An archeologist（考古学家） at Washington University in St. Louis is helping¹ to reveal for the first time a snapshot（快照） of rural life in China during the Han Dynasty. The rural farming village of Sanyangzhuang was flooded by silt²（淤泥，泥沙） -heavy water from the Yellow River around 2,000 year ago.

Working with Chinese colleagues, T.R. Kidder, PhD, professor and chair of anthropology³（人类学） in Arts & Sciences, is working to excavate⁴（挖掘，开凿） the site, which offers a exceptionally well-preserved view of daily life in Western China more than 2,000 years ago.

The research was presented at the Society for American Archeology meeting in St. Louis is April and highlighted last month in Science, the journal of the American Association for the Advancement⁵ of Science.

"It's an amazing find," says Kidder of the site, which was discovered in 2003. "We are literally⁶ sitting on a gold mine of archeology that is untapped（未使用的，未开发的） ."

What researchers find fascinating and surprising, says Kidder, is that the town, though located in a remote section of the Han Dynasty kingdom, appears quite well off（很有钱） .

Exploration has revealed tiled roofs（用瓦平铺的屋顶） , compounds with brick foundations, eight-meter deep wells lined with bricks, toilets, cart and human foot tracks, roads and trees.

There is an abundance of metal tools, including plow⁷（犁） shares, as well as grinding stones（磨石） and coins. Also found have been fossilized impressions of mulberry（桑树） leaves, which researchers see as a sign of silk cultivation⁸.

"One could make the argument that this is where the Silk Road began," Kidder says.

He thinks the site could be substantially larger than is currently known. The flood of sediment⁹ that buried the town also covered an area of more than 1,800 square kilometers.

Excavation¹⁰ has revealed two more buried communities beneath Sanyangzhuang. "This sedimentary archive goes to all the way back to the Pleistocene（更新世） era," says Kidder, who has experience digging in silt-laden sites near the Mississippi River.

"We have a text written in dirt of environmental change through time that's associated with the flooding of the Yellow River and it's environmental relationships. We have an opportunity to examine an entire landscape dating from the Han and periods before," he says.

Excavated¹¹ remains¹² of a wall near the site could reveal a walled town, which is still buried in the silt.