What is "sanxingdui"

Sanxingdui is the name of an archaeological site and the previously unknown Bronze Age culture for which it is the type site. Sanxingdui is now believed to be the site of a major ancient Chinese city in what is now Sichuan, China. The Bronze Age culture which was first discovered in 1929 and then re-discovered in 1986 when archaeologists excavated remarkable artifacts, that radiocarbon dating dated as being from the 12th-11th centuries BCE. The culture that produced these artifacts is now known as the Sanxingdui Culture, and archeologists are identifying it with the ancient kingdom of Shu. The artifacts are displayed in the Sanxingdui Museum located near the city of Guanghan.

The discovery at Sanxingdui, as well as other discoveries such as the Xingan tombs in Jiangxi, challenges the traditional narrative of Chinese civilization spreading from the central plain of the Yellow River, and Chinese archaeologists have begun to speak of "multiple centers of innovation jointly ancestral to Chinese civilization."