Archaeological Dig Sheds New Light on the Other Great Wall of China

Practically everyone has heard about the Great Wall of China, but the iconic monument is not the only massive frontier in northern East Asia.

An international team of researchers has surveyed a section belonging to the Medieval Wall System (MWS), a little-known and extremely remote network of walls, enclosures, and trenches across China, Mongolia, and Russia. Specifically, the researchers investigated a 252-mile-long (405-kilometer) section in Mongolia, called the Mongolian Arc, and conducted an excavation at one of its enclosures. Instead of a thick stone wall, the archaeologists uncovered a shallow ditch, suggesting the barrier didn’t serve defensive purposes.

“We sought to determine the use of the enclosure and the Mongolian Arc,” Gideon Shelach-Lavi, an archaeologist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said in an Antiquity statement. “What was its function? Was it primarily a military system designed to defend against invading armies, or was it intended to control the empire’s outermost regions by managing border crossings, addressing civilian unrest, and preventing small-scale raids?”

Various dynasties worked on the 2,485-mile-long (4,000-km) MWS, such as the Jin dynasty (1115 to 1234 CE), whose empire included modern-day North China and regions of Inner Asia. While the enclosure was made of thick stone walls, archaeologists found that the wall itself was actually a shallow ditch along a pile of earth.

A ditch certainly could not have defended against an invading army—but it may have helped guide people toward gates and served as a symbol of the Jin dynasty’s power and control of the region. Forts built along this barrier would have allowed soldiers or guards to monitor who was coming and going. In other words, the researchers suggest that those in power used the Mongolian Arc to control the movement of civilians, animals, and goods rather than to defend the frontier.

Led by Shelach-Lavi, the archaeologists also unearthed coins from the Song dynasty (960 to 1279 CE), iron artifacts, and a heated stone platform that would have been used as both a stove and a bed. Furthermore, “considerable investment in the garrison’s walls, as well as in the structures within them, suggests a year-round occupation,” explained Shelach-Lavi. He and his colleagues detailed their work in a study published today in the journal Antiquity. More specifically, this indicates that the dynasties who built the MWS greatly valued civilian infrastructure that could both symbolize their power and also enable trade.

Moving forward, future research might shed light on the people who walked along this frigid frontier hundreds of years ago. “Analysis of samples taken from this site will help us better understand the resources used by the people stationed at the garrison, their diet, and their way of life,” Shelach-Lavi concluded.