were some of the objects found that were made out of gold, while objects made out of jade included axes, tablets, rings, knives, and tubes. There was also a large number of ivory and clam shells. Researchers were astonished to find an artistic style that was completely unknown in the history of Chinese art. All the Sanxingdui discoveries aroused scholarly interest, but the bronzes were what excited the world. Task Rosen of the British Museum considered them to be more outstanding than the Terracotta Army in Xi'an. The first exhibits of Sanxingdui bronzes were held in Beijing (1987, 1990) and the Olympic Museum in Lausanne (1993). Nevertheless, despite the interest in the excavated finds, the site suffered from flooding and pollution. For this reason the site was included in the 1996 World Monuments Watch by the World Monuments Fund. For the preservation of the site, funding was offered by American Express to construct a protective dike. Also, in 1997, the Sanxingdui Museum opened near the original site. In March 2021, more than 500 cultural relics, including a 3,000-year-old gold mask, were discovered at Sanxingdui at a 4.6-square-mile area outside the provincial capital of Chengdu. The mask is estimated to be made from 84% gold and weighs 280 grams (0.6 pounds). According to the National Cultural Heritage Administration, the items were recovered from six newly discovered "sacrificial pits". Additional masks, jade tools, and ivory relics were also discovered in the pit. The six pits were discovered at the Sanxingdui site between 2020 and 2022 during a renewed slate of excavations. The artifacts found in these excavations include fragments of a gold mask, traces of silk, bronze ware depicting animals, ivory carvings, and more. A round of excavations is scheduled to conclude in October 2022. Culture The timeline of the culture of the Sanxingdui site is thought to be divided into several phases. The Sanxingdui culture that corresponds to periods II-III of the site, was a mysterious civilization in southern China. This culture is contemporaneous with the Shang dynasty, however, that culture developed a different method of bronze-making from the Shang. The first phase that corresponds to period I of the site belongs to the Baodun, and the final phase (period IV) the culture was succeeded by the state of Ba and state of Shu. Speculation regarding the end of the Sanxingdui culture includes that it might have been the result of