The Shihsanhang Museum prepares for grand opening

Taipei County's Shihsanhang Museum of Archaeology (十三行博物館), which occupies a site containing prehistorical relics of the indigenous Shihsanhang people located at the county's Pali township, is set to be inaugurated on April 24, after almost five decades of unearthing and maintaining relics.

The museum, built directly on the relics site, displays the remains of the Aboriginal Shihsanhang people, who existed between 500 and 1,800 years ago in the current Pali township near the estuary of Tamsui River. It is the only prehistoric archeological museum in northern Taiwan.

Director of the museum Lin Ming-mei (林明美) said the establishment of the museum is a joint project of the Ministry of Education, the Council for Cultural Affairs and the Taipei County government.

The construction of the museum started in 2000 and the facility was originally scheduled to open to the public on April 24. A total of NT$380 million was spent on the construction, Lin said.

The museum staff explained yesterday that the Shihsanhang Aborigines were named after the Shihsanhang village, where their prehistoric civilization was discovered.

Shihsanhang, which means "13 stores" in Chinese, was a port city in which extensive commerce and trade was conducted during the Qing dynasty.

As evidenced by the large quantity of iron-smelting relics which have been unearthed and other forms of archeological dating, the Shihsanhang people lived at the beginning of the Iron Age.

"Judging from the remains we unearthed, Shihsanhang people appeared during the later part of the Neolithic Age and the beginning of the Iron Age. It is one of the earliest human civilizations to master iron smelting," the museum staff said.

The anthropological and ethnographic characteristics also suggest that the Shihsanhang people originated from the Austronesian people, as did the indigenous Malay people.

The archeologists inferred that the Shihsanhang people could be a related to the indigenous Iban Group of Sarawak in Malaysia, in terms of their habitation styles.

It remains a mystery why the Shihsanhang people disappeared after living in Pali for almost 1,000 years. But archaeologists suggested strong ties between the Shihsanhang people and the Pingpu (平埔族) and Ketagalan (凱達格蘭族) Aborigines in Taiwan.

The Shihsanhang Museum of Archeology exhibits pottery with designs of human faces, iron utensils, weaving materials, architecture and other decorations made of shell and wood that were used in the daily lives of the Shihsanhang people.

The museum is located at No. 200, Museum Road, Pali Township, Taipei County. Traffic information: take the MRT to the Kuandu station, and from there take the Red 22 bus to the museum. More information can be found at the museum's Web site (www.sshm.gov.tw)