CHENGDU — A museum dedicated to the mysterious ancient Ba culture has opened to the public in southwest China’s Sichuan Province.
The Luojiaba Site Museum, which opened on Thursday, covers an area of nearly 12,000 square meters and is located in Xuanhan County under Dazhou City. The museum showcases more than 500 items unearthed from the Luojiaba cultural relics site, encompassing a diverse range of materials such as bronze, jade, pottery and stoneware.
The Luojiaba site, covering an area of about 1.2 million square meters, is renowned for cultural relics spanning from the late Neolithic Age to the Qin (221 B.C.-207 B.C.) and Han (202 B.C.-220 A.D.) dynasties.
It is believed to be an important place to explore the origin of the Ba culture, an ancient culture that flourished primarily in the present-day Sichuan Province and Chongqing Municipality in southwest China.
Since 1999, eight excavations have been carried out at the Luojiaba site, and over 250 tombs from the Eastern Zhou Dynasty (770 B.C.-256 B.C.) and more than 3,000 cultural-relic items were found at the site, according to Zheng Luhong, an associate research fellow at the Sichuan Provincial Cultural Relics and Archeology Research Institute.
The discoveries at the Luojiaba site reflect the ethnic diversity, as well as ethnic and cultural integration in the area in ancient times, Zheng said.
“Building a museum on the basis of the Luojiaba site will enhance the protection and utilization of the site, and further promote the exploration and demonstration of the Ba culture,” said Xiong Ou, curator of the museum.
