In July to August 2004, the Institute of Archaeology, Nanjing Museum discovered several ancient sites and numbers of Zhou period mounded tombs in their archaeological survey along the zones where the Zhengjiang-Liyang and the Nanjing-Changzhou railways were to be built. One of the barrows is Yuxiang-D1 on the hill about 600 m east of Yuxiang Village in Xuebu Town, Jintan City. Its excavation was jointly carried out by the Institute of Archaeology of Nanjing Museum and the Jintan Museum by opening simultaneously four excavation zones, advancing the digging works in them at the same rate, and following strictly stratigraphical order in the cleaning process of vestiges.The accumulations in the barrow can be divided into seven layers, from which three tombs, 13 object assemblages and one house-foundation were discovered and 107 objects were unearthed, including pottery pots, jars, ding tripods, lids, fu cauldrons, bu round-mouthed deep-bellied liquid containers and proto-porcelain bowls. A comparative study of the combination and decoration of the grave goods with the related data previously obtained suggests that the barrow can be preliminarily dated to the mid and late Spring-and-Autumn period.
