More than 4,220 cliff tombs have been discovered over 680 sites in Shangluo, a city in western China's Shaanxi Province, local archaeologists said on Monday.

The cliff tombs are large and of various shapes, and are scattered along a 160-km-long belt connecting Danjiang Valley in the east and Qianyou River in the west, scientists with the provincial archeological research institute said.

According to Yang Yachang, a researcher with the institute, most of the single-compartment tombs are erect stone caves, rectangular in shape and three meters deep. Tombs with multiple compartments are flat and carved with kitchen ranges, wells, toilets and shrines.

Inscriptions with names and titles, presumably of those buried in the tombs, were also found.

Another discovery was a cliff painting and eight pieces of basso relievo of what could be human faces or beast heads.

(Xinhua News Agency January 10, 2006)