Xiaohe Cemetery, Bronze Age cemetery in Ruoqiang County, China

Xiaohe Cemetery is a Bronze Age burial complex on an oblong sand dune west of Lop Nur, in Ruoqiang County, Xinjiang. About 330 tombs are marked by upright poplar posts, some torpedo-shaped and some oar-shaped, with dry reed bundles packed around their bases. Each coffin was made of two massive planks set over the body like an overturned boat and covered with cowhides.

Burials began at the site around 4,000 years ago, in the early Bronze Age. A local hunter, Ördek, found it around 1910; in 1934 he led Swedish archaeologist Folke Bergman there, and Bergman named it Xiaohe after a nearby tributary of the Kaidu River and excavated 12 burials. Excavation by the Xinjiang Cultural Relics and Archaeology Institute resumed in October 2003, and 167 tombs have been uncovered since the end of 2002.

The name Xiaohe, "little river", was given by Folke Bergman in 1934 after a tributary of the Kaidu River; a local hunter, Ördek, had found the site around 1910, and it is also called Ördek's Necropolis. Each grave is marked by a poplar post whose end is oar-shaped or torpedo-shaped, and the pairing is reversed from what visitors expect: oar-shaped posts mark male burials, phallic posts mark female ones. Ox skulls or horns may hang from the posts, and small human-face masks and wooden figures accompany some burials.

The site lies in the Lop Desert, about 60 km south of the lower Kongque River valley in Ruoqiang County, reached only by desert track; no settlement stands nearby. The dune is bare sand with no shade, water or shelter, so carry your own supplies and wear sturdy boots. Windblown sand and loose reeds cover the ground between the poles.

Researchers discovered in 2024 a cheese piece roughly 3,600 years old, counted among the oldest preserved cheese specimens in human history. This find shows that dairy processing in this ancient society was already quite advanced.