Archaeologists work at the Sanxingdui Ruins site Photo: Courtesy of the Sichuan Provincial Cultural Relics and Archaeology Research Institute

 
Construction on a new branch museum of the Sanxingdui Museum dedicated to displaying exquisite ancient Chinese cultural relics that were recently excavated, is expected to start in 2021, museum officials announced on Monday.

“As more valuable cultural relics are being found during archaeological work, the current museum does not have enough space, so building a new museum to better display these relics is a necessity,” Zhu Jiake, deputy curator of the Sanxingdui Museum, told the Global Times.

On Saturday, archeologist revealed that six more ancient sacrificial pits and more than 500 relics dating back to about 3,000 years ago have been unearthed recently at the renowned Sanxingdui Ruins site in Southwest China’s Sichuan Province.

The current Sanxingdui Museum was built based on discoveries from the first and second pit. Built in 1997, it has two exhibition halls covering a total of 10,800 square meters.

In October 2020, the museum announced that it was accepting concept designs for the new branch. A total of 57 design agencies as well as 214 designers from both home and abroad participated in the event and three designs were listed as outstanding works, according to the museum website.

Construction is currently underway on the new branch, which will cover 30,000 square meters, as well as a 5,000-square-meter tourist center. The project will cost an estimated 1.06 billion yuan ($ 163 million), Chinese news site The Paper reported on Monday.

“The new Sanxingdui Museum branch is an important part of the construction of the Sanxingdui National Archaeological Site Park and the declaration of World Cultural Heritage. We hope that the new branch will become an iconic cultural building that reflects both international and Chinese styles,” said Zhu.

Besides the new branch, China’s first open-style cultural relic restoration hall is scheduled to be opened in April. The new hall at the museum will be equipped with rooms dedicated to cultural relics storage and where visitors can observe the restoration of pottery, jades, bronzes and ivory works to better understand the techniques used to bring ancient relics back to life.

“The idea of building an open-style cultural relics restoration hall is something that can be established in the museums nationwide,” said Zhu. 

According to reports, a newly discovered ivory work weighing more than 50 kilograms has been removed from the fourth pit of the Sanxingdui Ruins and sent for cultural relic restoration.