DgcityPerched on an old caravan route in southern Xinjiang, the ruined city of Tangwangcheng has produced Buddhist sculpture heads from an eastern temple and more than 500 other finds in its third modern excavation, sharpening the picture of one of the largest ancient cities on the southern edge of the Taklamakan Desert.
The season opened on May 18 and covered 1,000 square metres across four areas of the site near the city of Tumxuk. Teams cleared 85 features, including stretches of wall, a Buddhist temple, an old river channel, houses and tombs, and registered 531 small finds: clay sculpture, pottery, metalwork, mural fragments and plant and animal remains. A set of 119 pieces, including the sculpted heads from the Eastern Buddhist Temple, has now gone on public display together for the first time.
Tangwangcheng stood on a Silk Road artery running between oasis towns, and its remains record a community in which Buddhism flourished alongside busy trade and farming. The temple heads give fresh material for studying Tang dynasty Buddhist art in Xinjiang, while pottery from the inner city speaks to everyday production. Survey work shows the site was more than a walled outpost: temples, beacon towers, post stations and settlements cluster densely around it.
The city itself covers about 1.1 million square metres within a grand fourfold system of high terrace, inner city, outer city and a great outer enclosure. Since 2021 excavations have covered 2,000 square metres, exposed 160 features and recovered 1,288 artefacts, and the site is now part of the national Archaeology in China project. The results were presented at a history and culture forum in Tumxuk from November 7 to 9.
Scholars associate the ruins with the oasis kingdom recorded in Han and Tang texts as Weitou, later absorbed into the network of fortresses and protectorates that secured Tang control of the southern Tarim. The forum, themed on Han and Tang archaeology of the Xinjiang Silk Road, paired the new finds with work on southern Xinjiang’s other Buddhist monasteries, reflecting how closely trade, military administration and monastic life were woven together in the desert oases.
