The Xinle Site Museum is located in the northern part of the Huanggu District of Shenyang City, Liaoning Province. It is divided into northern and southern components: the southern has an exhibition hall for displaying cultural relics, while the northern is the actual archaeological site and is an important protected cultural property. The northern section covers an area of 22,500 square meters and preserves a large-scale primitive dwelling site by reproducing in open- air form ten dwellings from the Neolithic period, together with a simulated lifestyle of people living at that time.
| The unique architectural external appearance of the Xinle Site Museum. |
 | The discovery of this Neolithic site was first made at the Xinle Electric Power Plant, hence the name. The excavations are divided into Upper Strata and Lower Strata cultures, with the Upper Strata belonging to a period roughly 3,000 years ago. This corresponds with the bronze period, and excavated objects include ceramics such as three-legged vessels and stone tools that are predominantly of the polished-tool type. The Lower Strata belongs to a period roughly 7,200 years
ago, or what is considered to be a primitive-society Neolithic period. Half-submerged or half-underground dwellings reveal the contemporary architecture. Recovered artefacts include deep-bellied pots with impressed rope patterns, microliths, polished stone tools, chipped stone tools, carbonized particles, and wooden carved items. Since this culture had unique characteristics and was important in researching the history of early peoples in the northeast, it was given the name Xinle Culture.
After repeated excavations, the Xinle site has produced around thirty habitations in the Lower Strata Xinle Culture. Larger buildings are around 120 square meters in area, medium-sized are around 40-60 square meters, and small-sized are around 20-30 square meters. These are spaced closely together in lines so that this is considered to be a Neolithic settlement.
The Xinle Site Museum in the southern district currently has around 1,200 objects in its collection. In the northern district of the museum, one half-underground house has been preserved and is on view in its original state. This homesite was excavated in 1978. It is rectangular in shape, covers 95.46 square meters, and there is a round hearth in the middle. The four walls of the pit show the remaining traces of columns. A large number of items were excavated from within the house that are now exhibited mostly in the form in which archaeologists found them at the time. This, together with the actual structure of a dwelling that people used 7,000 years ago, gives visitors an authentic sense of what it was like to live here at that time. |
