Light On

The No 1 tomb of the Wuwangdun Site in Huainan, Anhui province, believed to be the tomb of King Kaolie of the Chu state, who reigned during the late stage of the Warring States Period (475-221 BC). JIANG DONG/ TASTE ALL CHINA Findings at Wuwangdun shed intriguing light on how society was organized millennia ago, Wang Ru reports in Huainan, Anhui province. The 15-meter-high mound at the Wuwangdun Site in Huainan, Anhui province, has long been recognized as an important tomb, and was listed as a key provincial cultural relic protection site in 1981. As China often takes protective measures for important tombs without necessarily excavating them, Wuwangdun could easily have continued to conceal its millennia-old stories. However, its silence was shattered by grave robbers. While graves have been plundered throughout history, a major incident in 2015 was the last straw. When the public security authorities successfully cracked the case in 2018, archaeologists inferred from the confessions of the criminals and from field surveys that although many artifacts still lay buried, the underground environment had changed, leaving them exposed to damage. Consequently, an archaeological rescue project began in 2020 and the ongoing project has already yielded exciting findings. The Wuwangdun…