Shell relics unearthed in Pingtan Keqiutou Site

Keqiutou Site is situated in Pingyuan Township, Southeast China’s Pingtan Island. It is the earliest Neolithic site discovered hitherto in Fujian Province,China, and is the oldest and most typical bay-shaped shell mound site in China. It represents the early Neolithic culture in Fujian andTaiwan.

The site is located on a mountainous slope with an altitude of 5 to 10 meters, a minimum of 1 to 2 meters, and an area of more than 3,000 square meters. In 1985, the Fujian Provincial Archaeological Team conducted its first large-scale archaeological excavation of the Keqiutou Cultural Relics where 21 shell stacking pits and 1 tomb were discovered. More than 200 pieces of relics including stoneware, bone tools, jade articles, shell tools,and earthenware, and thousands of pottery shards came up out of the ground. According to a radioisotope test, the Keqiutou Cultural Site can be dated back 7450-5590 years, ahead of the Tanshishan Cultural Site (5500-4000 years ago), which pushed back the history of Fujian's ocean civilization to 7000 years ago.

The Keqiutou was listed as a Fujian provincial cultural relic protection site in 1991. The site is of great academic significance to finding the evolution of the Neolithic culture in Fujian and researching on the cultural relationship between Fujian and Taiwan.

Bone relics unearthed in Pingtan Keqiutou Site