Archaeologists will launch a large-scale excavation at the Sanxingdui ruins in Southwest China's Sichuan Province this year, to probe the mysteries of a lost civilization dating back more than 3,000 years.

A woman examins the ritual utensils and ivories at the excavation site of the Sanxindui.

Officials said work at the Sanxingdui ruins would run until 2010 as the State Administration of Cultural Heritage had approved excavation of a total area of 7,000 square metres.

A dig of 700 square metres this year would probably unearth the mysterious palaces, an altar, aristocratic tombs, bronze vessels and jadeware workshops, archaeologists said.

"We have great hopes for the dig," said Chen De'an, chief archaeologist of a Sichuan provincial archaeological team at the ruins.

Sanxingdui, which is listed among China's top 10 archaeological finds of the 20th century, has long been suspected of being the remains of the ancient Shu Kingdom, which suddenly disappeared in southwestern China between 3,000 and 5,000 years ago.

A bronze statuette dug out from the Sanxindui

Some of the most striking pieces were found accidentally in 1986 in Sanxingdui, a small village in the city of Guanghan, Sichuan.

Workers digging clay for bricks unearthed two pits, hidden for more than 3,000 years, which were filled with layers of bronze, stone and jade items including humanlike heads, masks, smaller figures and elephant tusks.

Though archaeologists have since struggled to further study and unearth relics from Sanxingdui, they have long been puzzled by the failure to find the altar and other items of the lost civilization.

How three different ancient civilizations that developed consecutively in the same area are still enigmas for archaeologists, while the exact meanings of the bronzes and masks remain unknown to experts at home and abroad.

The Sanxindui Museum

Some have held that an alien species might be the answer. A previous report quoted the locals as saying that the ruins were visited by an unidentified flying object (UFO) in December 2000.

"We hope to solve the millenniums-old mysteries one by one if we are lucky enough to find items like palaces, an altar and tombs," said Chen.

He said a rough picture of the mysterious ancient kingdom could be drawn if more details surfaced during the new excavation.

Sanxingdui is regarded as the site of the earliest and largest ruins of the ancient Shu people, who were discovered to date back to the late Neolithic period from 3,700 to 5,000 years ago.

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