Guxing Han Dynasty Metallurgical Site

 

Guxing Town is located at the confluence of the Yellow River and the ancient Grand Canal. During the three or four hundred years from the Warring States period to the Western Han Dynasty, it was a famous regional center city with developed commerce and advanced iron smelting industry, and the city was prosperous and famous in the world.

“He Yi”, the first iron smelting workshop in the ancient Henan Prefecture，is the largest and earliest iron-smelting site found in the world for the moment. Located outside the west wall of Xingyang of Han Dynasty, the site is 27 kilometers northwest of Zhengzhou It is 400 meters long from north to south and 300 meters wide from east to west, with a total area of 120,000 square meters.

In the two excavation of Guxing Han Dynasty Metallurgical Site of 1965 and 1975, the remains of two large iron smelting blast furnaces of the Han Dynasty have been excavated. At the same time, a well, a pool, the pit of wooden pillar with four comers, the pottery kiln, a ceramic blastpipe, refractory bricks,ceramic molds used for casting irons, as well as 318 pieces of iron ware, 380 pieces of pottery, eight pieces of stone tools, and more than 10 pieces of iron, the heaviest of which was 23 tons had been unearthed.

The remains of two larger blast furnace for iron manufacture lie side by side with a distance of 14.5 meters between. The base of the No.1 furnace is 3 meters deep in oval shape. It’s the largest iron-making furnace in ancient times both at home and aboard, while in the west, circular blast furnaces did not appear until the mid-16th century.

These metallurgical technologies discovered in Zhengzhou area represent the highest level of metallurgical technology in the Han Dynasty and are far ahead in the world at that time.