Li Dan

UNDER a dirt track leading to Xiantouling Village on the Dapeng Peninsula in eastern Shenzhen, lies a 30,000-square-meter prehistoric Neolithic site that was selected as one of China's top 10 archaeological discoveries of 2006.

"Now, people cannot tell the difference between this country path and any other earthy roads in the city, since the fifth excavation has concluded and the path was restored," said Li Hairong, team leader of the recent excavations.

Set against the backdrop of an untainted blue sea and green mountains, the village is inhabited by some 100 families, mostly migrants working in nearby factories who rent houses from locals. The property owners have moved elsewhere after making money. During the day, the silence is broken only by the occasional barking dogs, or laughing children.

It was very different last spring, when the excavation team was working at the site. Many curious onlookers came to watch.

"Those driven by curiosity or even cherishing a secret wish to come upon precious antiques were actually disappointed," laughed Li, who as a Ph.D in archaeology from Beijing University.

"Bronze ware and whole-piece porcelains are precious, but we excavated broken pieces of pottery and stone tools. It took us great care not to mix up the different layers of the site, and a longer time to restore the pieces into pots and bottles. However, these things are not economically valuable."

To archaeologists like Li, nothing is more precious than the broken pieces, which open a window to prehistoric Shenzhen.

British archaeologist Matthew Johnson once said archaeologists serve as a bridge that spans the gap between the past and present. They interpret and help people understand things from the long past with the traces left by our ancestors.

"When the Ice Age ended about 10,000 years ago, the sea rose to form bays and sand dams. Lagoon plains gradually came into shape through which mountain creeks flew into the sea. With fishes to capture in the sea, wild animals to hunt in the mountain and crops to grow on the plains, it was a good place to live. Then, some 6,000 years and 7,000 years ago, a human habitation site, the earliest proved in the city's history, spread along the coastline of Diefu Bay to the northeast of Dapeng Bay, reaching out about 300 meters to the sea from today's coastline," Li said.

Xiantouling is a typical sand dune site in archaeological terms. Evidence of the past is clearly visible throughout the dune system as scattered pottery, stone tools, and other archaeological relics continue to be uncovered by excavations.

The site was first found in 1981 when Mo Zhi, a veteran archaeologist who passed away in 2004, led a Guangdong provincial excavation team to Shenzhen. Their mission was to build a museum and survey construction sites in the city to preserve historical relics.

Yang Yaolin, a member of the team then and curator of the city museum today, recalled the team discovering a big sand dune in Xiantouling Village. "There were pottery pieces scattered around. We decided it was a relics site but didn't realize its significance."

In 1983, Yang came back because three pots were found when an old banyan tree was uprooted after locals dug sand from that dune.

"The pottery was confirmed as dating back to Shang Dynasty (1,600 B.C.-1,100 B.C.), and the site should have been built during that period or even earlier."

In 1985, Mo Zhi led the first excavation at Xiantouling. Archeologists returned in 1989, 1997, 2004 and last year.

The fifth excavation, led by Li Hairong, was so far the biggest so far. The team unearth stoves, foundations of buildings, pieces of pottery bowls, wine goblets and other utensils in black, white and other colors.