Ruru Chen ¹ Zhenbin Xie ² Qing Xiao ² Chong Wang ² Rui Wen ^1*

• ¹ Northwest University, Xi'an, China
• ² Sichuan Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, Chengdu, China

TIntroduction: The Sanxingdui Site (Sichuan, China) is the typical representative of the ancient Shu culture, which lasted from the late Neolithic to early Western Zhou. The sacrificial pits are located in the core region of Sanxingdui Site, and numerous artefacts are unearthed including ivory, seashells, bronzes, pottery, jade, stone, gold, bone and horn products. The function of the pits and buried artefacts have always been the focus but the microbiome around artefacts attracts less attention. Recently, the microbiome in buried ivory soil has just been identified, however, the microbiome around other artefacts has never been studied. In term of the unique perspective for interpretation the archaeological issues, the study were carried out for: (1) the microbial diversity and community of soil in the lower layer of artefacts in sacrificial pits, (2) the potential biodeterioration behavior of organic and inorganic relics, (3) the impact of sacrificial and burial activities in different sacrificial pits on microbiome.There were 45 soil samples around different artefacts in three sacrificial pits and 12 raw soil samples inside or outside the sacrificial pits sampling from Sanxingdui Site. The microbial genomes were then identified and analyzed using the next-generation high-throughput sequencing. The represented bacterial phyla were Proteobacteria, Actinobacteriota, GAL15, Chloroflexi, Acidobacteriota, Methylomirabilota, Thermoplasmatota, Crenarchaeota, Gemmatimonadota, Firmicutes, and the represented fungal phyla were Ascomycota, Mortierellomycota, Basidiomycota. Further microbial functional analysis found that the bacterial genera Sphingopyxis, Limnobacter, Streptomyces and the fungal genera Cladosporium, Acremonium and Mortierella were concerned with the degradation of organic matter, while the genera Pseudomonas, Arthrobacter, Variovorax, Aspergillus and Penicillium might be related to the biocorrosion of bronzes. In addition, the microbial composition and principal co-ordinates analysis (PCoA) demonstrated the significant differences in microbial composition and structure between the raw soil samples and the soil samples around the artefacts, and also between the soil samples in different sacrificial pits.It is important to understand the biodeterioration of the buried artefacts and the sacrificial activities in Sanxingdui Site according to the results of microbial diversity and community. The combination of microbiology and archaeology will shed light on the archaeological issues related to the ancient human activities and behaviors.