Ancient Pottery Exhibition

Huantai Museum features 12 exhibition halls housing nine thematic displays, showcasing over 5,000 cultural relics of various types.

The first floor holds two exhibitions: Light of Dongyi Civilization (Pottery Gallery) and Tile-End Art of the State of Qi. The second floor presents five thematic displays: Comprehensive Exhibition of Ancient Coins, Appreciation of Bronze Mirrors, Ancient Calligraphy and Paintings, Porcelain, Jade and Buddha Statues, and Bronze Wares of the Bogu State. The third floor contains two displays: Pottery Inscriptions, Seals and Clay Seals and the specimen exhibition World of Colorful Butterflies.

The museum boasts rich and diverse exhibits presented through flexible display formats. Visitors may admire a great many exquisite cultural relics, supported by detailed illustrated textual explanations, sand tables, photographs, charts and documentary materials. The exhibitions reflect Huantai’s ancient politics, economy, culture, art, rituals and customs from multiple historical dimensions and perspectives, trace the evolutionary timeline of Huantai’s history, display its splendid ancient cultural achievements, and demonstrate Huantai’s vital standing within Chinese civilization.

The Light of Dongyi Civilization pottery exhibition on the first floor displays pottery, stone tools and jade artifacts dating from 8,500 to 3,100 years ago, spanning the Houli Culture to the late Shang Dynasty. Highlights include fine painted pottery of the Dawenkou Culture, eggshell-thin black pottery of the Longshan Culture, and oracle bone inscriptions of the Yueshi Culture that have drawn immense attention from academic circles at home and abroad. Unearthed in 1996 from a sacrificial artifact pit at the Shijia Site in Huantai County, these inscriptions were verified by experts and carbon-14 dating to be the earliest oracle bone writings discovered in China to date — at least 300 years older than the Shang oracle bones from Yinxu in Anyang. Boasting a vast collection of relics with magnificent momentum and profound cultural connotations that chronicle an unbroken span of 8,000 years, this exhibition is a rarity among museums across Shandong Province, hailed by specialists as "a condensed epitome of Dongyi Civilization".

Bronze Wares of the Bogu State features precious Shang and Zhou relics unearthed from the Shijia Site and surrounding archaeological sites in Huantai. Key pieces include a bronze gu inscribed "Fu Gui", bronze jue vessels marked "Fu Xin" and "Fu Ding", a bronze zhi engraved "Fu Ding", as well as ding cauldrons bearing clan emblems "Yao" and "Tufang". Also on show are rare artifacts from the Spring and Autumn, Warring States and Han dynasties: ding cauldrons with interlaced animal-eye patterns, bronze yan steamers, garlic-head vases, and ear lamps inscribed with the auspicious phrase "May descendants thrive". These Shang bronze wares etched with clan emblems and inscriptions provide crucial evidence for research into the distribution of clans in Shandong during the Shang Dynasty.

Arranged in chronological order, Comprehensive Exhibition of Ancient Coins illustrates the origin, development and evolution of Chinese currency. Rich in exhibits and illustrated with abundant images and texts, it is the first special coin-themed exhibition in Shandong Province