelting activities at the Youzhashan site, and we analyzed the processing system. In addition, the carbon samples excavated from the Youzhashan site were carbon dated to determine the exact date of the formation of the Youzhashan site.