HORSEPOWER
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Interactions between China, Mongolia and the steppe 2000-0 BCE
Behind the Jade: Animals, Mining and Life at Mazongshan
Du Linyao
Introduction by Ruiliang Liu:
Mazongshan speaks directly to the central objective of Horsepower project because it captures, in unusually concrete form, the meeting of two broad worlds in the second half of the first millennia BCE: the animal-powered steppe world to the north (Mongolia) and the population-driven agricultural world to the south (China). Located in the Hexi Corridor, this frontier zone shows how the strengths of both were brought together in practice. Cattle provided labour, sheep and goats supplied meat and fur, camels and donkeys enabled transport, and horses supported rapid movement, social status and perhaps defence; together, these steppe-derived animals formed the logistical foundation through which local jade resources could be extracted and flowed to Warring States China, where all sorts of jade were sought after by both the old elites but also emerging social class. Through Mazongshan, one can vividly see how real people worked together, drawing on the advantages and needs of the two worlds to create a new economic flow using local resources in frontier conditions. In return, this recharged the broad connectivity between the Steppe and China.
Figure 1. Chinese jade bi (ring disc) reg. no. 2022,3034.158 © Trustees of the British Museum
Academic papers often appear well-polished, self-contained and even privileged. They present discoveries in neat paragraphs, supported by figures, dates and references. What they rarely show is the human side of research: the long days in field stations, the false starts, the revisions, the doubts, and the conversations that slowly transform rubbish materials into a bigger historical story.
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Our recent article on the Mazongshan jade mining site in the Hexi Corridor began, in many ways, started with a simple observation. During the zooarchaeological study of animal remains from the site, one feature stood out immediately: there were surprisingly many cattle. That may sound like a small detail, but in the extremely arid environment of Mazongshan, it was anything but ordinary. Compared with other archaeological sites in the Hexi Corridor, the proportion of cattle was strikingly high. That anomaly became the starting point for years of work and, eventually, for a new way of understanding how ancient jade mining actually functioned.
Mazongshan is no ordinary site. Located in the Gobi Desert in the northwestern Hexi Corridor, it is the first systematically excavated ancient jade mining zone in China. Dating roughly to 420–160 BC, it preserves not only evidence of mining, but also settlement and defensive structures, allowing archaeologists to reconstruct how people lived and worked in one of the harshest landscapes imaginable. The site covers more than 6 million square metres and includes around 296 identified jade quarries.
But the academic significance of Mazongshan goes beyond mining itself. Our study showed that jade extraction here was supported by a surprisingly complex logistical system. Rather than relying on human labour alone, the site used a coordinated mix of working cattle, horses, donkeys and Bactrian camels. Particularly exciting was the discovery of the earliest radiocarbon-dated donkey and camel remains yet found in the Hexi Corridor. Strontium isotope analysis further suggested that at least some of these animals came from different places, pointing to organised movement of resources into this desert mining zone. In other words, behind the beautiful jade objects admired in ancient China stood an unseen infrastructure of animals, labour and long-distance supply.
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Yet this larger picture did not emerge all at once…
Life at the field station
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Much of the real work happened far from museums and journal pages. In the summer of 2020, the animal remains excavated from Mazongshan were studied at the field station of the Gansu Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology in Zhangye, an oasis city in the middle of the Hexi Corridor. The station stood in the countryside beside a major archaeological site, with few signs of ordinary village life nearby. It was a place where archaeologists sorted finds, carried out research and lived together for weeks at a time. For a young researcher, it felt almost like a world of its own, quiet, focused, but also isolated.
The landscape left a deep impression. The Hexi Corridor is famous for its dryness, either summer or winter, but living there made that fact visceral. A washed lab coat could dry in less than an hour on the playground. Water was scarce enough that bathing became a small logistical challenge in itself. At the station, a black water bag was placed on the roof to heat under the sun, with a hose leading down into a tiny improvised bathing tent in the courtyard. It was an ingenious local solution, simple and perfectly adapted to the environment. But as summer waned and the sun weakened, even that stopped working. By the end of one stretch of work, twenty-four days had passed without a proper bath.
The Mazongshan jade mining site is located in an extremely arid area (photo by Menghan Qiu)
Gansu Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology
Meanwhile, the samples from Mazongshan released clouds of fine Gobi dust whenever a bag was opened. Over time, that dust seemed to settle not just on clothes and tables, but on one’s whole sense of place. Research no longer felt separate from the desert. The workroom and the landscape blurred into one another. And box by box, the thousands of animal bone fragments were identified until all twenty-four boxes from the 2014 excavation had been completed. It was slow, repetitive and unglamorous work, but that is often how archaeology moves forward: not in dramatic moments, but in quiet accumulation.
The question that changed the paper
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At first, the project looked like a strong zooarchaeological study. The faunal assemblage was analysed, the age and sex structure of the animals was examined, skeletal pathologies were studied to detect possible labour use, and samples were collected for strontium isotope analysis to investigate origins. The evidence was growing steadily. But something was still missing.
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In November of 2023, the journal to which the paper was submitted reached its decision: rejection. By then, more than a year had passed since the original submission. The manuscript had endured three full rounds of review, and each time the outcome was balanced, with one reviewer happily recommending acceptance whereas the other firmly rejecting.
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The journal’s notification came while I was in London, visiting the British Museum as a research visiting PhD, and I just happened to be having lunch in the museum canteen with my host supervisor, the Principal Investigator of the Horsepower Project, Dr. Ruiliang Liu. Ruiliang responded with remarkable calm, just one short sentence as I still vividly remembered -- we start again, and this time we aim for a better journal. That sentence seems simple, but in research it can mean a great deal. It was not just encouragement. It was a decision to treat rejection not as failure, but as an opportunity to think more ambitiously.
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More importantly, Ruiliang identified the central weakness of the draft with unusual clarity. The paper, he pointed out, contained almost everything about the animals—except the jade itself. That observation changed the entire direction of the article. Instead of asking only what animals were present and how they were used, the study had to ask broader archaeological questions. What kind of place was Mazongshan in its own time? Who organised these animals? How were they connected to extraction, transport and exchange? How did a remote desert mine fit into the wider political and economic world of the Warring States period?
Numerous mining pits were found at the site (photo by Menghan Qiu)
Those questions opened the paper outward. They connected the faunal evidence to the history of jade demand in early China, to long-distance exchange, and to the larger social world of the Hexi Corridor. Earlier work had already suggested that jade from Mazongshan reached eastern China during the Warring States and early Han periods. A Wei state coin from the site points to exchange with central China, and typological and geological evidence indicates that Mazongshan jade may have travelled as far as an aristocratic tomb at Shizishan in Eastern coast, easily over 2000 kilo metres. The animals, then, were not just part of local subsistence. They were part of the hidden machinery that made labour-comsuming mining and this long-distance movement possible.
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For me as the lead author, this was also a personal turning point. Coming from an ecology background and later joining environmental archaeology, it was not always easy to frame the problem in broader archaeological terms. Ruiliang helped reframe the whole conceptional structure completely, bringing in a wider perspective on trade, mining and cultural exchange. Even after the London visit ended, conversations continued across an eight-hour time difference, and the project slowly took on a new shape.
From an study of counting animal bones to a story about real history
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That reframing proved crucial. Once animals were placed back into the world of jade, the discoveries became more powerful and more legible to a broader audience.
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What emerged was a picture of ancient mining that feels unexpectedly modern in its complexity. Jade mining at Mazongshan was not just about miners cutting stone out of the ground. It required labour, transport, provisioning and organisation in an environment with very low rainfall and severe ecological constraints. The unusually high proportion of cattle, including many older and male individuals, suggested that these animals were valued not mainly for meat or milk but for labour. Donkeys and camels added further transport capacity. Horses were also part of this mixed animal economy. Together, they formed a flexible logistical system adapted to desert extraction and overland movement.
A goitered gazelle roaming near the Mazongshan jade mining site (photo by Menghan Qiu)
Jade material excavated from Mazongshan-Gansu Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology
Seen in this light, the article is not only about animal bones. It is about the invisible support system behind a celebrated material of Chinese civilisation. For millennia, jade has been admired as a symbol of ritual, morality and status. But before jade reached courts, tombs and workshops, it had to be mined from difficult places like Mazongshan and carried across great distances. Our study offers one of the clearest views yet of that hidden world.
Why this matters for Horsepower
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This is also why the Mazongshan study fits so naturally within the wider Horsepower project. Horsepower explores the relationships between China, Mongolia and the steppe from roughly 2000 to 0 BC, using evidence from horses, metals, excavation and scientific analysis to understand how exchanges of animals, materials and ideas shaped early states. It combines archaeology with methods such as genetics, chronology and metallurgical analysis, while also asking broader questions about politics, power and connectivity across Eurasia.
Mazongshan adds a valuable dimension to that agenda. It shows that long-distance interaction was not only about prestige objects at the receiving end, nor only about spectacular moments of political encounter. It was also about practical systems: how animals were moved, how labour was organised, how remote frontiers were connected to centres of demand, and how life in marginal landscapes supported major cultural traditions. In that sense, the site reveals the infrastructure behind exchange. It reminds us that the Silk Roads were never only roads. They were networks sustained by human decisions, animal power and environmental adaptation.
A long journey of seven years
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By the time the paper was finally accepted in 2026, seven years had passed since the work first began. During that period, I moved from PhD student to early-career scholar, navigating dissertation writing, graduation and job hunting, while the paper continued in the background, slowly taking shape. There were revisions, resubmissions and difficult reviewer comments. But there was also persistence, mentorship and collaboration across institutions and disciplines.
That may be the most important behind-the-scenes story of all. Research is often presented as discovery, but just as often it is endurance: the willingness to return to a problem, rethink it, and keep going until the evidence and the argument finally meet.
In the end, Mazongshan gave us more than a case study of ancient jade mining. It offered a glimpse into how archaeology really works—through dust, distance, conversation and patience. And it showed that sometimes the most revealing part of history lies not necessarily only in the object people admire, but also in the hidden systems that made it possible.
Researcher performing zooarchaeological identification (photo by Menghan Qiu)