The Xingong ruins is located in Nanyuan residential street, Fengtai, Beijing, and it is the first time that a settlement site relating to the double ring trenches of the Daituotou culture of the Xia and Shang Dynasties has been discovered in Beijing. It reproduces the history of exchanges and mingling between the central plains of China and the pastoralist area in the Bronze Age. Approved by the National Culture Heritage Administration, a systematic archaeological survey and excavation of the Xingong ruins was carried out by the Beijing Institute of Archaeology from 2021 to 2022, and important discoveries were made. In May 2023, the ruins was listed as one of the new discovery projects of China’s archaeology, with an existing area of about 45,000 square meters and an excavation area of about 16,000 square meters in last two years.
Remains such as ash pits, cellar caves, and house sites were found, which were severely damaged by later activities, and the cultural stratigraphy of the openings of the relic units in different areas was not completely uniform, with most of the relics surviving only at the bottom. In addition, a graveyard of the Western Zhou period was found, and it was initially recognized that the status of the owners of the graves was relatively low due to the excavated objects and the shape of the graves. A paleochannel was found in the northeastern part of the site, flowing from northwestern to southeastern, about 2 meters deep from the present surface, with silt layering, and plant humus, chalk, and black silt were seen at the bottom of the river. A number of factors, such as the sedimentary remains of the river and the ease of water flow, provide important information for environmental archaeological research. Experts speculate that this paleochannel may be related to the former channel of the Yongding river, which provides new information for exploring the changes of the ancient Yongding river.
The discovery shows that the ruins is a high-level ritual special site, and it is the first time that a ritual site which related to the late Xia Dynasty to the early-mid Shang Dynasty with relatively complete functions, layout and structure in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region. Its location and scale reflect the strong organizational and management skills of the ancestors. The graveyard of the same period of the ruins and the excavation of a large number of precious relics have filled the blank of the historical and cultural appearance of the Xia and Shang Dynasties in the urban area of Beijing, and it is an exemplary model reflecting the phenomenon of the integration of diversified and integrated cultures.