Huanbei

Artifacts had been recovered from the area since the 1960s. In 1999, a walled city eight feet beneath the surface was discovered in the course of a regional survey undertaken by the Institute of Archaeology at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the Archaeometry Laboratory at the University of Minnesota. The city has since been excavated by joint teams from Institute of Archaeology at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the University of Minnesota, the University of Wisconsin and the University of British Columbia.

The city has walls of pounded earth forming an approximate square oriented 13 degrees east of north, with an area of 470 hectares (1,200 acres), including a palace-temple complex of 41 hectares (100 acres). Part of the site lies under Anyang's airport, limiting the scope of excavations.