Below Jiuxiang: Rock Chambers and Human Traces

Jiuxiang lies in Yiliang County, where a provincial register identifies a 5,336-hectare canyon-and-cave national geopark. The protected landscape contains different places and histories. One is Zhangkou Cave, described in an archaeological paper published in Acta Anthropologica Sinica in 1995.

Author Hu Shaojin places Zhangkou on a slope beside the Maitian River gorge, within the Jiuxiang scenic area. The cave developed in Dengying Formation dolomite. Stalactites and stalagmites divided its interior into seven chambers in the published plan, turning a single cave name into several connected spaces.

Hu reports finding nearly a hundred stone artefacts near the cave in July 1989, followed by a larger trial excavation from September to November 1990. The study records 40 human teeth, 1,923 mammal fossils, 1,826 Palaeolithic stone artefacts and a small number of bone tools. It places the archaeological sequence in the late Pleistocene to early Holocene.

The paper’s section describes eighteen successive layers, with changes in sediment and the distribution of finds. Its plans and stratigraphy connect objects to positions within the cave. Jiuxiang’s underground world therefore holds more than striking chambers: at this named locality, a documented excavation also opens a view onto human time.